The various players in the document imaging industry continue to share their highlights of the year, allowing readers to get a better handle on what made the many segments that make up the document imaging industry rock in 2014. This week we present another 12.
“2014 was an important year for GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation in helping dealers evolve their businesses, as we launched five Service Leadership GreatAmerica Managed IT (S-L GAMIT) peer groups. Comprised of many of the most respected dealers in the nation, these peer groups are partially subsidized by GreatAmerica and are the only Managed IT-focused peer groups in the office imaging industry. “What we found in 2013 and years prior, was that scaling a Managed IT Services business is exciting, yet full of challenges. We formed the S-L GAMIT Groups in conjunction with Paul Dippell and his team at Service Leadership to help office equipment Dealers overcome challenges more rapidly and profitably—with the unmatched Managed IT expertise of Service Leadership.” Jennie Fisher, SVP and General Manager, Office Equipment Group, GreatAmercia Financial Services
“2014 has been a momentous year for Square 9, in terms of expansion and product development. Yet our most notable highlight of the year was the release of GlobalSync, a hybrid cloud document management solution. Coupled with Amazon’s S3 cloud storage platform, GlobalSync cloud-enables our flagship product, SmartSearch Document Management, by combining the power of an on premise application with the flexibility of cloud-based document storage. We’ve also enhanced collaborative efforts through a tight knit Dropbox integration in order to fully deliver scalable and durable cloud services to the Square 9 community.” Scott Worrell, Square 9
“The launch of the Impression Solutions online dealer portal, greatly accelerated the use of many of the tools and value adds offered by ISI and was the highlight of the year.” Ray Looney, Vice President of Sales, Impression Solutions
“Innovolt surpassed the quarter of a million control point deployed this year. That means customers have deployed over 250,000 Innovolt devices and are protecting billions of dollars worth of equipment with Innovolt’s service.” Brady Murray, Innovolt
“It’s a lot of little things. Besides disruptive action by one OEM, we’ve overcome that and are still on pace to hit our business agenda. They’ve kind of done us a favor and helped us diversify our business. We’re probably unique in that. We weathered the storm and are coming out okay.” Monte White, Supplies Network
“In an ever-changing market, Clover continues to diversify its offering. Clover continues to invest in the development of products to supplement our core business of ink and toner. Our investments in other product categories such as postage meter supplies and printer parts, and in our growing array of MPS solutions, continue to provide our customers with opportunities to diversify their portfolios and increase share of their customers’ wallets. Diversification into similar products allows Clover, and our customers, to proactively manage changing trends in the marketplace. By leveraging our investments in new technologies and product categories, resellers can ensure that they will remain at the cutting edge of industry trends.” Eric Martin, Clover Technology
“The year 2014 marked a turning point for many office technology dealers in terms of what they see as their greatest source of opportunity going forward. This month (December 2014), the Business Technology Association asked dealers two questions via an email survey: (1) In 2015, what do you believe will be the area of greatest opportunity for office technology dealers? (2) What do you believe the best strategies for success in pursuing those opportunities? We received responses from 48 dealers, all of which will appear in the January issue of BTA’s Office Technology magazine. The majority of the respondents see managed IT services as their greatest opportunity in the new year. That is quite a contrast to the industry’s past views in terms of the greatest opportunity for dealers. At some point, the profile of the typical office technology dealership is going to be markedly different than it is today. It appears likely that managed IT services will become a key component of the dealer channel’s services-led approach.” Brent Hoskins, Executive Director, Business Technology Association
“Integrating our ERP system to e-Automate with regard to Pinnacle dealer invoices. It saves dealers hours daily closing out sales orders, tracking, and customer invoicing, especially for drop-shipping. This is in addition to our front-end integrated PO capture from dealers. We have automated and integrated the entire loop on the ordering process.” Jim Loparich, Pinnacle Sales
“Print Audit’s highlight of the year is releasing three new products: Facilities Manager V3 as well as Lexmark and Kyocera Embedded.” West McDonald, VP of Business Development, Print Audit
“Significant improvement in quality and our new product development process to ensure a robust and repeatable product coming from NCC.” James Meyers, National Copy Cartridge
“We’ve seen a greater interest in the MPSA from OEMs. This may reflect a recommitment to managed print services and recognition of the fact that pure MPS drives hardware placements. Additionally, the association has delivered some of the best white papers in the industry. Our Standards committee introduced the “MPSA MPS Framework” and Education Committee presented, “MPS Market Segment – Enterprise” findings and study. These are two prime examples of pure content generated by managed print services practitioners, for MPS practitioners. Void of influence or outside agendas. To me, this is the great power of your MPSA and I look forward to even more in 2015.” Greg Walters, President, MPSA
“Compass Sales Solutions, Your Complete Sales ERP, had an amazing 2014 by adding over 35 percent in dealer partners, over 50 percent year over year growth in license count and revenues, added five full time employees, purchased a new office to accommodate this amazing growth, introduced additional product lines and modules such as ezMPS to provide additional resources and tools to the dealer community. Additionally we redesigned our website and added several new features, including Live Chat support.” Jim McMeel, VP of Sales, Compass Sales Solutions
