Cost Recovery in the New World

BEAR Solutions has made the trip over the Pacific and has set up camp in the Land of Opportunity. Cost recovery systems change rapidly as the building blocks of IT that support them evolve. And whilst these solutions move forward, sometimes the clients don’t.

The US market is diverse, not only because of the number of solutions or clients, but also due to the unique needs of these clients.

In other regions like Australasia, CR systems get completely overhauled on a regular basis, very few systems become entrenched in institutions and even these updates are due to the client’s drive for new features. The US still has these types of clients, the ones looking to push the boundaries of what can be done with the technology available to them. However there are a large number of clients that just want the legacy system that has been in place, without need to integrate new functions or technology. These clients can have legitimate reasons, as simple as the expense of implementing a new system with a large number of casual or walk in users (public libraries) vs. the revenue they are producing from the current configuration.

Given the size of the US market, just the number of available clients allows CR companies to supply more specific solutions in what is already a niche industry. Individual coin boxes or laminated barcode systems are not used widely in other countries but the large US customer base wants these simple offline solutions of a coin box or the cheap cost of a barcode (and integration with other barcode systems).

Again this diversification of clients doesn’t mean all clients want simple solutions, at the other end of the scale US clients want CR or CR supporting applications to be tied into every other system they can. CR is not just about reporting on copying; it can be a foundation for security, attendance, internal retail, external retail, or just about anything that an end user can identify themselves on. This broad range of needs means that most companies are not a “jack of all trades” but rather forge partnerships to supply client a complete solution.

Looking closer at vendors leads one to notice how important it is to be recognized as being a “master of one” aspect of CR; it has to be a cornerstone or flag ship. If you look at the large One Card suppliers, each has a specific strength –  a platform or foundation that might not be directly related to CR but has allowed them to gain market share in this area. Looking then at vendors who are leaders in printing applications or hardware terminals, they use partnerships to develop products that extend outside the direct CR business and into value added services.

Cost recovery in the United States is still, in the end, all about the user. The client’s need and end user might not be able to be slotted into the same collection of pigeon holes but on the whole the systems have to be designed to make their lives easier. At BEAR Solutions we know what we do best, for any features outside that we have developed partnerships with other leading companies.