Is it even possible for Doing Better Business, the Altoona, PA-based provider of office technology, managed print services, managed IT and document services for the central Pennsylvania, West Virginia panhandle and Maryland regions, to improve upon 2017?
It would be tough to replicate the amazing experience that 2017 provided for the ownership team of Debbie, Joe and Beth Dellaposta. The siblings were able to complete the acquisition of their parents’ business, Word Processing Services, at the end of last summer. Around the same time, the dealership sold its TSI Office Products division to W.B. Mason, moved its Latrobe, PA, office to Greensburg, PA, and launched its new website.
But that’s not all. In May, Doing Better Business acquired 2,000 customers from Ricoh, along with 11 of its employees. And the year all began with the acquisition of Total Service, in Latrobe.
Doing Better Business owners Debbie, Joe and Beth Dellaposta
Doing Better Business was created in 2013 when the Dellapostas obtained Van Dyk in the Pittsburgh market, setting the stage for the eventual buyout of Word Processing Services. The dealership carries Ricoh, Sharp, HP and Lexmark products and does about $25 million in annual revenue.
We sat down with the Dellapostas (Debbie is president and CEO, Beth is CFO and Joseph COO) to learn more about the whirlwind of activity and how it has positioned them to continue the successes forged by their parents, Vincent and Marcella Ann, while carving out their own identity in the market.
How has business been this year?
Debbie: We are showing steady growth for this year. Electronic document management, combined with our managed print services program, has helped make a strong impact. It was kind of a surprise, because we committed a lot of resources to get electronic document management to take off. But just when we were about to scrap it because it wasn’t working—we even took away our dedicated sales rep—it started moving like crazy. It just takes time to educate your customers and build a foundation. We’ve been big in MPS for a long time, we called it printer fleet management before the term MPS became fashionable. It continues to be strong and we’re growing that aspect of the business.
The Washington County, MD, commissioner and president of the county’s Chamber of Commerce participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Doing Better Business
Beth: It’s been our best year ever in the history of the company. Revenue, profit and keeping NPS above 90. Revenue is up by 10 percent and we doubled our net profit.
What does Doing Better Business pride itself on?
Debbie: Customer service and family. We do not consider our team members employees. They are family and they carry this over to our clients by making them part of our family, as well. It’s all about trying to differentiate yourself. Everyone’s out there saying the same thing, whether it’s true or not. We really rely heavily on our Net Promoter Score and we do surveys. Anybody can make a claim, but we have the documentation to back it up.
Youngsters from Girls Inc. sang Christmas carols and presented Doing Better Business with a gift to thank the dealership for supporting its organization
During 2017, you acquired Total Service and the family’s Word Processing Services, plus added 2,000 customers from Ricoh. How has this integration process unfolded, and what were some of the challenges along the way?
Beth: We experienced all of the normal challenges like converting and merging databases, integrating new team members and finding the correct cadence for communicating with clients. There’s been moments of utter chaos and stress; we’d be lying if we said it was all roses and balloons.
Debbie: We had a fantastic team of people working for us making sure that everything went as smoothly as possible. It’s unprecedented in history of Ricoh to do something like that, so they also had a learning curve, plus they had 20 other dealers they were contending with. Seeing them as a partner rather than competitor was something new, because they had been very strong in our marketplace.
Onboarding such a large influx of customers seems like an overwhelming challenge. How do you tackle such a tall task from a sales and marketing standpoint?
Joe: We were blessed to not only acquire Ricoh customers but also some of their talented sales and service personnel. Everyone from the sales, service and administrative teams put forth a heroic effort to meet with every new client face to face. Our marketing team put together some great materials, which were hand-delivered, mailed and emailed to every new customer. We ended up with 13 new people from Ricoh. We’d had two Ricoh technicians come over several years before. We sent them out with existing sales people and the new sales people we received. We just divided and conquered, got out in front of everybody as quickly as we could.
From left, Joe, Beth and Debbie Dellaposta unveil the dealership’s new sign in Hagerstown, MD
How has the cultural assimilation progressed with the former Ricoh employees?
Debbie: We take great pride in the culture we’ve created here and they love the family atmosphere. One of salesmen sent us a long email after his wife had a baby; he couldn’t believe that we sent flowers and a teddy bear. All of the staff we on boarded was amazed that we really do walk the talk about culture and core values here. The process to hire them was rapid and intense, just because of the nature of how everything transpired. It was apparent in the interviews that everyone was going to love being with us. The same was true of the Ricoh customers, who have found it is so easy to work with us. Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of great surveys from the Ricoh customers.
What factored into your company’s decision to sell the TSI Office Products Division to W.B. Mason?
Joe: Our niche, where we are truly one of the best in the industry, is with our managed print and document services programs. We did not want to lose our focus. W.B. Mason is a leader in the office supplies and furniture space. It just made sense. For over four decades, we had dedicated ourselves to the office equipment industry and avoided office supplies and furniture. In purchasing TSI, it was a good experience for us and very profitable. The furniture portion was profitable but office supplies were more of an add-on. TSI predominantly services Westmoreland County in Pennsylvania, and one county was more of a distraction than it was worth.
What are some of your newer areas of business? Is it going the way you hoped?
Debbie: We are finally experiencing significant client adoption of electronic document management software and workflow. The key to EDM is understanding how to create workflows that customers can understand. Instead of trying to sell a software package, at a holistic level, you get down to one workflow and you’re able to describe how you can take a paper intensive workflow at a company and turn it into an electronic workflow. That’s really been the key for us, finding success in selling workflow with electronic document management versus trying to sell a package of software. We sell Content Central from Ademero mostly into HR and accounts payable.
Is there a product or solution that you are looking to add in the near future?
Debbie: Our industry is definitely going through some dramatic changes at a much more rapid pace. We see many of the manufacturers looking for ways to adapt and they all have some interesting new offerings. We will continue to vet those products on behalf of our clients and only implement any new technologies that make sense. We jumped into 3D printing very early and that was a huge mistake; it’s definitely not mature enough for our market. There’s probably going to be more coming in that space in the future. We’re in that holding pattern to see how things flesh out.
What was your dealership’s most significant accomplishment or biggest win last year?
Beth: We are proud of the way our team handled an unprecedented amount of change and growth. We had new clients, new team members, a ton of data to convert, moved an office, opened two new offices and had to completely rebrand under one company name. We did all of this and had a record-breaking year in revenue and profit and still maintained our net promoter score.
What do you look for in your employees? How do you recruit and retain good ones?
Debbie: We are very protective of our culture and core values. Team members must adhere to our internal code of conduct, which can be summed up as respect for each other. Our best recruits come from current team member referrals. We are very excited about the new program we are using to share our profits with our team members and everyone is eligible for our President’s Club.
Joe: A year ago, I would’ve said finding new employees is challenging. We’re fresh off adding 11 Ricoh sales people; in the Hagerstown market, we picked up two quality reps and it didn’t seem all that challenging. On service side, we’re having difficulty finding more mechanically trained technicians. There are so many people out there learning networking skills that there’s been a drop off in people being trained in mechanical skills and electronics. We’ve been actively looking for a service technician in the Pittsburgh market for three or four months now. So we were having trouble finding quality salespeople, but now it is quality service technicians that are hard to find.
Have you instilled major cultural changes at Doing Better Business?
Debbie: I think so. Back when we created Doing Better Business, one of first things I wanted to do was talk to everybody one-on-one. We instituted that, then started doing open book management with everybody and sharing the financials. We’ve gone through a couple different profit sharing plans and settled into the one we have now. We’ve had a lot of success from it and are getting a lot of great feedback from the employees. We now have an online app platform internally for employees to be able to receive bonuses on a daily basis for doing great things for our customers.
What was your biggest challenge in the past year?
Debbie: Maintaining our high standards of service and Net Promoter Score with such rapid growth. We are proud to be ending the year with a Net Promoter Score in the mid 90’s.
Joe: The desperate grab of market share by all of the dealers. In any given transaction, people are willing to lose money. I’d rather not have the customer at this point than lose money.
Who do you see as your biggest competition, and how do you differentiate your company from them?
Joe: We operate in different markets, so it’s really a market-dependent question. Pittsburgh is different than our West Virginia panhandle market, Hagerstown or central Pennsylvania. We have different competitors everywhere we go.
Debbie: We used to see Ricoh Direct as our biggest competition. We now view them as a strategic partner. Typically, when you are up against any of the OEM direct branches, they are the ones that are dropping the prices drastically versus an independent dealer. I wish other manufacturers would take a note of what Ricoh’s doing and put more focus into their dealer network and let them hopefully have profitable business.
Doing Better Business toured the Vatican during its Rome trip in May of 2017
What are your goals for 2018?
Beth: We want to continue to focus on profitability, for not only us but our clients as well. I think we focus on supporting our sales and service teams, so that all the puzzle pieces we put into place really drive that growth for the company.
Debbie: We are also looking to make at least one more acquisition, one that would be in support of one of our current markets. There’s been a few that I’ve reached out to that would be adjacent to us, but I’d rather just support the current markets right now.
How do you view the industry changing in the future and what are you doing to adapt?
Debbie: We see the continued movement to being a cloud-based services industry rather than commodity-driven, with more focus on leveraging technology to improve efficiencies. Continuous education of our team members, an internal technology committee and participation in global peer groups help us stay fresh and nimble.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Debbie: We enjoy working with each other; we have our moments, but we’re pretty good. We really focus on having fun.
What is your least favorite aspect?
Joe: Now that we’re larger and have 100 employees, the toughest thing to deal with is the HR aspect of it. Every day, there’s something that has to be managed. It’s not a huge ordeal, but there are always little things here and there. None of us like to shop for health insurance every year because of the escalating costs. We want to offer the best benefits package that we can, but we also have to be competitive ourselves.
Employees kick back at Foxy’s in Jost Van Dyke, the British Virgin Islands, during Doing Better Business’ StarClipper sailing trip in 2016
Outside of work, what do you do for fun?
Debbie: We all enjoy traveling, which shows with the how much time and effort we put into our President’s Club Trips. We’ve been to Punta Cana, Ireland, Germany, Scotland, Italy, Puerto Vallarta, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Cabo, and Lake George. Now we’re going to New Orleans. We usually do a Caribbean or beach-type trip, then go to Europe the following year.
Beth: It started with our mother, who loved to travel. We all inherited her love of travel and exploring, and it’s something we want to share with our team. We enjoy planning, picking the location, surprising everyone with it. We try to have a one-of-a-kind experience on the trip that they wouldn’t be able to get if they just went on their own. We did the 100th year anniversary of Oktoberfest, which was really fun. It’s not just a sales incentive trip; we create opportunities for everybody—service, management and admin staff—to win an invitation onto the trip.
