Providing an on-point, creative solution that increases a client’s return on technology investment and produces the Raving Results we constantly seek to deliver.

The Client: City of Marshall

The Account Representative: Ariel DeLong

When Ariel DeLong first visited the City of Marshall after moving into her East Texas territory earlier this year, the need for organization and unity within a mishmash fleet of copiers and printers was a no-brainer.

She didn’t just “clean up” and right-size the fleet with her proposal. Ariel maintained an acute level of detail in her approach that made the City’s decision to do business with Datamax a relatively easy one. In the spirit of our 2022 corporate theme, Ariel was a true Difference Maker. 

The Business Challenge

When Ariel first moved into the Longview territory, Sales Manager Josh Sims knew there was a new Purchasing Manager and City Manager starting at the City of Marshall. He suggested they set up a meeting. The big goal was to update and regain control over the print environment across the various city buildings.

What Ariel found was a hodgepodge. There were Konica Minolta machines, Ricoh machines, and Xerox. There was an abundance of box-store printers sitting on desks (most with no service agreement). In fact, among the fleet of 75 devices, 46 of those were desktop printers.

Multiple manufacturers. Multiple vendors. No centralized point of purchasing. And little clarity on the exact number of devices, and the costs associated with them, including service and toner.

“It was just kind of a mess,” Ariel said. “When we first met with them, we all agreed that we needed to streamline things. There was no visibility on who was using what, what was owned, what was covered, and what was not. We set up a time to do a full walkthrough of the city offices.”

The Thought Process

So they took the tour, so to speak. Ariel and city staff members walked through most every office: the main building, water billing, community development, permit office, human resources, admin and finance, municipal court, main street office, the public library, the city animal shelter, public works, fire department, city hall, the police department, and the water treatment center (Yep, it was a long day).

“In one office in particular, in a room the size of the sales bullpen in Tyler, they had 7 employees working within that space. Altogether, they had seven devices – one copier and six printers. The director had two printers, side by side, one for black and white, and one for color!”

The goal? To cut the device total down by half, even knowing the number of users who were attached to their printers. Also, by harnessing the fleet into one agreement, the city would gain not just cost savings but a number of control and visibility benefits moving forward.

That’s where Ariel went to work, going to great lengths to provide transparency and exquisite detail every step of the way in their multiple proposal meetings.

“Because of the size of the contract, it was part of their process to get multiple bids. Out of all the other vendors they reached out to, only Datamax and one other competitor proposed,” Ariel recalls. “We had a couple of different key meetings with them going over the proposal, and we tweaked it accordingly.”

The Prevailing Results

“I think a strong part of our proposal is that we had really good references. We work with Marshall ISD and Harrison County. Those are two big entities they are familiar with,” Ariel said. “Honestly, I put a lot of work into my proposal and went into great detail to make sure there was no confusion and all questions were answered.”

Lastly, Ariel credits the service department – the staff at the city were uniquely impressed by Service Manager Justin Harper’s Master Level Certification, our service guarantees (which they’d not been privy to with other vendors), and the service team’s reputation at large.

In the end, with all these things, Ariel shined as a true Difference Maker. Doing business with her? It was relatively a no-brainer.