Dan Waldinger will be the first one to tell you that a slogan is just a slogan. But when those words truly embody the ideas, initiatives and actions of a company, that’s when a client understands there is purpose behind the words—not just a Starbucks-induced epiphany of a Madison Avenue agency executive.
The senior director of B2B marketing for Brother International Corporation takes pride in the “At Your Side” tagline that has long been the calling card for the company. It aligns nicely with the OEM’s continued push into the dealer channel. The manufacturer has been relentless in its quest to align with dealer needs. Brother created a dealer council to closely monitor the needs and pain points of their resellers. It teamed with Toshiba to create work-from-home kits that can help businesses continue in a COVID environment, and is focused on the “six-foot office” to anticipate the needs of companies returning on-site.
The Brother Knowledge Center brought a bottomless reservoir of resources that has witnessed a surge of usage in this time of need. And when face-to-face meetings were pulled from the table, the manufacturer used video conferencing to ratchet up its level of communication with dealer partners.
Even as this issue went to press, Brother was knee-deep in several key initiatives, including a pilot program for a flat-rate billing offering and the upcoming launch of a new partner relationship management platform. The company has also provided a series of account-based marketing tools that drill down to the vertical level—the list goes on and on.
We spoke with Waldinger and Bob Burnett, the company’s director of B2B solutions development, to learn more about how the flurry of activity in the last few years has catapulted Brother from being just a darling of the small office/home office (SoHo) space into a true champion for the dealer channel, leading them through the current difficult circumstances and showing a path to future success.
How would you characterize Brother’s business performance in the 12-month lead-up to the coronavirus outbreak?
Waldinger: We’ve been strategically increasing our investments in the B2B segment for the last four to five years. We had a really strong year from a laser printer hardware perspective, with 9% B2B growth. Among our business categories, the color laser MFP business was up 17 percent. We know there’s a marketplace shift from black-and-white to color, and our numbers support it. Our single-function color laser business was up about 7%. We saw 6% year-over-year growth in the black-and-white laser category. On the printer side, it was about 3% growth, and our scanner business saw a 2% rise. All hardware business in the copier channel was up about 11%. If I add the supply business to that, we’re up over 45%. Contract business (companies like Staples and Office Depot, not retail ecommerce) was up about 10% for hardware and accessories. Looking at our DMR business (firms like CDW), they were up 11%. We started to focus intently on the system integrator and VAR community within our Brother Authorized Partner Program (BAPP), and we had 12% growth there.
What were some of the highlights in 2019 for Brother across all lines of business, particularly in the dealer channel?
Waldinger: Our Value Print Program (VPP) is offered contractually to all the B2B channels. An extended warranty – three years with options for more – provides advanced exchange for a unit that has any difficulty at all within the contract period. And it allows for significant discounts on the supply business; this is where our partners are able to reach an aggressive cost per print or cost per copy. That business was up 33% for FY19, and now we’re up to 125,000 units in the field under contract. That says a lot about how Brother’s markets are shifting from transactional to contractual business.
In FY19, when we look at the dealer business—which consists of the copier dealers and our relationships with Toshiba and Xerox dealers—that business represented 40% of our larger BAPP business. When we look back at FY14, the majority of business that was moving through what we call office product dealers was mostly small office/home office (SoHo) laser business. So we’ve seen a completely different shift in our business, and that’s exciting because it allows us to serve a wider and more diverse customer base.
In January of FY19, we established a dealer council consisting of about a dozen dealers to really help us further expand into this channel. It was created to ensure we’re offering all of the programs, have the right products and the team available, and get straight talk from council members about how we can grow this group.
Can you provide some insight into how Brother has endured the COVID-19 period, and how did the company pivot to ensure the needs of its reseller clients were being met?
Waldinger: The company acted quickly within the spirit of business continuity. Our initial focus was on the health and well-being of all our channel partners, the concern for our employees and their immediate personal needs. We quickly helped our people transition into a work-from-home environment, and immediately shifted our helpdesk likewise so that there was no downtime for our partners. We also shifted aggressively with our distribution centers to make sure that they were modified in order to keep our “essential” employees safe. We’ve kept employees abreast of developments through weekly town hall meetings, and at our headquarter location we operate under the guidelines that the state of New Jersey has set. We’re proud to say that we’ve operated continuously without any reductions in the resources we have dedicated to our reseller partners and our mutual customer base. We’ve been able to maintain our first-class “At Your Side” commitment from our company.
From a marketing perspective, we immediately began to focus on the elements our channel partners would require from us. Number one, the supply chain needed to be uninterrupted, so that partners could take care of their immediate customers. Plus, they would need help and guidance around marketing in an environment where businesses are still functioning or were deemed “essential.” Right out of the gate, we started to provide marketing materials that focused on warehousing and shipping logistics, health care institutions, public sector services and grocery providers, just to name a few. We’re focused on what we call the six-foot office, so that once businesses opened, they would be able to safely access our technology, have a more optimized device-to-employee ratio and have reduced contact while using Brother devices.
With the work-from-home movement, we saw a big push for our smaller footprint laser products, and our dealer community became interested in how they could also sell those products. We collaborated with Toshiba to create a work-from-home kit, with the idea of building a corporate office within the home. It spoke to business continuity, the ability to enable collaboration and communication with customers, while using tools other than low-end inkjet products. Toshiba put out that package to their dealer community with our help, to really push some of those other laser products—black-and-white and color—to be sold into those environments.
Burnett: Pre-COVID, all of our teams were out in the field—marketing and field engineering as well as sales—visiting accounts, really bringing the message of what Brother is about and why we have a great value for them and their customers in bringing solutions to the table. When the world changed in March, we actually amped that up even more. I visit and meet with more channel partners than I did prior to COVID, because it’s being done virtually. We’re not getting on airplanes and traveling. Remote meetings enable access to more of their sales staff on a regular basis. Now the Brother team can meet with channel partners on a weekly basis and speak with their sales teams regarding the importance of business continuity—reduced contact with the product, addressing the six-foot office, and making sure our solutions are meeting the needs of their customers in a COVID world. That’s really increased during this period.
Brother assisted in the production of personal protective equipment (PPE) by donating industrial sewing machines. Can you provide some insight into this initiative?
Waldinger: What makes us really unique is we have divisions that speak to solutions beyond office equipment. As a leader in industrial sewing machines, we saw an opportunity to donate equipment that answers the CDC’s call for PPE and masks. We donated 100 industrial machines to back a coalition of apparel companies’ efforts. That led to the production of about 185,000 masks in a short timeframe. We continue to look for other opportunities to assist nonprofit groups. We donated equipment to an organization in Miami called DesignLab Give, which provides sewing education classes to underserved communities. We were recognized by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy for doing some volunteer work and donating to the Mask Squad of Somerset County, which produced and donated thousands of masks to hospitals and others in need right in our home county where Brother headquarters is based.
Our Brother Mobile Solutions division donated 75 printers to restaurants across the country in support of an industry that was really hit hard. Our label printers can, through contactless applications, deliver labels and receipts on-demand. In the fall, the Mobile division will work with a thermal mirror and digital signage company to promote thermal temperature and validation solutions for businesses, governments and schools.
Burnett: On the labeling side, our team supported a nonprofit organization that writes inspirational notes to health care professionals. The messages are printed and affixed to cardboard or foam core blocks, and presented to health care professionals as encouragement and praise for their efforts. We’re providing the labeling products and media. Also, a partner with our gear motor division has modified their machines to sanitize multiple types of masks. And on the printing side, some of our machines are being used to assist health care workers at COVID pop-up testing centers.
What types of solutions are dealers seeking in the COVID environment?
Waldinger: They’re interested in learning more about other imaging products that we have available, and enhancing their ability to sell those products as well. Some are specialized, such as the Brother Mobile Solutions, the labeling solutions. There is a lot more interest in those products as well. We’ve really invested heavily in our solutions offering to the community, and we launched that toward the end of last year, with over 120 solutions on the web. We also launched a playbook for our dealer community on how to offer and sell those solutions.
Our Brother Knowledge Center learning platform for dealers and authorized resellers saw a 20% increase in use, with partners downloading information like white papers, sell sheets, infographics and product training modules. Since its launch, we’ve seen 15,000-plus hours of training, which is an indication of how people are engaging with us on a work-from-home perspective.
Establishing the dealer council in January was important to us, and we’ve already had a virtual follow-up with that community. “At Your Side” is not just a tagline. What makes the difference for the dealer community is that hands-on approach, being in the market and the relationships we’ve established with the dealer owners, sales directors and service teams. We’ve been doing a lot around MPS the last year. We have a team that does predictive assessments for the dealer community, and we’ll be offering an online tool around assessments in the coming months.
Along the lines of support, we’re making an investment in a partner relationship management (PRM) tool, a best-of-breed application for our partners. It’s not just about learning and downloading information; it is supporting the sales and marketing efforts of our resellers through a single resource tool. We’re launching that tool right now in a pilot phase. The PRM company is ZINFI, which is one of the leaders of partner relationship management platforms. It’s really all about the productivity of the partner, how they can get information, looking at actionable insights of how they’re engaging with the tool, and delivering leads in a more efficient way for our partners.
We also announced our partnership with Microsoft on the Universal Print driver. We’re excited about that relationship and what that means from a shift to a server-less world or a cloud server. We’re focused on advancing that technology and rolling that out in the September timeframe.
We’ve invested in applications such as Oracle’s Eloqua, which is a marketing automation platform for running email campaigns. It focuses on aspects such as lead storing, routing and nurturing. Getting the benefits that these tools deliver in the hands of our B2B channel partners is important, so we’re accelerating that effort.
Earlier this year, Brother announced its partnership with Kofax to offer the ControlSuite print management software. Tell us about the value of the partnership in terms of secure document management.
Waldinger: That was a big addition for us this year. We signed an agreement with them globally, with Europe and U.S. partners having the ability to sell the Kofax Print Management software. The technology integration was just completed within the last 90 days. We did a complete launch with our sales teams virtually, along with the Kofax support team. We’re really excited about the opportunity that brings Brother, particularly as we see more proliferation of A4 devices and business. We feel the Kofax software brings a best-of-breed document management package, along with our Workhorse series products, and the combination is a really powerful solution for dealers to sell. Many of our dealers are familiar with Kofax and some of them sell it with their other providers, so it was a natural fit for us. It was a long time coming; we’ve been talking to Kofax for a couple of years, so we’re excited about the partnership.
Burnett: The relationship of bringing ControlSuite and the integration of what is called the unified client into our product, the demand for business continuity and the expectation of having that same capability of workflow on an A4-sized device are critical, especially now that the world’s changed. Kofax helps Brother bring that capability to those customers. It’s not just controlling the print piece, it’s also managing the security and the entire document workflow, making it mobile and interacting with an entire workflow from a mobile device as well. Also, it offers all the reporting, tracking and tracing of what documents can do and the rights people have to redaction of information. There’s some massive capability there, and when you mesh the Kofax and Brother technologies together, it truly offers an end-to-end solution for a customer.
How do you see Brother evolving technology- and strategy-wise over the next few years? What impact is COVID-19 having on your blueprints?
Waldinger: The first quarter saw a downtick when businesses were shut across the country. We saw people printing way less, but our business as a whole has remained healthy. The B2B business was down about 16% in the first quarter, but we were able to offset some of that loss with our SoHo business products and the WFH trend. As the country’s business reopens, we want to continue to offer support for the channel. What this has taught us is the importance of being fluid and thinking differently about business models. With that in mind, we’re piloting a flat-fee service/subscription program with the dealer community. We recently developed a calculator and support material. Traditionally, the dealer model has been break/fix, lease and CPC, and I think as we move into a new norm, we’re going to see some customers very interested in the more flexible operating expense (OpEx) models versus the more common capital expense (CapEx) models. With that in mind, we are working with a national leasing company and developed a flat-fee calculator for them to be able to bring those contractual offerings to interested customers. We’ll have more information on it in the near future. As people think differently about how they acquire, use and consume office equipment, Brother is right there working with our dealers to deliver those types of unique business models.
What are your goals for the balance of 2020 and what will you look to accomplish heading into 2021?
Waldinger: We’re currently running new campaigns called account-based marketing. We’re really focusing on verticals, rather than casting a wide net to generate leads for our partners. We just launched a K-12 campaign to get back to what’s important as schools (hopefully) open up. We’re demonstrating how Brother can help the education community be more efficient and effective with document and print management needs while maintaining safety. Health care is a big push as well, because we know that’s an industry that has never shut down and needs more help than ever before. These campaigns are designed to raise awareness around our secure printing capabilities within hospitals, doctors’ offices and pharmacies. As the government sector is still operating, we’re also working to ensure they’re aware of our ability to assist with our trade-compliant machines.
The truth is Brother hasn’t stopped, it never shut down. We’re all about taking care of our customers. Our hope is that businesses come back and people stay safe and healthy, and that we get through this as a team. Brother remains at the side of its partners and at the side of its customers, and we think that all these initiatives drive that message home.
