Suddenly last summer, two prominent suppliers in the document imaging industry, MSE and Clover Technologies Group, joined forces to create an even more formidable entity. On the supplies side of the document imaging business this was by far the biggest stories of 2014.
It’s now eight months into the merger and we thought it would be interesting to touch base with Gil Wazana, Senior Vice President of sales at MSE, and Luke Goldberg, Global SVP Sales and Marketing of Clover Technologies Group, to find out where things stand today, the impact on customers, and what’s in store for the rest of 2015. Incidentally, MSE just celebrated its 20th anniversary in December, which is an impressive feat in itself.
Looking back at the past year would you say it’s been a good one for MSE?
Wazana: It’s been an excellent year and the measurement for that is multi pronged. It’s not one singular thing that made it an excellent year. Of course we can point to the merger with Clover. That’s a big part simply because it set us up for the next 20 years along with the collective value and support we can provide to the industry through that.
The merger was announced in July, has much changed since then?
Wazana: Things are changing and they will continue to change, but they’re all positive changes. We are progressing as you might expect when two large companies merge together. From the day-to-day mechanics of MSE, there haven’t been many significant or earth-shifting changes that affect how we do business or affect how we support our customers internally and externally. Ultimately, we’re where we thought we would be seven or eight months into the merger.
We have introduced some additional solutions and value-adds to our customers. We recently announced an additional distribution location in Florida, and an expanded location for the East Coast in New Jersey. We have expanded our California location with a new 4,500 square feet QC lab and 18 engineers and technicians have been added as part of the merger. These are all positive changes that will allow us to better serve our customers.
Are your resellers feeling the impact of these changes yet?
Wazana: Absolutely. When we initially announced the merger we committed to a best practice methodology and to creating additional value for our customers and resellers. Expanding in certain areas of the business, including our product lines and distribution, and having additional resources in engineering, so we can be faster to market and have a wider product breath, is part of the value we’re committed to and are already delivering on.
Luke Goldberg
Merging two large organizations like this must come with some challenges, what’s been the biggest challenge of merging the two entities?
Goldberg: There haven’t been that many challenges because both sides have been moving forward with a spirit of cooperation. Sometimes when these things happen, you get a “we always did it like that” scenario. We’re not getting that.
One of the terms you hear frequently within the context of these mergers is “best practices.” Best practices are driving the communication and cooperation between the collective organizations. There is no ego here; it’s not about “we’ve always done it that way,” it’s what’s the best way to do it? Driving things forward with that spirit of cooperation is first and foremost based on the premise of best practices, which is keeping the conflicts and challenges to a minimum.
It would also be disingenuous to say there haven’t been any challenges because it’s not inherently possible to meld two organizations of this size together without some challenges. There are certain day-to-day things like not being on the same ERP system, which means we don’t have 100 percent visibility across all platforms. Eventually we will, but in the meantime, that’s a challenge.
We have a sister company, West Point Products; they’re an excellent company and excellent partner, but we sell to some of the same customers. A big part of what Gil and his team are doing is making sure we’re going to the market collectively instead of as adversaries. That is a challenge, going from being an adversary to a partner. You have to change that mindset overnight to make sure we’re being cooperative as opposed to competitive. That takes a lot of work and Gil can attest to that.
Wazana: On the customer side there’s questions like, “Will MSE be different? Will West Point be different? We love our rep at MSE or we love our rep at West Point, what will that look like?” Those are things we’re working through, with a focus on a seamless process for our mutual customers while staying focused on our core competencies.
We have 1,100 employees on one side and over 16,000 employees on the other side. You need to balance the human element as well. The challenges have been minimal and more on the tactical day-to-day side of the business. How do we get on the same ERP? Which project or integration do we want to tackle first? Outwardly, both sides are lucky. We have customers who have a lot of faith and trust in us and believe we will be able to grow and merge properly while only providing benefits to them without degrading our level of service or the quality of our products. Our customers are making this process easier than we imagined.
Gil, earlier you mentioned you’d be introducing various new solutions and value adds, can you be more specific as to what those are?
Wazana: We recently launched a postal ink line and believe that this creates an incremental profit opportunity for the majority of our customers. We are launching a branded remanufactured inkjet solution that will augment our MSE Brand. The products are made in the USA in a state of the art facility which utilizes robotics and automation in order to deliver a very high quality product that our customers can rely on. That’s an additional value from a product position that MSE is regularly asked about.
We have also started down the road of better understanding the organization’s MPS platform and how we can deliver it under the MSE Brand suite of services and marketing support. Our goal is to continue to offer differentiation on the MSE Brand as we bring these services to market. These are just a couple of things we can bring to customers who were historically MSE-only customers.
Let’s talk more about how MSE and Clover are complementing each other?
Goldberg: One critical aspect we haven’t talked about yet, which creates one of the biggest insecurities in our industry, is the availability of cores. Obviously, Clover being the largest collector of cores in the world in the aftermarket imaging supplies business, that doesn’t eliminate [the insecurity], but it mitigates and/or alleviates a lot of the stresses that MSE was encountering vis- a-vis core collection.
Another benefit happening behind the scenes is that Clover will be handling our core collection program. They have the most robust and comprehensive core collection program in the world. Providing dealers with Clover’s services and reclamation programs is another huge value add.
Another exciting thing about being part of the Clover family of companies is our global footprint. That global footprint is global manufacturing, global distribution, and global sales and marketing. We have the ability to interface with customers in 26 languages in more than 18 countries. We have manufacturing, distribution, and collection all over the world. That’s exciting from an MSE context as well because MSE now has the ability to expand our brand in markets we couldn’t expand into before. We’ll now have distribution in Latin America, we’ll have sales people and boots on the ground in Mexico and Brazil and places we didn’t before. That’s an expansion of all of our brands globally, including the MSE brand.
It’s also exciting to be part of a diversified organization. Clover’s global solutions portfolio includes mobile device solutions and telecom engineering services. Our wireless device solutions include private label mobile device buyback and repair. We currently support some of the top brands in the industry. Clover’s wireless and telecom divisions are essentially taking this platform of manufacturing or reengineering and applying it to other types of e-waste and diversifying beyond the world of print.
Wazana: MSE is celebrating its 20 year anniversary and over the years we have had an incredible team of leaders that are smart and experienced who have been the driving force in our progress. Through the merger, that team has been expanded and it’s exciting to sit around that table now with more people that have different experiences and walks of life both professionally and personally. I can only speak for myself, but it’s great to hear other people’s history and experiences and learn how we can change or do things differently. It’s a great learning experience that will allow us to grow, gain new insights and reshape ourselves.
Goldberg: Everyone is open minded and willing and desirous to learn just as we are. We create a formidable team when you put together the level of expertise that each of these top managers have in their respective areas, whether it’s the retail, distribution, technology or big box side. That’s exciting and I’m enjoying the learning experience as well.
All the positive experiences you’re sharing, does that surprise you or were you expecting that?
Goldberg: I don’t think I had a lot of preconceived notions about how this was going to take place. You naturally expect when you have a lot of different personalities and strong personalities coming together there would be some conflict. It’s almost unbelievable how little conflict there has been and how that spirit of cooperation has prevailed at the highest levels. I anticipated it would go well, but I didn’t believe you could have as collegial an environment as the environment that’s been created.
Wazana: Clover and MSE were fierce competitors with a great relationship. And the relationship was such that each side had some insights into the style, approach and personality of the other. We’re both extremely passionate and spirited. I expected to have some high voltage type discussions and am glad that we did as it revolved around the ultimate goal of creating a better experience for our customers. Not to sound like a cliché, but everyone is truly open minded and focusing on collaboration and best practice.
What else do you think readers should know about the new MSE and Clover that hasn’t already been discussed?
Wazana: I want to reaffirm that both organizations are working towards becoming one. The goal at hand and everybody sees it clearly, is taking care of our customers and helping them grow their business. Over the past six or seven months we’ve proven it by delivering value. The customer is always number one and that is something that we all see clearly at every level.
Goldberg: We’re going to continue to deliver better products, better solutions, diversity of product lines, and we’ll continue to be an even more valuable part of our customer’s business. We already started delivering on some of the promises we made pre-merger. We said we’d have product line diversity, better distribution, and better tools. We’re delivering on that and our customers are seeing that. We continue to bring the highest degree of value any organization can bring to any dealer anywhere in the world.
Next year when we have this conversation again, what do you think we’ll be talking about?
Goldberg: We’ll be speaking more in terms of our mid-market organization, more as a cohesive whole. We’re seeing the same things, we’re on the same system, approaching independent dealers in the United States as an organization as opposed to two organizations and there’s going to be more cohesion as far as that aspect of our business is concerned.
Being only eight months into this everybody talks about synergies; by then more synergies will be delivered. We’ll have more solutions and products to talk about and we’ll have a full-blown managed print solution available to our dealers. You’ll see the byproduct of more time together and how more time together will bring more synergies, more value, and more cohesion.
Wazana: What we’ve been talking about today will be a reality. All the energy that is put into the integration today, our customers will see the fruit of that. A year from now the integration will be complete and our energy will be focused on creating the next wave of solutions, more value, and more positive evolution.
