Richard Elixman,
Business Systems Consulting
The list of professionals who have positively impacted their businesses and clients in the office technology world is tremendous, as the 2017 ENX Magazine Difference Makers list will attest. But there’s something to be said for those individuals who invest their time and resources into improving the condition of people living thousands of miles away, most of whom they have never met.
Dick Elixman resides on both lists.
Elixman has a passion for the Rotary Club and Rotary International. During the past 20 years, he has worked with other Rotarians on projects to stimulate economic development initiatives in third world countries, including business co-ops for women. And the salutary impact on these strangers’ lives is immense and long-lasting.
“This work has provided education for their children while teaching the basics of building and operating a business to raise them up in their own life and community,” Elixman said.
Improving the lives of others has become a life’s work for Elixman. When he joined Litton Business Systems in 1980, Elixman had planned to just stick around long enough to build his sales skills while obtaining an advanced accounting degree. And while he left that company to start his own business in 1991, Elixman found the office technology industry so compelling that, 38 years later, he is still making his mark as the president of Business Systems Consulting.
Elixman founded the company 10 years ago to help guide organizations in creating their strategic vision, providing dealers in the office automation industry with services including strategic financial planning, productivity analysis and employee mentoring to achieve operational excellence.
“It is the development of new processes that allow us to improve productivity and build healthy relations with staff and managers,” he said. “This change allows us to feed our financial projections while changing company core values to create a customer-centric culture within the organization. By creating a healthy culture and bottom line, the company can provide great value to the customers they serve while also providing their employees the opportunity to develop and grow.”
Elixman also spent seven years with Imagistics International, a copier and multifunction printer dealership (later acquired by Océ), and held the position of vice president of dealer acquisitions and integration. He had the good fortune to learn from Marc Breslawsky, who was chairman and CEO at Imagistics (formerly Pitney Bowes Office Systems).
“His wisdom and understanding of recurring revenue and improving productivity was truly valuable in forming the basis for cash creation when operating smaller dealerships,” Elixman noted. “Through this experience, we have developed a business model we use to grow cash and change the company’s capital growth strategies.”
The 2016 campaign proved to be fruitful for Elixman and Business Systems Consulting, with three clients eclipsing the million-dollar profit barrier. The goal moving forward remains constant: to facilitate changes in client business cultures and models to sustain them well beyond the terms of their current leadership.
“We’re always learning from what we’ve done by constantly improving processes, people and productivity,” he said. “We are never satisfied with just getting by.”
Away from the office, Elixman is a wine connoisseur. He also enjoys orchestrating fundraiser dinners that benefit the numerous Rotarian projects he supports.
