If They Can Reverse Engineer Photoshop and Microsoft Word, Why Can’t a Copier Rep Rebuild Their CRM?

Two recent Ai software developments raise an uncomfortable question for the office technology industry: Why should a salesperson live inside a 500-function application when they only need ten functions to sell?

During the first week of October 2026, something extraordinary happened in the software business.

Developer Brandon Thomas, using Anthropic’s Claude, published open-source applications designed to recreate some of Adobe’s most recognizable products.

Three Reasons a copier dealer should think about selling Office Ready Robots

For decades, copier dealers have built successful businesses around placing equipment in customer locations, financing it, and keeping it running. That experience has prepared the channel for another opportunity: Office Ready Robots.

Autonomous mobile robots are already performing practical jobs inside businesses. They transport materials, deliver supplies, and reduce the time employees spend walking between departments.

For copier dealers, the opportunity deserves a serious look. Here are three reasons why.

1. You Already Know How to Sell the Business Model

Think about how your dealership operates today.

You identify a customer's problem, recommend equipment, arrange financing, install the solution, and maintain the relationship through a service agreement.

Sound familiar?

Does Your Business Really Need an A3 Copier? The 90% Question Nobody Wants to Ask. Art's in the 10%

For years, the office equipment industry has convinced businesses that bigger is better. Bigger copier, bigger paper, bigger monthly payment, and naturally, a bigger commission for the salesperson. Somewhere along the way, we convinced just about every business in America that they needed the ability to print 11 x 17 documents, even if the largest thing they printed all year was a pizza menu for the company Christmas party.

After more than 46 years of walking into businesses of every size imaginable, I've started thinking about a question that probably should have been asked a long time ago. When was the last time the average office actually needed to print something on 11 x 17 paper, let alone 12 x 18?

The Cloud, the Cylons, and the Return of the Server Room

Ai is consuming business software, rewriting the economics of subscriptions, and raising a question we thought we’d settled thirty years ago: Who should own the computer?

Think about it.

We’ve spent three decades moving our businesses into someone else’s computers. We called it the cloud, celebrated the freedom from server rooms, and gradually accepted monthly subscriptions as the cost of doing business.

Keypoint Puts Robotics Questions on the Table. The Continuum Has the Answers.

Another great article reflecting the growing opportunity for robots in office technology.

David Sweetnam asks the right questions about how our little niche might take advantage of robotics to increase revenue, reduce costs, grow profits, attract great talent, and secure the legacy. Five of many planks in The Continuum Platform.

They are questions The Cricket Continuum started addressing almost two years ago.

From the article:

Robotics Is Repeating the MPS Playbook

I’ve said it a million times, “the office ready robot category is just like the early days copier/office technology”, especially Managed print Services, albeit 17 years later.

Very similar to, but not identical with, the way we sell, manage and service fleets of output devices.

Office ready robots are like copiers that move around - usage, supplies, consumables and service SLA’s are part of the model not easily fulfilled by existing OEM ecosystems. That’s our wheelhouse.

Ask Us Anything CXXVII

End-of-quarter sales pain, robots, Epson, remote surgery, drones and Eddie Van Halen.

Pretty much a normal Friday on Ask Us Anything.

Art Post and I started with something every salesperson recognizes: a deal you did everything right on can still get pulled upstairs to corporate and disappear into somebody else’s purchasing process.