In our previous look at vertical-driven business, we examined the art of developing competencies within a given set of market spaces. This time around, we’re asking our panel to provide a glimpse of what the vertical market approach may look like going forward.
Erik Crane, CPI
For CPI Technologies of Springfield, MO, the future is already beginning to present itself. CPI President Erik Crane notes his firm is starting to see traction in the manufacturing sector, where they have taken down several deals based on reliability, ease of service and the ability to print from many different applications.
“Customers will have a finance application, an ERP, they’ll have autoCAD—all of these different types of applications and platforms they need to print from, and our ability to do that has won us a couple of deals there,” Crane said. “We’ve also won a couple with the finance sector and banks. Those are new ones on the horizon, and security is critical for them. Every single transaction and every interaction that anybody has on the PC, Mac, over the network, over the network or local wifi, is at risk of having bad things happen. That will be important going forward.”
Scott.Anderson, CORE
CORE Business Services of Medford, OR, the managed IT firm acquired by Kelley Imaging Systems, has a strong concentration within the health care vertical. Scott Anderson, president of CORE, notes the union with Kelley will help enable his organization to offer value that extends past IT services, such as a higher level of consulting with a client’s electronic health records or delivering workflow automation.
“Getting past that IT layer/security layer and really impacting their business from a consultancy standpoint would really accomplish what we’re looking to do as our team continues to build ou,” Anderson said. “Manufacturing is another vertical that we’re in, but not currently in a big way. So I would see us continue to grow out our manufacturing practice a little more. It’s a whole different vertical from health care, requiring a different skill set. It’s definitely a growth opportunity for us.”
Brad Yocum, Funcion4
Brad Yocum, market director for Function4 of Houston, is excited about the possibilities for the education and health care markets. “We’ve been fortunate to secure several good-sized accounts and are bringing different offerings that typical hardware suppliers are not offering in those spaces, which is opening a lot of doors for us,” he said. “In the medical market, Konica Minolta has a strong group of purchasing programs and products that help in that space. Sharp’s platform is definitely strong in the education market.”
Kelley Imaging Systems of Seattle is hard at work growing its vertical approach, according to Brian Woodman, vice president of sales. The dealer will be making investments in the government sector in order to have specialization around the various contracts and legalese inherent with that realm. Kelley Imaging also hired a top-level producer away from a national competitor in the AEC market, who is spearheading MPS at the enterprise level.
Brian Woodman, Kelley Imaging Systems
Health care is certainly a prime target, given the aforementioned combination with CORE Business Services strengthening its managed network services and Kelley’s ability to deliver at the local level, backed by more depth. “We now have a competency level in a lot wider area from top to bottom, which is great for all the different projects we can take on now that we hadn’t been able to do before,” Woodman said. “Our software side of the house is huge because it assists in the process improvement. It’s big when we start quantifying labor efficiency gains with clients.”
