Deb Dellaposta,
Doing Better Business
As we wrap up April’s look at the value of peer groups, one of the common refrains uttered by all of our panelists is resisting the urge to implement too many ideas brought back from meetings all at once. Easier said than done. Many dealers remark that they’ve emerged from peer group meetings with a half-dozen or more ideas proffered by fellow members. Some are simple to implement—perhaps a small tweak to a workflow—while others are a bit more involved in their execution.
That’s where you, as an owner, need to be more judicious in your choices. If you bring back five workable implementations from each gathering, and your group meets three times a year…your staff might not end up sharing your enthusiasm. Ah, but CEO knows best.
A veteran of the Select Dealer Group, Deb Dellaposta—president and CEO of Doing Better Business in Altoona, Pennsylvania—recalls the value of creating a corporate culture as being particularly beneficial in the early days. While she emerges from each meeting with workable solutions, the culture piece was truly a watershed moment.
“That came out of a meeting where we were talking about another dealer using different tools that people use to bring that focus into their organization, have everybody accountable and organizationally aligned,” she said. “There was a seminar on that and we jumped on it. It made a huge difference in our company.”
Starting Points
Jerry Blaine,
LDI Color ToolBox
For Jerry Blaine, founder, president and CEO of LDI Color ToolBox in New York City, the Copier Dealers Association (CDA) provided a sound foundation for the company’s entry into managed print and managed network services. “Learning about it at CDA dramatically accelerated our entry into both of these areas,” he said. “We’ve been in MNS for five years—kind of late compared to others—and managed print for about 10 years.”
He also credits the dealer panels that are assembled after the benchmarking statistics are collected and analyzed. “The nature of the business has changed in relation to the technologies that are available,” he said. “The various technologies that are employed by companies in the CDA—this is where you learn about them and that’s how you understand how it helps you manage the business. It can help drive significant improvements as a result.”
Bob Doucette, president of Smart Technologies in Daytona Beach, Florida, and president-elect of the PRO Dealer Group, has sat on a few panels himself to provide insight as to best practices. Based on a few elements the dealer has devised with its financials, Doucette has been able to help dealers with best practices for using e-automate, ECi’s ERP solution.
On the takeaway side, Doucette points to one of the simplest, yet extremely clever, ideas for categorizing equipment being shipped to and from the warehouse. On a visit to a dealership, he noted that one company used a colored plastic wrap for its machines based on what is its intended purpose. Lease returns were wrapped in yellow, machines ready to go were wrapped in green, etc. Color coding the plastic wrap provides a visceral indication of what is on your warehouse floor.
“It’s just one of those little things,” he said. “You walk into an organization and have an open door to ask questions about how they’re doing things. You wouldn’t even think to ask a question about that because there are so many bigger things that need to be asked.”
Evolving Needs
Dean Swenson,
The Swenson Group
For a company such as The Swenson Group (TSG) of Livermore, California, the scope and value of the SDG have changed significantly since President and CEO Dean Swenson first joined. Twelve years ago, Swenson’s needs were centered on making the transition from being a Xerox agent to a full-fledged independent dealer and garnering as much information as possible to help facilitate that transformation.
In those early days, TSG relied on OMD for its business automation requirements, which was the de facto standard, but according to Swenson, it was not an ideal fit for a company just starting out. A few employees developed a deep knowledge of the solution, but it was not widely grasped.
SDG members pointed Swenson toward the more user-friendly e-automate.
“One of the members said, ‘What is a company of your size doing using OMD?’ That was one of many things we got good counsel on,” Swenson said. “When we adopted e-automate, it was a much more open system that was easier to use, and we’d never be dependent or potentially held hostage by one person in the company who knows everything about it,” Swenson said. “We abandoned OMD, which was a tough pill to swallow financially, to go to e-automate 10-plus years ago. Since then, we use almost every function and feature of e-automate. It’s really been fortunate for a company of our size. We have multiple people comfortable with the system, and when we bring in new people, we can train them easily.
“I couldn’t get the reporting and information I wanted out of OMD,” he added. “When I got the report, it was 40 pages long. And if the person we had running it decided to walk out the door, we’d be in big trouble. Fortunately, we hadn’t used (OMD) for many years. Otherwise, it could’ve been more painful to make the switch.”
Developing Ideas
Chip Miceli
Pulse Technology
Chip Miceli, president and co-owner of Pulse Technology in Des Plaines, Illinois, has the benefit of being involved in a number of peer and user groups. One of the true deans of the office technology space, Miceli is always on the hunt for new and better ways of doing things.
“I have a friend in Mexico who is doing security cameras and video surveillance-type stuff,” Miceli said. “There’s a group he partnered with and we’re meeting with them to see if we can bring it to Illinois. When someone comes up with a cool idea, right away I reach out to dealers who can benefit from it.
“We were in the cloud business for a while, but we didn’t like the way it was going. One of my peers turned me onto Datto, and boy did it take off from there.”
