The biggest challenge we have every year is choosing the Elite Dealer of the Year. There were plenty of worthy candidates, but the ultimate decision came down to the quality of its Elite Dealer submission. We could have honored a bigger dealer, and there were many of those worthy of recognition as well. We could have honored a dealer that impressed us by what they were doing in one or more categories on the nomination form, and there were many more of those as dealers as well. But looking at the big picture, Flo-Tech based in Middletown, CT, was the one dealership whose Elite Dealer submission stood out from the pack. Flo-Tech made a strong case for its selection as an Elite Dealer, and we felt that case was strong enough to not only honor them as an Elite Dealer but celebrate its accomplishments as The Week in Imaging’s 2013 Elite Dealer of the Year.
FLO-TECH
Middletown, CT
President/Owner: Leo Bonetti
Year founded: 1992
Number of employees: 160
Primary hardware vendors: HP, Canon, Xerox, Lexmark, Dell, Zebra
Primary solutions and services offerings: Managed Print Services, DocuWare, HP Nuance eCopy Sharescan, HP Access Control Intelligent Print Manager, HP ePrint Enterprise for Secure Mobile Printing
Approximate/Average yearly revenues: $30+ million
Biggest sale/win of the past year: Flo-Tech has had several big wins this year but one that stands out was the win back of a large law firm. This firm had been under pressure to further reduce costs and left Flo-Tech for a lower cost provider; six months into its agreement with that provider, service levels had significantly dropped and device downtime had become a major issue. With several other issues also contributing to its dissatisfaction with its new provider, the law firm re-engaged Flo-Tech to support its fleet.
Where do you start writing about a dealership that seemingly does everything right? That’s the dilemma when honoring Flo-Tech, one of the office technology and imaging industry’s most innovative dealerships. It’s also a dealership that has been enjoying serious growth in various segments of its business. For example, it now has close to 30,000 devices under contract and now manages 1.5 billion pages. The fastest growing page volumes are color page volumes. Additionally, Flo-Tech has seen significant growth in the tried and true—MPF/copier placements.
It’s safe to say too that many of Flo-Tech customers would describe them as Elite because of the great service it provides. And that growing customer base is not just located in Connecticut as Flo-Tech offers nationwide service and support. How do they provide great service? Let us count the ways:
- Four to six hour average response time and a 95 percent first-time fix rate.
- Extensive technician training and certifications plus techs with an average tenure of 14 years.
- Automated parts inventory management system and dedicated Parts Inventory Analysts.
- An integrated platform of Alert Management Software, Flo-Tech Connect, FieldAccess software that provides extensive information on each service call before a tech arrives on site.
- The Flo-Tech Coast to Coast program that supports customer locations across the country and gives them a single service provider responsible for managing service delivery, service response, billing and customer satisfaction across their entire organization. It also allows them to leverage many of Flo-Tech’s tools such as its Alert Management Software to manage their entire network—fleet-wide and nationwide from a central location.
Leo Bonetti
Another reason customers choose Flo-Tech is its unique positioning in the industry “We are smaller than the large OEM’s, but larger than the average copier dealers and resellers,” notes Leo Bonetti, president. “Why is that important to our customers? With a ‘right- sized’ company like Flo-Tech we are nimble enough to provide our clients personal attention, work with them to resolve key issues and provide flexibility that other organizations can’t offer. That could be flexibility in our offerings, our terms and conditions or our ability to meet special needs and requirements as they arise and as well as leverage our expertise to address issues they encounter.”
On the flip side, Bonetti says that Flo-Tech is large enough to have the resources, infrastructure and technology to provide innovative solutions and support millions and millions of transactions on a monthly basis while providing customers with the personal attention and innovative solutions they expect from a provider like Flo-Tech.
“We have built an infrastructure that is scalable to meet the needs of clients of all sizes that gives us the flexibility to develop and deliver innovative solutions like our Alert Management Software, Flo-Tech Connect, our asset management program, and customer reporting,” adds Bonetti.
We’re also impressed by the way Flo-Tech leverages software technology in its business. Topping the charts is Flo-Tech’s Alert Management Software (AMS), a remote monitoring application for its customers’ printing and imaging infrastructure. This patent pending Flo-Tech-developed system manages thousands of alerts generated by its customers’ printing and imaging devices with automated, intelligent alert handling capabilities to improve the availability and productivity of their output-infrastructure while reducing the support requirements. This can be used to monitor devices across the country from a central location.
“AMS has strengthened our nationwide service program allowing us to monitor and truly manage their entire fleet, companywide regardless of physical/geographic location,” reports Bonetti. “And AMS integrates with Flo-Tech Connect, our customer Web portal for streamlined service delivery and management. AMS is also a valuable tool to our onsite technicians, housed at customer locations who can receive alerts directly from AMS and provide service response in minutes vs. hours.”
Also noteworthy is Flo-Tech’s Activity Based Cleaning (ABC) Program, a strategic preventative maintenance program designed to optimize fleet performance, minimize downtime, and maximize the useful life of devices. With Activity Based Cleaning, preventative maintenance is performed based on actual page volumes and device utilization measured against a set of predetermined thresholds. “Our program, which also includes proactive parts replacement, was designed to maximize the effectiveness of preventative maintenance cleanings and keeps devices consistently operating at peak performance,” says Bonetti.
We’re not the only ones impressed by Flo-Tech’s performance. In the past three years the dealership has been recognized by Canon as one of its top 30 independent dealers based on year to year revenue growth (234 percent in 2010) and it received the 2012 Canon Outstanding Partner Award for outstanding revenue growth. Driving this growth are placements in net new customers and net new placements within its existing customer base where Flo-Tech is now managing their customers’ printer and copier fleets under an MPS agreement, and in many cases providing nationwide support for those fleets.
Add to that The MPSA Leadership Award for Best Independent MPS Provider, being selected for the Photizo MPS Leaders Index – one of 11 Companies worldwide noted as the “gold standard” in MPS, the Perfect Image Award for Outstanding MPS Program, and being recognized with the CIO 100 Award by CIO Magazine for innovations and strategic excellence in IT and the business value it provides. Flo-Tech also earned the CompTIA Managed Print Trustmark, one of a limited number of independent dealers to have earned this industry credential to date.
We’ve only scratched the surface of why Flo-Tech is not only a 2013 Elite Dealer, and without a doubt why we celebrate its selection as The Week in Imaging’s 2013 Elite Dealer of the Year.
