Jennie Fisher
As one of the finance companies serving the office technology dealer community GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation has a firm grasp on the trends and issues affecting their dealer customers.
“We’re seeing more BTA channel dealers interested in moving down the path of managed networked services,” reports Jennie Fisher, senior vice president and general manager, GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation.
Fisher is keenly aware of the trends, challenges, and opportunities that are going to affect the industry and GreatAmerica and its customers in 2013. “Everybody is talking about managed print becoming a commodity. Some might argue that. I think the ones that have implemented managed print are better candidates for moving into the managed network space. Along with the managed network we see there’s going to be a real drive from the overall managed services perspective of implementing document management which only makes sense because as the output goes down more output is moving to scans and being stored on the system.”
Those are a couple of things that GreatAmerica is thinking about even though the core of what they do is financing equipment. “We also offer managed networked services and we’re making good headway there,” adds Fisher. “We have the ability to bring resources and are able to finance that equipment, finance software on the document management side, and continue to bring resources that help dealers along the lines of MPS.”
In late December when we spoke with Fisher, GreatAmerica was still in the midst of their strategic planning for 2013. “When you look at the strategic planning for the Collabrance side and some of the main initiatives there, one of the main ones is going to be improving our pool of candidates of dealers we’re going to move down the path with because we’re ready to take that next step now,” reveals Fisher. “We’ve taken baby steps, getting a few dealers on, but we wanted to make sure we were doing the right things and on-boarding them in the right direction. We’ve had some challenges with that and we’ve learned from those challenges and now we’re ready to ramp that up a little bit.”
From a finance perspective, Fisher expects the low-cost leasing rates to continue for another 12-18 months. “That’s made for a very aggressive environment on the financial provider side as you can imagine and that’s a challenge for GreatAmerica,” she says
Historically, one GreatAmerica’s largest assets is its reputation for excellent service. “We hear that every day,” says Fisher. “But when the rates get aggressive and you see what’s going on out there now, we are a little higher priced in for different reasons and the right reasons. You’ve got the competition and see the difference in rates of 10 points plus, that makes it more difficult for us. What that means is even though we’re really good on the service levels, at that much lower price [some dealers] are able to tolerate lesser service levels.”
For now Fisher expects to see GreatAmerica continue to be challenged on the rate side. “It’s just a matter of market share shifting based on the pricing, and we see that and the lack of involvement that we have with the manufacturers is making it more challenging for us.”
GreatAmerica has some good OEM relationships and expect to see them try to play in that OEM market a little more in 2013 than they have in the past. “Primarily, we’re targeting and trying to build a relationship with Konica Minolta and Sharp,” says Fisher. “There are a lot of questions going around about what’s happening with Sharp, but we’re continuing down that path and we’ll see where that goes. Overall, we see a lot of opportunities, but what might be a challenge for some of the other companies is when we go back and talk about document management and managed network services, not all of the leasing companies have an appetite to finance software or IT equipment and that’s one thing we’ve gotten real comfortable with in the last few years. That’s an opportunity for us.”
Fisher also sees a lot of opportunity on the aforementioned managed network side of the business in terms of helping her customers be successful. “We have a good platform, a good grounding, and in the next year we’re going to focus on improving our pool of candidates and making sure that we’re entertaining that right profile of a dealer. There are certain characteristics of a dealership that we’re looking for and making sure we’re honing in on that and building that pool in a more proactive way.”
