Following the November 2010 announcement by Asite of a contract between its north America distributor and US-based reprographics firmnetwork ReproMAX (post), the London-based AEC collaboration vendor has announced a similar, related deal a little closer to home. It has signed another “major contract”, this time with Callprint, the “premier technology-led reprographic and print service provider in the UK.” According to the news release:
“the partnership will support Callprint’s customer promise to deliver value-added services to the construction sector as the industry begins to accelerate its adoption of cloud technology to improve efficiency and create greater collaboration.”
Callprint will be a reseller of Asite’s SaaS collaboration platform within the UK market through its 15 branches. Callprint will also be the European distributor for Asite via partners Electrogeloz (nine branches in France) and Goedhart Repro (10 branches in Belgium and The Netherlands).
I know from previous conversations with Asite CTO Nathan Doughty that he is enthusiastic about the VAR relationship with ReproMAX (the Callprint tie-up appears to be an extension of its ReproMAX deal; Callprint is is the sole UK member of the ReproMAX marketing and purchasing network), and Asite is looking for similar synergies.
As I noted in March, Asite expected its e-procurement engine to increase the efficiency of ReproMAX’s service delivery by automating transactions, and it can offer the same to Callprint (I did notice that Callprint also has its own File Transfer service – I wonder if this might be something that might develop further with Asite?). In return, the reprographics firm (and its mainland Europe partners) will provide an additional route to market, helping promote Asite’s cloud-based services to their customer base, and expanding Asite’s reach beyond the contacts it makes through its existing sales and marketing activities.
Update (16 August 2011) – Thanks to Joel Salus, who blogs on reprographics-related issues at Reprographics 101, I now know more about ReproMAX. Joel has provided the following clarification (and also blogged about ExtranetEvolution – thanks, Joel):
“ReproMax is not a reprographics firm; it is a reprographics industry trade group. It is a for-profit enterprise. Certain of its “member companies” are shareholders in ReproMAX (they are often referred to as “partner-members”). And non-shareholder member-companies are often referred to as “associate-members.” ReproMAX’s member population consists of approximately 70 different U.S. reprographics companies. ReproMAX also has member-companies in the U.K. and in Western Europe (Goedhart and Electrogeloz, the companies you mentioned in your recent post). …
Since ReproMAX does not own or control its member-companies, it cannot force all of the member companies to acquire and/or promote “cMAX”. Buy-in (by reprographers in the ReproMAX member group) and promotion of “cMAX” to A/E/C customers in the U.S. will depend on the buy-in of individual ReproMAX member companies. Some will adopt it and push it, some will not. Some will further “rebrand” it, such as is the case with Thomas Reprographics, the 2nd or 3rd largest reprographics company in the U.S.”
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