Lexicon Technologies will be showcasing a booth at the Modex 2012 expo in Atlanta, Georgia at the Georgia World Congress Center, February 6-9. Modex is the material handling industry’s newest expo for the manufacturing, distribution and supply chain sectors, featuring the latest in technology solutions and innovations.

Come see us at Booth #914 and talk to a member of our team. Visit the Leader in Specialty IT Repair and Maintenance and discover Enterprise Solutions for IT Management and Execution. Learn about RepairEngine®, RepairSherpa™ and our many service programs for IT maintenance and repair.

All Your Repairs

All Your Vendors

All At Booth # 914

Register Free for Modex 2012  

Our LexiconTech.com Re-Design features more about what we’re all about – leadership in Maintenance and Repair Execution and Management.

We’ve found a better way to tell our story. Quickly learn who Lexicon is and immediately know the benefits we’re able to deliver through our IT maintenance and repair execution and management products. Read our success stories focused on how we serve Enterprises, OEM’s, Global Services Providers and VARs to produce significant, measurable results. View our solutions, including RepairSherpa^TM, our new money saving solution that improves your maintenance and repair execution and management.

You’ll find easier ways to interact with Lexicon though our streamlined contact forms and product inquiries. Browse our user friendly catalog to learn about our services and products. And we’ve made it easier and faster than ever to engage with RepairEngine®, our revolutionary service management system, directly from LexiconTech.com, even for first time users.

Take another look at Lexicon and reach out to us. As IT Maintenance and Repair experts, we help your organization save money and increase productivity. Email or call us today to learn more.
 

As we’ve continued to grow and evolve what we do for our clients, we decided that a website refresh was in order to better tell our story.  When we launch later this month, new visitors can expect to quickly learn who Lexicon is and immediately know the benefits we’re able to deliver through our IT maintenance and repair execution and management products.   We’ll also focus our message to better communicate with the particular customer groups we serve, so that Enterprises, OEM’s, Global Services Providers and VARs can understand the advantages they can gain from working with Lexicon.

Look for these updates on our new site:

Success Stories – Review these “proof sources” to learn how Lexicon has helped large organizations overcome IT maintenance challenges and save time and money doing it.

Featured Solutions  – Learn about solutions Lexicon provides beyond our repair capabilities.

Streamlined Access to RepairEngine® – It will be quicker and easier than ever for Lexicon clients to engage the best way to manage IT device repair.

Re-Engineered Navigation – Information-rich drop-downs to find exactly what you want without having to click around.

Improved Catalog Search – Located on the homepage so it’s simple – start typing in the search box and you’ll see suggestions by model or manufacturer. It’s just an easier way to navigate our thousands of specialty IT products.

New and Improved Product Listing Page – Our catalog listing page shows one “unified” product page containing info and pricing you need for repair, maintenance and refurbished devices.

Plus expect some other cool stuff we haven’t announced yet, but it’s going to be good so stay tuned!

Not Dave Word

These days everybody gets so wrapped up in day-to-day events, we often forget to think about the organizations in our community that need our help – be it our time, talent, or treasure. The importance of community involvement is growing each year as the needs for education funding, housing, feeding the hungry, and supporting young people grow more urgent as the economy remains sluggish.

For a number of years, Lexicon has supported the A.R Barksdale Boys & Girls Club, a part of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta (BGCMA), to assist its fundraising work for programs that support at-risk youth in our area.  Their 27^th annual “Super Saturday Night” event was held in Conyers, GA at the Georgia International Horse Park in May, to raise money for their work.  This year’s event was ‘casino night’-themed complete with gaming tables, professional dealers and even an Elvis impersonator to serenade guests with throughout the evening. The evening was a success, netting over $52,000 for the club.  Lexicon Leadership Team member, Dave Word, our Director of Technical Services, represented us and accepted an award from the Boys and Girls Club recognizing our support.  And NO, Dave was not the “Elvis-guy” (see pictures for confirmation).

Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta’s mission is to provide a quality developmental program that empowers metro-Atlanta youth, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, to become productive adults. Through 26 Clubs in 11 metro counties, trained, professional staff serves more than 5,000 disadvantaged youth (ages 6-18) daily through programs that foster academic success, healthy lifestyles, and character and leadership development.  For more on the Boys & Girls Club, visit their Atlanta site here

Everyone knows that funding for education is under pressure in our nation, especially so during the last couple of economically weak years.  To try to do our part to support teachers and students in our local community, since 2003 Lexicon has helped to support and fund a “teaching grant” program from the Rockdale Foundation for Excellence in Education, designed to enrich the classroom experience for students in our local Rockdale County Public School system.

The Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, governed and staffed by an all volunteer board that is committed to attracting funds and resources for education programs and projects not covered in the school system’s regular budget; every dime they raise each year goes directly to support classroom teaching or boosts the organizations’ endowment.  Their primary program provides “mini-grants” (up to a maximum of $500 each) to teachers to purchase materials for innovative learning activities in the classroom.  The competitive grant application process encourages teachers to discover new and exciting ways to challenge students, and provides community members (like Lexicon and other companies) an opportunity to lend support.

Lexicon’s Rose Collins, our Chief Administrative Officer has held positions on the volunteer board for many years (including two stints as President; she’s currently the treasurer).  Other Lexicon team members including Scott Robinson, Director of Operations, and Darla Mann, one of our Business Development team members have spent many volunteer hours scoring grant applications, to support the mini-grant project. This year, thanks to great community support, The Foundation for Excellence in Education was able to award 41 mini-grants totaling $18,000.  We are very proud and supportive of our community and its support of our local schools – and thanks to Lexicon Team Members for their leadership in this important effort!

We recently got a call from Minnesota Diversified Industries (MDI) regarding Lexicon's used/refurbished barcode label printers. They wanted to replace one of the Zebra printers in their St Paul facility; they use Zebra thermal transfer printers to produce customer specific labels as well as to print shipping and barcode labels for their US Postal Service packaging and fulfillment operation.  They're pretty good at it, too -- read how they recently produced and shipped postal tote number 75,000,000 to the Postal Service on their site here!

MDI is a Non-Profit Enterprise employing people with disabilities while delivering high quality products & services to business customers.  In addition to providing MDI-specific job opportunities and vocational support, they offer programs and services to adults with disabilities; they also assist individuals to prepare for and obtain jobs in the community. They are able to do this by partnering with various businesses and providing services tailored to each customer's unique requirements.

Mitch Rogers, a Lexicon Business Development team member, worked with MDI to ensure that we could support their printer spec requirements.  After some successful testing, we determined that a fully refurbished Zebra 140xiIII would meet their needs to a "T".  As we learned more about and reflected on MDI's mission, Lexicon decided to donate the Zebra printer to MDI out of admiration and support for the good work that they are doing.

The Lexicon team was able to fill the order in about a week and Mitch reports that the "printer is working wonderfully” for their operation.  Read their blog entry about Lexicon's donation here.

We believe that it's the important to support good works in our communities, and MDI is an organization that inspires us with their special mission.

 Back in February, Lexicon completed a “Gap Analysis” phase where an initial assessment was performed to determine where our company is currently and what must be done to get a quality system in place. The Lexicon team has been busy documenting all the relevant processes and procedures.

This summer will be dedicated to auditing all the departments to ensure that processes are being followed, and that any non-conformances are documented and corrective actions are implemented.  All of the members of the Lexicon team are being educated and continuously tested on the “quality system” and results and business objectives are measured monthly. Meeting the growing demands of our customers need for improved quality and better service is crucial to the success of the business; therefore we are achieving this registration to show our commitment to quality and to the continuous improvement of our business.  It’s an exciting time, and in so many ways the management team has already seen the positive impact the ISO 9001 certification process is having on Lexicon and most importantly, our customers.

At the annual Service Industry Association Executive Summit in Las Vegas in April,  Mr. Wiedman was appointed to the board of directors by the general membership of the association. “I look forward to working with other technology service industry leaders on the SIA board and to serving the SIA community”, said Mr. Wiedman.  “Our collective strength as an ‘eco-system’ of leading technology service providers is enhanced by the partnering and peer collaboration that SIA helps to foster, which leads to better service solutions for technology users.”

About Service Industry Association (SIA):  The Service Industry Association is a non-profit association of enterprises involved in the support of high technology products in the marketplace, represented by their top level executives, whose role is to promote the best possible range of alternatives and choices of services for those products, and support of the customers who use them. For more information on the Service Industry organization check out the website at www.servicenetwork.org

Media Contact:

Julie Clark – Marketing Communications

jclark@lexicontech.com

One priority for me will be to keep our customers informed on Repair Engine®, our online Repair Management System by communicating improvements, new features and benefits (there are lots of them!), and maybe a series of tips to better utilize this program. I will also be managing the content of LexiconTech.com, and specifically have an initial project to oversee a new look and feel to our current website to better communicate how a relationship with Lexicon can benefit Enterprise and Service customers.

My past professional experience has been in marketing communications, though for the last several years I've been away from the corporate world to focus on my family. Previously, I held marcomms positions at Snapper Inc., a manufacturer of commercial and residential lawn mowers, and at Acuity Brands, a provider of lighting fixtures and services. In both positions I worked as the liaison between the company and it's employees and the internal and external advertising agencies. I managed the web content and created copy for external product communications items including brochures, sales sheets, mailings, trade show giveaways, banners, hang tags and other POP materials. Coming from marketing products in those roles, to Lexicon which is a service provider is definitely a change for me, but in the end it is all the same concept; communicate the benefits Lexicon can provide to our target customers and tell the story over and over in lots of different, tangible, and compelling ways. Hopefully, you'll notice the difference in the frequency and quality of our marketing communications soon.

After all, it isn't enough just to do a good job - it helps if the market also knows about the good job we're doing.

We saw this article about appliance repair in the New York Times earlier this month entitled, "That Repair Bill is Huge, but There Are Reasons" (the complete article is linked here).  The author, Alina Tugend, did a nice job of explaining for homeowners what the cost drivers are that underlie major appliance repair:  washers, dryers, refrigerators, and the like.  After reading the article, we remarked how similar the business of "at the customer site" repair of IT printers and servers is to the home appliance fix it trade. 

A few analogous highlights to be aware of:  first, recognize that if you don't have a pre-paid maintenance or support agreement of some sort in place, you can expect to pay a flat fee of some amount for a qualified technician to travel to your site and diagnose the problem.  If the technician is not able to repair your dot matrix line printer or thermal transfer label printer for example, on the first call and has to come back, you shouldn't have to pay that diagnostic flat rate again, but you will have to pay for labor and any parts.

Finally, for enterprise IT equipment users, companies who depend on servers and pc's, Zebra or Intermec label printers, Printronix line or Lexmark or HP lasers to get the work done, day in and day out -- get a plan that works for you.  Does a maintenance agreement make sense for your operation?  Maybe it does or doesn't, so do the math and find out. 

Do you have adequate back up devices or enough spare capacity to spread the work load in the event of device failure (which inevitably comes)?  If you do, then maybe time and materials onsite repair works for you, or maybe return to depot repair is even more economical.  Do you have adequate back up?  -- To save money, consider used, refurbished or remanufactured equipment for your back up capacity.  We blogged on this recently.  This strategy, depending on the type of IT device and your site-specific conditions, could result in huge and recurring annual savings for your organization.

Seeing leading technology companies like Hewlett Packard and CDW making significant commitments to the "remanufactured" technology equipment business is another validation, in our view, of the viability of used equipment as a solution for enterprise and business-level customers.  As this is written, Lexicon has large volumes of Zebra, Intermec, and O'Neil thermal transfer printers in stock which our team has beautifully refurbished (most of them look brand new), as well as Motorola or Symbol portable or mobile terminals (MC9060, MC5040, and more).  Intermec CK handheld devices as well.

Easy because RepairEngine® allows an enterprise to manage service for all IT equipment and devices in one place, online for FREE.  One place to manage your existing equipment maintenance relationships, contracts, warranty returns to factory, break-fix returns to the depot, or to dispatch an onsite call for printer repair -- for a single location or across the enterprise.

Powerful because RepairEngine® puts all the critical data and information about your IT devices, their performance, failure history, downtime, turn-around time for repair, etc., in one place. RepairEngine®'s analytics give an enterprise team the tools and information necessary to drill down and identify failure patterns and perform root cause analysis -- in order to prevent future failures and downtime.

We think RepairEngine® provides a feature set that really moves the ball forward in an operational sense for enterprises looking for a better, more efficient way to manage IT equipment maintenance and repair - and in a strategic sense as a result of it's ability to consolidate critical data about all of an enterprise's IT device repair & maintenance in one place.

Talk to us -- we'll show you how easy it is to get started.

A "flexible cell" repair team deploys in our new Power-Prep area to refurb some Zebra 105sl printers

We blogged a couple of weeks ago about our expansion -- we basically increased our space by about 50% to accomodate our increased volume on repair and refurbishment of barcode and point-of-sale scanners and systems (Symbol, Motorola, Intermec, NCR, etc.) and printers (Zebra, Epson, etc.) and other information technology hardware.  We added repair space, specifically what we're now referring to as our "Power-Prep" pre-repair area that we're excited about because it really supports our scalable processes well.  In the Power-Prep zone we can bulk-process literally hundreds of electro-mechanical devices in very short order for necessary pre-repair cleaning tasks.  Power-Prep can also be configured to bulk-process a large refurbishment order say for 100 or 200 Zebra 105sl printers or Intermec 3400e printers, etc.  Now we can quickly clean, repair/refurb, even paint onsite to make legacy devices work and look like new.

We also added desperately needed office and warehouse capacity -- much to the relief of our supply chain and depot services teams, who had gotten really good at putting more than "10 pounds of  'stuff'" in the proverbial 5 pound bag!

I woke up to hear that today is Earth Day, in fact the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970 - wow!  It's a sure sign of creeping old age when you can remember the first Earth Day (like I can) - ouch!  Anyway it got us thinking about the ways that we try to be good stewards of resources and the environment in our day-to-day business practices at Lexicon. 

We do some simple, but we think meaningful and important things:  we've got recycling collection bins for plastics and bottles at various locations throughout our facility, in repair production areas (more about that below) and staff break areas.  Since we can't get onsite collection of consumer recyclables at our location, we bag them up and one of our employees (thanks Scott!) takes them home where he has curbside recycling service.

Every repair bay in our service center facility has a recyclable plastics collection point for housings, covers, and cases.  All of our repair processes are designed with an eye to capture reworkable electronics which are saved and siphoned off to a background, in-house recovery process for refurbishment and reuse.  We try to absolutely limit the disposal of electronic waste, but we handle that with an e-waste processor who uses environmental best practices.

Our receiving team makes it a practice to salvage and reuse good packing materials - paper, bubble wrap, even the ESD friendly version.  That team sorts these reuseable materials into bins adjacent to our pack stations and out it goes again. 

None of this is "earth-shattering" but we think it adds up to "earth-friendly":-).

In the meantime we'll share this:  in February we began the physical expansion of our Conyers, GA service center.  Two primary catalysts for the expansion:  1) repair volume -- we had simply outgrown our space and had to have more depot floor capacity, office/admin/business development space, and our warehouse was way too small; 2) we wanted to implement a newly-designed repair strategy (on high volume lines of technology equipment we repair on a depot-basis) to improve scale economies, repair throughput, lower our per unit repair costs, and improve our already high quality.  To make that a reality we needed the physical room to utilize new processes our team has designed to incorporate multiple strategies for automated bulk or "power-repair" actions in the "pre-", "in-", and "post-" repair phases.  It's really exciting stuff and we believe our customers are going to love what Lexicon can provide in terms of repair & maintenance quality and value (and volume) in 2010.

We'll post some pictures over the next few weeks so you can see some of the Lexicon innovations in process and get a look at our expanded facility.  The great news for our customers is that we continue to make the critical capital investments in the physical assets (our expansion, etc.) and the digital, information-based assets (RepairEngine® and LexiconTech.com which you'll hear some exciting new stuff about soon) to ensure that you get the most from your IT hardware investment -- whether we're talking mobile barcode handhelds from Symbol Motorola or Intermec, printers from Zebra or O'Neil -- or POS systems and scanners from NCR, printers from Hewlett-Packard or Printronix, etc., etc. 

Nobody is going to make Technology Equipment Repair & Maintenance, or managing same, easier or better than Lexicon -- and we're going to keep proving it in 2010.

The DIAD V will feature video capability which could provide some additional utility in the capture of the condition of damaged packages (if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth even more!) and will be even smaller weighing in at 1.3 pounds.

To us, this announcement from UPS and Honeywell underscores the power and value delivered by enterprise mobility applications.  Delivering significant information resource to workers at the point of service permits enhanced productivity, reduces overall costs and improves customer experience every time.   That's why you see organizations like UPS, famous for their ability to analyze and improve business processes, continue to invest in leading edge enterprise mobility technology.

Unfortunately, we got caught up in the problem as well, and RepairEngine(r) was down for about 90 minutes.   Lexicon's tech team has since added a couple of layers of DNS redundancy to prevent a reoccurrence of this problem.  Thanks to our users for your patience this morning.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused. The good news is that our development/tech teams have taken the opportunity to build more durability and robustness into the web "infrastructure" that supports RepairEngine(r).

In the meantime, please feel free to contact Lexicon by phone at 800.678.1744 for any information or immediate assistance that you may need.

Well the answer for the last couple of months has been "yes" -- we went live with a robust and powerful new data exchanger system (we're going to call it 'LiveData' Exchanger when we issue the press release) which our team developed for RepairEngine® and rolled into production in September.  'LiveData' replaced our "old reliable" data comm technology which utilized multiple updates occurring at regular intervals throughout the day.  Our "systems of record" -- service center management and accounting, for example, would sync with RepairEngine® throughout the day to get relevant information onto the web, and available for Lexicon clients. 

Not anymore.  Now RepairEngine®'s 'LiveData' Exchanger uses its State Manager to detect any change that occurs in our web database or in one of our host systems instantly.  We use a Connection Manager to keep a connection between the systems always open (and recover it when necessary), and a Data Translation Rules manager to "tell" 'LiveData' what to do with a given transaction (for example, 'LiveData' Exchanger knows that a bit of data is a repair status update or a new routing rule for shipment processing or a payment -- and sends it along, accordingly), all essentially in real-time.  XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is used to help standardize the communications that take place between our systems or between RepairEngine® and the incident management systems employed by Enterprise-level customers, for example.

It's leading edge stuff, we think and we're proud of it.  'LiveData' will open up important  integration opportunities for RepairEngine® and other useful repair management systems -- to benefit Enterprise Mobility customers in ways that haven't been possible before -- and we believe that costs can be taken out of existing processes for our customers, as a result.  And that will make it a winner.

Fifty-seven years ago, on October 7, 1952, the US Patent Office issued a patent to two American inventors (Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver) for a bulls-eye shaped barcode (yes, even though their symbol was "round" - we now refer to it as the first "bar" code) and a scanning apparatus designed to interpret the bulls-eye pattern. Silver and Woodland started as grad students at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University), to work on a problem that was brought to them by a local Philadelphia grocer who wanted a system that would "read" product information during checkout. Barcode eventually started to take off in the 70's with the adoption of the Universal Product Code standard by the grocery industry, and as we all know, the rest is history. Thus was born an extremely successful technology -- one that has found its way into applications far beyond grocery and that were not imaginable 50 or even 25 years ago.  For this paragraph, I borrowed heavily from a nice, concise arcticle by Mary Bellis on the history of barcode at about.com.

Today is good time to reflect on the genius borne of the Woodward and Silver collaboration: described in their patent applications as "article classification . . . through the medium of identifying patterns".  These young guys invented, envisioned and paved the way for easily produced (usually simply printed) patterns (that is, barcode symbols), which could be readily affixed to  just about any object that someone might want to keep track of.  They knew it would be relatively simple to read (and interpret) the barcode patterns with light emitted from a "scanner", which was reflected off the barcode pattern. Their vision has led directly to the creation of incalculable economic and societal benefits over the last 35 or 40 years.

Finally, it's been popular to speculate for the last few years about the imminent demise of the lowly and now familiar, "simple" barcode -- choose your new candidate for replacement champion from this incomplete list: two dimensional symbologies, smart cards, memory buttons, and the latest, and certainly the contest entrant which has breached the conscience of the consumer, Radio Frequency Identification or RFID.  However -- my advice is to expect the old garden variety barcode to be with us for a long time to come (and since I'm part way out on the limb, I'll just go ahead and say "for decades").  Why?  The answer is cost advantage -- barcode "marking" (that's industry jargon for the act of printing or affixing a barcode to a product or object) is cheap. For products which are packaged and sold at retail, adding a barcode is essentially "free" -- and "free" is a tough price for any competing technology to beat.  Innovations in enterprise mobile computers, (like Motorola/Symbol, Intermec, HHP) scanners, and printing technologies (Zebra, O'Neil, Datamax) continue to enhance the application opportunities for the good old barcode, and will for many years to come.

You can read the article here and learn more about RepairEngine® here or give us a call or an email at info@lexicontech.com.

All right -- the last day of August.  Everyone knows what that means  -  just a few more days until:  "Toe Meets Leather!" (credit to the late, great Al Ciraldo).  Yeah -- bring it on!  Spirits are soaring, the juices are starting to surge and of course, everybody is still undefeated so all things are possible, especially in the minds of younger fans.  We've got them of all ages at Lexicon and like most places our loyalties (as represented by Lexicon team members) are spread far and wide.  We've got allegiances here (this an incomplete list) that include:  Alabama, NC State, Virginia Tech, UVA, Clemson, University of South Carolina, Wake Forest, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Miami, Troy State, Ohio State, and Valdosta State.

What's that got to do with our repair and maintenance business for Symbol/Motorola or Intermec scanners and  portable terminals or Zebra printers?  Hmm.  Well, I did get my parking pass the other day and it's got a barcode on it  -- so how about enterprise mobile devices to manage access and control of game day parking?

That's OK.   I should say stay tuned to this space for some exciting news coming soon on RepairEngine®.  The design and development team has been focusing all summer (not day dreaming about kick-off) and plans to release more good stuff in the early fall around payment options, repair routing to support all your repair vendors, and more reporting power and options, and also Real Time updates to make managing repair and controlling your enterprise mobility assets easier and better.   Of course the price is right for enterprise mobility equipment users -- FREE!  If you haven't tried RepairEngine® yet -- make your life better and signup here.

And good luck to your favorite team this fall :-)

RepairEngine®, the revolutionary Repair Management System that delivers a "better repair experience" for barcode and enterprise mobility equipment users, is celebrating its 6th birthday this July. RepairEngine's® development team has been working to continuously enhance the system over the years by incorporating innovative features such as Dashboard and the "Grid" System seamlessly into RepairEngine®. We want to make RepairEngine® THE tool to use when managing the repair or maintenance of any Symbol, Intermec, Zebra, or any other kind of barcode and enterprise mobility equipment.

Its not every day that we celebrate a birthday at Lexicon Technologies, so we decided, "Whats a birthday without a cake?" This was icing on the cake last Thursday, pardon the pun, as we already had a three day weekend coming up for the 4th of July!

For the past several years, Lexicon has been working with the Rockdale County Public School System in the Student Apprenticeship Program based in the Rockdale Career Academy. Basically, we've hired students from the local high schools to work at Lexicon and learn the basics of electronics repair, as well as what it is like to be an actual employee at a real company. It's been kind of cool to have a few younger employees! At one point we even had a good chunk of the Rockdale County High School Wrestling Team working either on the repair floor or on the loading dock!

The program has worked great, giving the kids an important job to do after school, not to mention a paycheck, and has helped familiarize them with the business world. Now, when Lexicon work study employees go to the grocery store, a concert, or Blockbuster, they spot any number of scanners or enterprise mobility devices that they have worked on. Some examples include the Symbol SPT 1800's, MC 9060's, or even Metrologic MS7120's, which some of our student-employees spotted at LA Fitness last week. Their experience at Lexicon has helped make them aware of how technology is employed all around us in our daily lives.

BTW - if you have ideas about how we can improve RepairEngine®, we try to be like Ross Perot -- all ears -- so let us know and thanks in advance.

The same "grid" technology has been deployed throughout RepairEngine®.  You'll find it in Asset Management and you'll see it in a few more locations inside the system next week, including Contracts, Price Lists, Reports, etc., when another RepairEngine® update is deployed.  Contact us if you have any questions or ideas about how we can improve RepairEngine® -- our goal is to make it the best Repair Management System for Enterprise Mobility equipment available anywhere.

Let us know what you think -- we're determined to make RepairEngine® the best place on the web for enterprise mobility (Symbol / Motorola, Intermec, Zebra, Datalogic) asset and repair management.

The RepairEngine "spring-fling" of new feature rollouts rolls on later today with our new splash page "Dashboard", which we guarantee that you'll like and find useful.  There is an 'Alerts' mini-grid that identifies any and all items that may need your immediate attention, as well as three other sections to help you monitor your overall Repair Mangement status, recent trends, and user/location activity at a glance.  RepairEngine's dashboard mini-grids are linked directly for fast access to the full and complete information you need to successfully manage your team's enterprise mobility equipment and maintenance.

All RepairEngine users should expect to see the new features we've been beta testing by mid to late next week, when we plan to roll all of the enhancements out to our entire user community. 

RepairEngine® users will enjoy a greatly enhanced ability to navigate, filter, sort, group, and analyze all of their Lexicon repair and refurbished equipment transactions.  Ease of use and user experience have been dramatically improved.  The New RA Status page should allow users to spot trends, analyze failure patterns or repair history, and prioritize management responses faster and easier than ever.

We've retained the "Rapid Estimate Approval" feature for volume users and made sure it stayed "quick" and easy to use.

Oh, also in this release, we're replacing the "tired" and cryptic automatic emails that didn't give enough specific information with ones that do -- and that are much easier to read -- and that contain links that will take you exactly where you need to go in RepairEngine®, not just get you close. 

We think you'll like these new features -- and you can expect even more in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.  Also, please tell us what you think.  We value your suggestions for improvement.

There was a great article in yesterday's New York Times business section about business model innovation in the delivery of health care services.  The author, Janet Rae-Dupree, did a solid job of pointing out how tired, inefficient business models employed by most physicians and general hospitals actually limit improvements in "care-quality" for patients and keep costs high.  She quotes Harvard b-school professor and author of "The Innovator's Prescription", Clayton M. Christensen, who argues that "health care hasn't become affordable because it hasn't yet gone through disruptive decentralization".

Briefly, the article explains that important point thusly:  "by putting the financial interests of hospitals and doctors at the center, the current system gives routine illnesses with proven therapies the same intensive and costly specialized care that more complicated cases require".  So in a phrase, it's "one-size-fits-all" treatment -- and it's an expensive size!  For a fuller explanation, please read the complete article here.

The other business model problem the article addresses is the lack of focus on a "continuum of care" for the patient, in favor of a system which treats patients only during periods of acute crisis.  Again, the result is high costs -- at least partially driven by wrong incentives in place for doctors and hospitals. 

Several organizations including Kaiser Permanente and the Mayo Clinic really seem to be getting it right, though, "with fixed-fee integrated systems" that are delivering better results for less money.  Hey they're focused on the patient (aka "the customer"), not the doctor or hospital.

Many similar strategies are employed by Lexicon in our barcode equipment repair and maintenance business.  RepairEngine® helps us and our customers keep track of the "health history" of Symbol, Intermec, and HHP equipment, and on many products we've incorporated special SIP (single-item-pricing) options instead of higher "one-size-fits-all" flat rates that frankly, are often not needed, and are not economical.

It's a reminder to not fall in love with your business model so much that you miss a big innovation opportunity . . . you can bet that at least some of your competitors won't.

". . . Blaming market uncertainty, Microsoft declined to issue a revenue or earnings forecast for the rest of its fiscal year.

'We are planning for economic uncertainty to continue through the remainder of the fiscal year, almost certainly leading to lower revenue and earnings for the second half relative to the previous year,' said Chris Liddell, the company’s chief financial officer."  The entire article is linked here.

The point is that when a dominant competitor like Microsoft reports a profit of over $4 billion dollars for the quarter, and still announces huge job cuts (read that painful "expense reductions"), there is truly great uncertainty to say the least, about business prospects for the year ahead.  It's not a stretch to say that even industry leaders are expecting already dim revenue growth prospects to worsen before sentiment and expectations improve.  Microsoft's action this morning indicates that perhaps no company is immune from the negative effects of the current economic crisis.

One prescription Lexicon is offering to our clients:  economize by working with us to maintain your proven mobile devices from Intermec, Symbol, and Hand Held Products.  There are hundreds of thousands of durable, rugged batch and rf enterprise mobility devices in use that are 3+ years old, but our message to user organizations who own these devices is:  The Intermec T2425, Intermec T2455, and other Trakker Antares terminals; the Symbol SPT 1800, Symbol PDT 6846; the HHP Dolphin 9500 and many, many more similiar mobile devices have many more YEARS of reliable service yet to give.

If you've got so-called "legacy" devices (we prefer "proven" as a more accurate descriptor) that you want to continue to gain an ROI from in this economy, we salute your sound judgement -- and we may be able to help you.

So the concern for the NFL and for a lot of managers is "how can I proactively position my business to survive, and prosper if possible, through the downturn?" 

At Lexicon, we suggest that you take steps to make your existing automatic data capture equipment infrastructure, your barcode scanners and portable data terminals, continue to work for you.  For example, if you have already invested in and paid for robust, durable devices from Symbol (PDT 6846, MC9060, etc.) or Intermec (T2425, T2435, T2455), then make plans to keep them maintained and productively deployed.  Unless you've got a new business requirement that makes these devices (or similar ones) obsolete, we can help you keep them running reliably -- for years to come, in some cases.  We can put annual or multi-year maintenance contracts in place for these types of devices that will keep your operation supported -- and provide value and savings to your company in the process.

In this business climate, keeping the proven, "paid for" barcode equipment productive will really stretch your ROI - and makes too much sense to ignore.

And though the inner-child in us may wish for only a "happily-ever-after" economy, the grizzled, history-reading capitalist in our nature is aware that the business cycle is as real (and as certain) as the changing of the seasons - even if economists, those "dismal scientists", are somewhat less adept at predicting its comings and goings.  The expansion and contraction of economic activity (and the success or failure of firms) has been a standard feature of free market capitilism and presumably, also of what we've got now:  a "mostly free market with a government-provided, taxpayer-funded safety net for some big guys on Wall Street".  

So, while the Treasury Department will use the public purse to save some, the great majority of economic participants will have to claw back the old-fashioned way:  we'll learn from our mistakes BECAUSE we'll have to pay for them.   I mean, does anyone really think that speculators who bought credit default swaps from AIG (and who were subsequently bailed out when U.S. taxpayers stepped up with a cool $150 billion) really learned any of the valuable lessons that a free market can impart to those who take foolish financial risks?  I don't think so; it takes an "actual loss" to make one respect that old hypothetical "risk of loss".

Anyway, for all those non-bailoutees among us, here's some upside.  There is a lot of good product on (or coming to) the market and it will be value-priced.  Myriad retail shutterings and failures will lead to substantial amounts of quality equipment, tools, fixtures, hardware, and the like coming available.  The next few weeks and months could be an ideal time to look for bargains in many areas, and thus presents an opportunity for well-capitilized organizations to actually reduce their budgeted capital outlay, while nonetheless positioning to expand market share.    Well, if you can't join 'em (in the bailout), then beat 'em . . . with basic, sound, risk-respecting execution.  Don't overpay.

In our corner of the economy, legacy barcode and enterprise mobility equipment from Symbol Technologies, Intermec, Zebra, Handheld Products, etc., we've found some of the most popular barcode and rf portable data terminals, barcode scanners, and printers and we've got them if you need them.  And we've got a great repair and maintenance capability to keep your existing barcode and enterprise mobility infrastructure runnning strong.  After all, good old American quality, value, & frugality never go out of style.

The Impact Now show is an opportunity for a lot of networking, educational opportunities, and some fun, as well, for much of the vendor community in the barcode & related businesses.

We know that many of our reseller partners will be there.  Give Scott or Dave a call if you want to sit down and discuss any business or service opportunities while you're in Orlando.  Scott has come up with a promotional opportunity that you'll want to take advantage of (50% off a flat rate repair) -- or just get them to buy you a beer -- they're mostly always up for that . . .

The big news in this release is the addition of Asset Management for barcode and enterprise mobility equipment. Symbol scanners & pdts, Zebra printers, Intermec data collectors or printers -- you name it -- if it's enterprise mobility gear (and probably even if it's not -- more on that idea in the future), you'll be able to use RepairEngine® to manage and control these small, but critically important and expensive assets better than ever, in any enterprise - big or small.

And we've integrated the new asset management features with a more powerful, more intuitive Return Authorization module that will make getting an "R.A." easier and faster than ever.

AND, another really cool feature is that if we've repaired a device for you in the last 5 years, an asset management record for that device is already in RepairEngine®, along with all the repair history for that Symbol PDT6846 or Intermec T2425, etc., -- and you can access it with a single click.

OH, and this also a first for us: check out the new screencasts below for RepairEngine®'s Asset Management and RA Generation. These are great tools that make it easier and faster than ever to learn how to interact with powerful RepairEngine® features -- tons better than a "help file".

There's more to tell and there's still more new RepairEngine® features coming this year -- so stay tuned and please let us have your feedback after you've checked out Asset Management in RepairEngine®.

So what are the lessons, the takeaways?  For what they're worth, here's what we're thinking about and doing at Lexicon.  We remember that:

1)  Business will go on.  Our barcode equipment repair customers and our Symbol, Intermec and Zebra used equipment customers will continue to ship products to retailers and consumers.  Doctors and hospitals will continue to treat patients.  Groceries and gasoline will keep right on selling.  Volume will probably slow down some, maybe more than a little, but the economy has always been cyclical (and always will be).  In time, the negative cycle will turn positive.  We don't know when that will be -- and neither do the financial pundits on CNBC.  Politicians have even less of a clue.  In the meantime, we'll just keep working.

2)  And we'll focus on what we can control.  It's prudent to pay attention to expenses, inventory, and A/R all the time -- now it may be critical.  Be conservative with personal spending.  Diversify in terms of your investments, customer concentration, market segments, and the banks you do business with.  This crisis, if that's what it turns out to be, should serve as the last lesson a reasonably intelligent person will ever need on the risks of excessive borrowing.  Owing to human nature, many just won't the get the word.

3)  If you're managing the fundamentals soundly (see number 2), then don't obsess on the panic-tinged, breathlessly and continuously-delivered  "news"(or speculation) delivered around the clock via cable tv and the internet.  Realize that the crisis has been good for CNBC's ratings -- advertising revenues have no doubt risen right along with their ratings!  This trouble hasn't been trouble at all for that business.

4)  And that's the final lesson we'll take away:  even in tough economic times, some companies and individuals will thrive.  Remember at the end of the day, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is basically the sum of all "sales" that occur in the economy.  Even when GDP starts to turn negative as a result of the widely anticipated recession about to befall us (and GDP hasn't been negative yet, by the way) some - even many - companies will grow sales and profits, gain market share, continue to innovate to better serve customers, etc.

While the sunny forecasts of October 2007 have been replaced by ones of impending doom, we take comfort in knowing that these latest predictions are likely wrong, too.  Let's just keep working.

Since we're in the business of providing repair and maintenance for Symbol, Intermec and Zebra equipment and we also sell a fair amount of popular legacy barcode equipment (which is a nice way of saying we sell a lot of used Symbol, used Intermec, and used Zebra gear), we're in a position to observe trends in current and future barcode & mobility equipment usage.  Over the last sixty days or so, we've seen an upswing in customer inquiries and orders for devices like the Zebra 140xiIII, the Intermec T2425, and the Symbol SPT 1846.  These particular models are just representative examples -- frankly demand in general for maintenance of barcode/mobility gear that is 5 years + old and older is more robust than we've seen in the last 6 - 12 months.

Given the daily headlines about the "crisis du jour" in the U.S. economy, enterprises of all types are looking for creative ways to conserve cash and still meet operational objectives.  We believe that many more decision makers, of late, are recognizing the benefit and value of maintaining an existing installed base of Symbol MC9060 or Intermec CK61 (or similar PDTs) terminals and are instead, putting off a major technology refresh until the business cycle turns.  Maintaining a proven technology platform that is still supporting enterprise business objectives -- even one that is 5, 7 or 10 years old -- by adding quality used/refurbished equipment to that platform as needed, can make good business sense and save big dollars for your company -- at a time when we could be staring down a major recession.

Fortunately, for the sake of economy (which means there is an opportunity for you to save your organization some maintenance budget money here) the reverse is also true:  it makes practical and economic sense to use a return-to-depot strategy for Intermec, Datamax, or Zebra printers in approximately the 55 lbs. and under weight category.

Why It Matters.  First there are a ton of barcode label printers in this size class in use today, so there is a lot of money to potentially be saved.  There are a host of examples of field-proven label printers of this type from Zebra (Zebra S600, Zebra S400), Intermec (the Intermec 3400, Intermec 4420), and many more that do a great job in industrial, distribution, retail and healthcare environments.   Most of these devices are smaller, so-called "table-top" barcode label printers and will range in weight anywhere from about 17lbs on the light end up to that mid-50lb threshold on the heavy end.  These printers, when properly packed (wrapped in bubble wrap about three times around, placed in a properly-sized, heavy duty corrugated box) can ship via UPS or Fedex ground service, safely and reliably. 

The advantage to the user organization in this case is the savings and (and usually, the repair quality).  Depot repair is much less expensive to provide than on-site service for the repair or maintenance company.  There are obviously no travel costs (tech travel time, vehicles, fuel) and the really big thing is that in a repair center, you get great economies of scale.  Over time, the depot-based technician will have at least a four times advantage in productivity (on average) compared to the "road warrior" tech.  The on-site printer maintenance customer pays the freight -- the depot repair printer customer reaps the savings benefit.

Also, because the repair center (when it's well run) is the home of all the spare parts, all the standard repair diagnostics and repair processes, etc., repair and maintenance quality should be more reliably and consistently delivered on average, when compared to on-site. 

Finally, what makes a label printer "return-to-depot" service strategy really viable for this class of Zebra or Intermec printer is that spare printers are so affordable.  Typically, for only a few hundred dollars, high quality used and refurbished spare units are widely available in the market so that your operation doesn't suffer downtime.

Maybe.  We frequently get asked by clients who use our barcode scanners and portable data terminals repair center to support their (Symbol scanner or Intermec scanner and printer devices, typically) about whether we can also repair their barcode label printers (usually Zebra printer or Intermec printer; sometimes Datamax printer or Sato printer).  The short answer is usually "yes", but frankly these label-printing sub-systems often make for more complicated service strategy decisions than many users realize . . . so this multi-part post will offer some keys to consider as an OPS Team creates a support plan.

Number One and don't laugh:  How much do my label printers weigh?  Two common sense rules of thumb apply here, and though Zebra label printers aren't sold by the pound, the more expensive the Zebra, the heavier Zebra. And the real kicker, the heavier the Zebra (or Intermec or Sato) the trickier and more trouble it is to safely ship.

Take special precautions when you're shipping heavy (70 lbs plus or minus and up), wide-web (more than 6 inches wide) thermal/thermal transfer label printers; unless you ship in the original container with all the original packing, then box the printer, wrap it/pad it well in in about three layers of bubble-wrap (no polystyerene peanuts, please!), strap it to a pallet, and ship it for repair service via an LTL carrier.  Specify that it be returned to you in the same manner.  If you ignore this guideline and ship via a parcel carrier ground service, be prepared for carrier damage due to the weight/dimensions/design of the printer in combination with inadequate packaging.

The bottom line with these wide-web workhorse printers like the Zebra 220xiIII, or a similar model from Intermec, Datamax, or Sato is you should consider an onsite printer maintenance contract just because they don't travel well. We're not minimizing other important issues like the nature of the application (i.e., can I afford to be without the printer for hours, days or more, etc.), the availability of print capacity on other printers or lines in your shop, or the presence of on-site spares - but from our experience and that of many Lexicon customers, don't miss this simple truth -- it will save you heartache.

Note that our general recommendation in this case was for an onsite maintenance contract for heavy, wide-web thermal label printers.  Change any of these variables and we've got other, and we believe better ideas to consider for Zebra printer or Intermec printer maintenance and repair support.

Check Part Two of this post for some of those thoughts next week.

These handheld, fixed, and truck-mount barcode data collectors have in many ways set the standard for the durable, mobile enterprise-quality terminals of today like the Symbol Technologies (now Motorola) MC9090 or MC9060.  Many of the Intermec T2425 RF terminals or T2420 Batch terminals and the T2455 truck-mounts placed into service more than ten years ago are still providing reliable, faithful service today.  These terminals were (and still are) true industrial-strength specimens - no wonder they're still ticking.  Intermec's design has stood the test of time.

Lexicon intends to continue to repair, service, and maintain these great Intermec barcode scanning terminals.

HOWEVER, like we said at the top of this post -- we've only heard this info informally.  If anyone has additional facts, details or corrections, please comment (there's a link at the beginning and end of the post) and we'll get the post updated.  Thanks in advance.

In Lexicon’s own hometown of Conyers, Georgia, we’ve had a dedicated group of community-minded people put on a great tennis-themed fundraiser each August for the last three years as our own little prelude to the US Open – the Kim Atkins Memorial Tennis Tournament.  The event raises awareness about and benefits the fight against breast cancer. We (along with many others in town) have been privileged to support this great charity event, which raised close to $40,000 this year toward the purchase of a mobile mammography unit, and which was recognized by the USTA, as a 2007 USTA Charity Event of the Year. Well done to Benny and Jean and all your great volunteers!

Summers’ end means Labor Day, cookouts, back-to-school and the US Open at the Billy Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, NY.  One of the four majors in tennis, sponsored by the United States Tennis Association (the USTA), the US Open is the world’s largest sporting event by attendance.

My wife is a huge fan as well as an enthusiastic recreational tennis player (and USTA member).  It’s one of her missions in life to get to all the majors.  In addition to the US Open, that’s the French and Australian, plus Wimbledon in London. So along with eight of our best friends we charged off to New York last week for a few days of the best tennis atmosphere anywhere.

And we weren’t alone -- already after Week One (it’s a two week gig) more than 420,000 fans have passed through the turn styles. That’s where the practical power and reliability, not to mention speed, accuracy and value associated with good old mobile barcode scanning devices help to make this train run smoothly. Each fan through the gate had their barcoded ticket scanned by a Symbol SPT1846 handheld terminal, which we know a little about.

I know that most of the time we’re talking about moving product off the dock to customers and how important that is (and it is), but trust me – when a (huge) crowd of serious tennis fans are determined not to miss a minute of Rafael Nadal or Venus or Serena – you’ve got to be able to move people through the entry ques quickly.  That’s just what the USTA people were able to do with zero backups or bottlenecks (at least I didn’t observe any).  Hats off to the USTA for reminding us that reliable, proven barcode technology and RF-powered handheld devices can be used for more than taking inventory!

Wasn’t this equipment bought to make your operations run smoothly? Barcode and RF on the front end of your MRP or WMS was going to help put your operation way out on the right side of the performance bell curve – right?

Barcode Scanner Repair When Breakdowns Happen

Don’t blame the hardware. If you have deployed top products like Symbol PDT6846 or Symbol MC9060 handhelds or the Intermec T2425 or Intermec CV60 terminals, you bought tough durable devices. The Zebra 105se or Intermec 3400 label printers are awfully hard to beat day-in and day-out for reliability.

But breakdowns are inevitable, even with great quality, robustly designed and built gear from Symbol, Intermec, Zebra, or even HHP or Datalogic. And when this happens, Lexicon believes the key is end-to-end “repair process efficiency”, which means eliminating periods of inactivity or wait time from your repair cycle.

Barcode Scanner Repair: A Metaphor

To illustrate this insight we ask if you’ve seen the television ad that Kaiser Permanente, the health care provider debuted during the Olympics they call “Community Bicycle”? It’s really a great spot and you’ll see that Kaiser’s point is that, like the bicycle being passed from rider to rider, good health can be spread throughout the community in the same way and everyone benefits.

We got inspiration from the piece – first, for its intended purpose, and as it relates to repair systems, designed for efficiency. When you watch the ad, pay special attention to the bike. You’ll notice that it doesn’t stop for long. When one rider gets off, another gets on; interludes that occur when the bike is at rest are few or non-existent. That bike seldom “waits around” for a rider – it’s on the move to somewhere all the time.

Lexicon's Barcode Scanner Repair Philosophy

We believe that same philosophy works in the efficient design of high volume, scalable repair centers for barcode and enterprise mobility equipment. Turnaround time leadership (or improvement) is derived from installing strict standard processes that keep the “bike” (the broken scanner or printer or pdt) on the move. Processes that don't permit equipment in need of repair to be placed in a “wait” state, or at least limits these non-productive, non-value-added “wait” conditions as much as possible.

Don’t overlook the power of eliminating non-productive “wait” time in your own processes and operation. You can start by getting that pile of broken Symbol scanners and Intermec terminals for repair on the move right now.

An entirely new Custom Routing module has been added that is intuitive to use and extremely flexible.  Custom Routing now allows Lexicon Partners who have deployed RepairEngine® to direct or "route" customer equipment to multiple repair centers, including to OEM service centers for warranty or maintenance service.  Custom Routing rules may be managed by Lexicon Partner Administrators and provide repair return routing by equipment manufacturer, model/serial number, user, or user organization.  New ‘Customer Administrator’ and ‘Customer Company Profiles’ features make it easier for larger or geographically dispersed user organizations that rely on barcode/mobile devices, to easily gain and maintain complete control of repair management across the enterprise.  Return Authorization Generation has been streamlined and starting now, RepairEngine® users will notice ease-of-use enhancements when they navigate the service management portal.  “Mouse-over” technology has been replaced by a friendlier selectable menu system that doesn’t ever “disappear” at the wrong moment.

Solution Providers or Lexicon Partners who want to learn more about RepairEngine® or these new features should contact Scott Robinson for more information.  Barcode Equipment Users who want to access the benefits of RepairEngine®  may contact their Solution Provider support team to find out if they are a Lexicon Partner who has deployed RepairEngine®.  Alternatively, equipment users may contact Lexicon directly to immediately begin to enjoy the benefits of quality and timely repair and maintenance services, and a better repair experience driven by RepairEngine®.  We'll make sure we understand your needs, and then we'll connect you with a Lexicon Partner Network company who will provide your organization with the level of support that you're looking for.

"The new lexicontech.com site will make it easier for new and existing customers and partners to see the large selection of leading products that we repair and maintain and that we offer for resale as Lexicon-Certified™," said Dave Wiedman, Lexicon Technologies Chief Operating Officer.  "Additionally, we've worked to make it even easier to contact us for support, sales, or service — the new site will help us communicate more effectively with customers."

Added Travis Collins, CEO of Lexicon, "We've designed www.lexicontech.com to accommodate substantial new features in the months ahead to make our company easier for customers to interact and do business with.  In addition, we've designed and built this site as a key component of a growth strategy to drive new business for us and our Solution Provider Partners in the Lexicon Partner Network™."

For more information contact:

Dave Wiedman, Chief Operating Officer
dwiedman@lexicontech.com

Travis Collins, President and CEO
tcollins@lexicontech.com

Having a 24×7 on-line service portal that can easily generate a repair authorization for any piece of barcode or automatic ID equipment, automatically route customer equipment to the correct repair center, send out email notifications when customer action is required, provide online pricing, online repair approvals, up-to-date repair status, etc. gives Lexicon Partner Network companies a strategic advantage. “It is no accident that our Partners who currently have RepairEngine® installed prominently on their website are driving substantially more repair volume than those who don’t”, according to Scott Robinson, director of Sales Operations at Lexicon.

Existing Lexicon Partners should contact Scott Robinson or Darla Mann at Lexicon to learn how a powerful RepairEngine® Service Management Portal System can be deployed to drive more service business and better repair experiences for your barcode equipment customers.  Companies who use Symbol, Intermec, Zebra, Datamax, PSC, Norand, Telxon, or other leading AIDC devices may contact their Solution Provider support team to find out if they're a Lexicon Partner. Alternatively, equipment user organizations may contact Lexicon directly to immediately enjoy the benefits of quality and timely repair and maintenance services, and a better repair experience driven by RepairEngine®. We'll make sure we understand your needs, and then we'll connect you with a Lexicon Partner Network company who will provide your organization with the level of support that you're looking for.

• PSC / Datalogic Falcon 4420 Windows Portable Data Terminal
• HHP Dolphin 9500 / 9550 Windows Portable Data Terminals
• Symbol 7946 Vehicle Mount Terminals

Soon-to-be-Released Products (Dec. 07)

• Intermec CV60 Fixed Vehicle Terminal
• Symbol 8946 Vehicle Mount Terminal

"Earlier in 2007 we announced initial repair support for HHP 9500/9550 terminals and the CK 30/31 devices from Intermec," said Dave Word, Depot Operations Manager for Lexicon.  "We're excited that we can continue to provide excellent repair quality, value, and turnaround times for these leading Windows Mobile-based handhelds, as we've done for years with DOS-based data capture terminals."

• Tools to manage your own In-House Repair Operation including online approvals, automated emails for your end users
• Easy-to-use, partner-managed repair Routing System to meet all your customers' equipment maintenance needs
• A Single Service Portal Log-in for all your customers on your website
• Enhanced Partner Branding to help you win more business and maintain customer loyalty
• Two levels of Solution Provider (SP) Administrator visibility
• New Sophisticated SP price markup logic – price the way you want and need to price
• Immediate web visibility for Solution Providers, end users for newly submitted Return Authorizations (RA's)
• Solution Provider editable FAQ's for your custom tailored RepairEngine® Service Portal
• Online Contract Management
• Online Repair Reporting for Solution Providers
• Support for Multiple, Major Repair Providers- Enhanced Solution Partner User Interface and more . . .

"We expect RepairEngine® will become even more of a key building block which our Solution Provider Partners will use to successfully meet the repair and maintenance needs of their customers", said Dave Wiedman, Chief Operating Officer of Lexicon."We've spent a year designing and building it to be a key linking technology to make service access and management via the web a reality for all the players in the channel – Solution Providers, end users, vendors, and repair providers."

Added Travis Collins, Lexicon President and CEO, "The launch of RepairEngine® marks a major step in the evolution of our company as a provider of specialized web systems and information to support and complement the delivery of our legacy maintenance services and, in fact, the delivery of maintenance services industry-wide through the indirect channel.We're excited about the partnering potential that RepairEngine® creates for us and our Solution Provider customer base."

For more information contact:

Dave Wiedman, Chief Operating Officer
dwiedman@lexicontech.com

Travis Collins, President
tcollins@lexicontech.com

"We're pleased to offer this value-added service through our Solution Provider Partners", said Dave Wiedman, COO of Lexicon. "This program features affordable pricing and a quick turnaround time for the upgrade service to benefit Symbol and Intermec equipment users."

For more information contact:

Mitch Rogers, Business Development Specialist
Direct - (678) 750-0306; mrogers@lexicontech.com

Scott Robinson, Sales Operations Director
Direct - (678) 750-0281; srobinson@lexicontech.com

Darla Mann, Business Development Specialist
Direct - (678) 750-0283; srobinson@lexicontech.com

“Repair support for these terminals will initially be limited to flat rate or time and materials service options,” according to Dave Word, Lexicon’s Depot Operations Manager.  “Per incident repair service for these units will include main board reflow and/or refurbishment; display/digitizer repair or replacement; keypad, trigger, or internal component repair or replacement; and alignment, calibration, and testing.”

For additional information contact:

Dave Word, Depot Operations Manager
Direct - 678.750.0261; dword@lexicontech.com

Dave Wiedman, Chief Operating Officer
Direct - 678.750.0270; dwiedman@lexicontech.com

A large variety of equipment is available in the Lexicon rental equipment pool including popular terminals and scanners originally manufactured by Symbol Technologies, Intermec, Telxon, and Norand.  Equipment may be rented by the week or month, in quantities required by the user organization.

For additional information about Lexicon’s Rental Equipment Pool (REP) Program contact:

Mitch Rogers, Business Development Specialist
Direct – 678.750.0306; mrogers@lexicontech.com