Throughout the month of January we’re presenting updates from the players in the document imaging industry who responded to our request to share their plans for 2016. It’s the perfect complement to last month’s highlights of the year and serves to set the stage for the 2016.
The final part of our January series has insight into 2016 from Richo, Sharp, and Pinnacle Sales. Read below to see how the new year looks to play out for the document imaging industry.
“In 2016 we intend to continue our practice of working side-by-side with our dealer community to ultimately help them become and remain successful in their markets. As their partner, we will take a good, long look at their business and collaborate with them to help best determine the hardware, software, support services and staff training they will need to expand into the industries, including production print and IT services, that will help their businesses ultimately thrive.
“Ricoh will continue to foster relationships based on collaboration and trust with our dealers in 2016. One example of how we will help further our dealers successes is to guide those who have not yet dipped a toe into production print by adding these capabilities to their portfolio. In an industry where overall volume is decreasing, it provides an entry into a space where volumes can be increased. To make that leap though, they need a trusted partner to provide the full array of technology and services to their customers. That is where Ricoh comes in. Each year we further our goal towards being a services-oriented company that provides not just equipment, but the services and support our customers and dealers need to expand business and make their customers happy.” Jim Coriddi, Vice President, Dealer Division, Ricoh Americas Corporation
“Coming out of our successful National Dealer Meeting in San Antonio, TX., one of Sharp’s primary goals for 2016 is to help our dealers expand their business with 13 new models! In addition to the new hardware offerings, Sharp will launch a host of new software offerings and new 3rd Party products from organizations such as Tech Data, Fujitsu and Clover Technologies, to our dealer community. As announced at our National Dealer Meeting, one of the biggest opportunities for dealers in 2016 will be to adopt a bundled software/hardware model that integrates into the existing infrastructure of their customers by leveraging these new partnerships. In order to make this change, our dealers will need to alter their approach from one that focuses on ‘adding hardware to a network,’ to one that focuses on workflow and solutions becoming ‘part of an existing network.’ It’s shaping up to be an exciting year for Sharp and its Dealer Network!” Sharp
“What’s new for Pinnacle Sales in 2016 is ‘that the old is forever new’. Since our inception in October of 2009, our business model has been and still remains 100 percent drop-shipping of products, whether to the dealer or their end-user customer. We truly are experts and an industry leader at this process.
“It gives Pinnacle the leading edge on price, quality, fulfillment, and delivery which is backed up with the best service and customer support in the industry. With direct access to dozens of top manufacturers and importers, we can supply every product every dealer needs whether it’s remanufactured or OEM.
“Quite simply, we’ve collapsed the supply distribution chain to its most fundamental and basic principle – getting product to where it needs to be, on time, every time, at the lowest cost possible.
“To make the process simple and more efficient, we have developed and built a software pipeline that integrates our ERP System with e-Automate that has completely automated the entire order processing cycle. We capture the PO from e-Automate, push tracking back in, create receivers and vouchers, and then close out the invoices. We also created a price validation program to flag any price discrepancies.
“All the processes are unattended and at no cost to the dealer.” Jim Loparich, Pinnacle Sales, Inc
“[Look for us to increase] our distribution model, add more sales people, seek out new opportunities, and leverage our engineering expertise to be first to market and to help companies grow.” Jamie Luety, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, RPT Toner
“The arrival of 2016 will bring with it a time of great celebration for the Business Technology Association. It will mark the 90th anniversary of the association’s founding back in 1926. On Jan. 22 and 23 of that year, a group of typewriter dealers met in Kansas City, Missouri, to form the association, then know as the National Association of Typewriter Dealers. A written history of the association reveals that the initial purpose of the new association was to ‘acquaint dealers with more professional business practices, and to urge them to use salesmanship, instead of price cutting, to sell their services and products.’ While the scope of the efforts of what is now BTA is much broader than it was in 1926, based on our foundation of dealers helping dealers the essence of the initial purpose for the association’s creation endures to this day. Join BTA on June 10 in Kansas City at the historic Union Station as we celebrate our 90th anniversary.” Brent Hoskins, Executive Director, Business Technology Association
“EverBank Commercial Finance, Inc. will continue to expand the Office Technology Platform by releasing new product offerings to the market. These products will align with the ever-evolving industry by integrating network services as well as other IT offerings. These additions to our extensive product mix will offer a seamless suite of products to our manufacturer and dealer customers. We will continue our approach to offer innovative market-relevant products to help our dealers and manufacturers grow and take market share. This market/partner alignment strategy has and will continue to drive EverBank Commercial Finance’s unprecedented growth. EverBank Commercial Finance, Inc. is a subsidiary of EverBank and is not itself a bank or a member of the FDIC.” Fred Carollo, Everbank Commercial Finance, Inc.
“The main industry theme I foresee in the coming year will be convergence, particularly in terms of the continued alignment of print and capture, as well as the improved communication between devices like multifunction printers and mobile devices. As the market becomes increasingly software-driven, end-users are demanding a unified experience that enables them to gain control of their many workflows. At Nuance, we will remain dedicated to providing our dealers with the document capture and print management solutions that their customers need to be more productive, secure, and cost-efficient throughout the New Year.” Chris Strammiello, Vice President of Global Alliances & Strategic Marketing, Nuance Communications
“Supplies Wholesalers is proud to have become the largest toner cartridge importer in America and we will continue to build on our success in 2016. We now have over one million cartridges in stock and will launch our fourth Distribution Center located in the Midwest to provide overnight ground delivery throughout the Midwestern states. Once this fourth DC is launched dealers will benefit from our overnight Ground delivery to over 50 percent of the U.S. population and two-day ground to 95 percent! We will continue to expand our product lines including a focus on compatible printer parts and copier toners. Bob Willmes, President, Supplies Wholesalers
“2016 promises to be another good year for Toshiba. We plan on refreshing our award-winning e-STUDIO™ multifunction products with new versions encompassing multiple speed segments while introducing new solutions and thermal barcode printers to address the nuanced content management needs of our customers. We are also excited about upcoming improvements to our Ellumina™ digital signage line to help advance the diverse objectives of our dealer clients across such varied vertical markets as sports and entertainment to retail and education. Moreover, our team will continue to provide the training and support necessary – be it producing training videos, online seminars or even in-person classes – to properly support our dealers’ sales and marketing efforts.” Bill Melo, Chief Marketing Executive, Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc.
“In 2016, Canon U.S.A. expects strong growth in Enterprise products, services and solutions as well as MDS- and Fleet-focused engagements. As enterprise trends such as BYOD and IoT increasingly pick up steam and transform the business landscape, Canon U.S.A. will continue focusing its efforts on a one-stop shop approach to provide a holistic solutions platform as well as mobile and cloud based solution integrations that customers and channel partners desire. In addition, the company will continue pursuing ways to provide smart personalization for products, enhance its office product and solutions lineup and build on its success and momentum in the color MFP space.” Canon U.S.A.
“This will be an exciting year for us as we look forward to aggressive expansion and growth as we service the office equipment industry. We will continue to strengthen our product offering and make adjustments to better serve our dealer community as the pace of change continues to increase. We have listened, learned and changed to meet the many opportunities ahead in 2016.”Rob Parker, Senior Vice President, Wells Fargo Equipment Finance
“In 2016, Katun is looking forward to introducing more of our customers to KDFM – our portfolio of MPS offerings. KDFM includes the MPS Profit Calculator for analyzing devices and submitting profitable MPS bids; Automated Toner Fulfillment, which ensures automatic just-in-time toner delivery; and Accelerator and Premier, our comprehensive MPS programs provided via our partnership with Print Audit.” Katun Corp.
“Lexmark will continue to develop mid-market ECM and BPM offerings that address both specific vertical market needs as well as growing horizontal market applications, such as accounts payable. Our goal is to provide the best combination of hardware and software solutions that enable the independent dealer to grow their business with the Lexmark brand.” Phil Boatman, Business Alliance Manager, Lexmark International
“Copier Careers looks forward to assisting our rapidly growing Copier Channel Clients in continuing to build and expand the Channel. We will be further educating our recruiting staff to the new solutions and specialties that this industry has embraced and is now offering to its clients so that we can bring value to our clients and help them evolve whether it’s their sales, technical, management or geographic reach. We will continue to mature our proprietary database and also increase the number of participants in our 4 annual salary surveys.” Paul Schwartz, President, Copier Careers
“With great anticipation, Square 9 looks towards 2016 and the release of several new products to further compliment their rapidly expanding ECM platform. At the front end of the 2016 development cycle will be GlobalCapture, a web based platform that brings together the capture of a broad spectrum of business information including MFP scanned records, digital documents and native email, allowing high value information to easily be extracted and repurposed. GlobalCapture, like all of Square 9’s products, scales easily from high volume enterprises to small business applications and is expected to debut in May of 2016.
“In addition, Square 9 will be releasing GlobalMetrics, a new web based reporting engine that will be introduced as an extension of the GlobalAction platform to provide businesses an in depth view of not only their business processes but also the data they contain. With the release of GlobalMetrics, Square 9 will complete a strategic round of development which brings all aspects of their product suite to the cloud including Capture, ECM, BPM, Web Forms Management and Process Reporting.” Square 9 Softworks
“We are looking forward to launching a number of new partners and solutions on our LINK platform in 2016 and really seeing our ‘get connected’ mantra come to fruition.” Elise McFarlane, Global Marketing Manager, PrintFleet
“On the ink and toner side we have a few projects in the works, both for the Ink for Dummies line and our private label business that we’ve been cultivating and we’re excited about that. As far as our 3D project, we’re just in our infancy and [expect to] grow. We are doing a big push at CES. We have a great booth location in the 3D printing section. We feel with CES we’ll be able to bring on more dealers. 2016 should be a year that helps define who Green Project is. We’re almost to our ten-year anniversary and 2016 will be a big year for us.” Joseph Wu, President, The Green Project, Inc./GP3D
“Our plans for 2016 include focusing on themes and areas of success from 2015, which was a highly successful year for our Solutions group. There will be continued emphasis on offering comprehensive solutions in the imaging space including expansion in equipment sales of both A4 and A3 product lines, growth within MPS and expansion of services — printer installation, staging and configuration, and local device management. Our goal is to provide a turn-key solution for equipment sourcing, installation, set-up and the overall management of print environments, all with the objective of helping our partners enhance their value-proposition and profitability. Our business development team will be aligned by channel and will be tasked with helping our partners understand how our product and services portfolio can be integrated into their business to create a compelling advantage within the marketplace. Lastly, we’ll realigned some internal resources to further support what we believe to be the best possible customer service and delivery experience in the industry. That belief is based not only on logistics metrics by which we live and breathe, but more importantly on the feedback we get from our customers. Our ultimate goal is to deliver of the best possible customer experience for both our partners and their customers.” David Concors, Vice President of Sales, Supplies Network
“If 2015 wasn’t action packed enough ODC has great plans for 2016. We are looking at adding further functionality to the floor plans inside Central V4 which will include refined device management and user workflow with the help of ROI Print Manger. Lastly our mapping capabilities will continue to evolve with the launch of something we are calling . look for an announcement mid second quarter for more details.” Mike Lamothe, President, Office Document Consulting
“IBPI will continue in 2016 to add new members and new vendor programs that provide our membership with great savings. In addition, we expect even bigger and better results at our 2016 Membership and Regional Meeting in New Orleans as IBPI conducts our second joint event with BTA Southeast—to provide two beneficial events back-to-back. Our member dealers and vendors enjoy the economical ease of the meeting—dealers can reduce travel and costs, and increase effectiveness, while the vendors can meet with a large base of their current customers, and see many prospective clients!” Randy Horshok, Executive Director, IBPI
“In 2016 Digitek will launch a sales leader coaching series for resellers, IT VAR’s, copier dealers and office products dealers who want to master proven strategies in solution selling. We will continue our monthly Thought Leadership Webinar series, which showcases industry experts who share their insights on being successful in a rapidly changing market place. We will also focus on helping customers to leverage digital marketing for business growth by providing expert content marketing, social media and website building services for the purpose of ongoing targeted lead generation. Digitek customers will also benefit from our new Digitek Advantage customer program, which awards points for purchases of eligible supplies and hardware that can be redeemed for cash, merchandise and gift cards. Register at www.digitekadvantage.com.” Jennifer Saunders, Marketing Director, Digitek
“This year we’re expecting continued growth. We’re most excited about the prospect of releasing our technology—the Releaf API—for license to third-party platforms which market and transact enormous volumes of paper-based items.” Jordan Darragh, Founder & CEO, printreleaf
“Muratec is focused on becoming a key provider of digital short-run label printing solutions to the BTA channel in 2016. Our program is completely built around the independent dealer sales model and Muratec has invested in the support structure necessary to enable our dealers to successfully prospect, sell, finance, train and support these unique solutions.” Lou Stricklin, Dealer Marketing & Sales Support, Muratec America, Inc.
“In 2016 we’ll continue to help our clients integrate digital prospecting and online marketing to grow their businesses. LinkedIn coaching led by Larry Levine will be a core part of this process. Our clients will also benefit from our enhanced web development capabilities as we shift dealer websites to become more helpful information portals that support the sales process.” Darrell Amy, Chief Innovation Officer, Dealer Marketing
“Looking forward to 2016 we will continue to innovate and to wrap our world class products and technologies around leading edge services that allow dealers to evolve their business models. We are looking at utilizing our vast data sets to innovate in the realm of cost per seat billing models and continuing to use data and technology and the internet of things to morph MPS and service models to become increasingly proactive and predictive versus reactive. Dealers can also expect positive changes in terms of how we go to market with the various divisions comprising the Clover Imaging Group. Ultimately, we will deliver innovation, quality, and game changing solutions to our customers in a more seamless fashion than ever before in 2016.” Luke Goldberg, Global SVP Sales and Marketing, Clover Imaging Group
“We expect to stay on a growth rate of more than 25 percent in 2016. Enterprise Content Management is evolving into a mainstream category for companies of all sizes when looking for higher efficiencies and competitiveness. We continue to serve this market with a choice of cloud-based, on-premise, or even hybrid solutions. From a feature standpoint, our focus will be around mobile, workflow, and our Advanced Capturing service, Intelligent Indexing.” Thomas Schneck, President, DocuWare Corp.
“Dealers and customers [will] harness the power of data. Dealers will start to grow their footprint by leveraging data from Innovolt and other connected devices to win more business with their customers, including business in non-office equipment segments.” Amy Hoang, marketing manager, Innovolt
“In 2016 we will be honing in on our revised partner value proposition: Expand into new sources of profitable recurring revenue by connecting Xerox technologies and services with your unique capabilities, so you can innovate to deliver solutions that help SMBs work better. ‘Innovate to Grow’ is the first instance of this promise. You will [also] see more proof points to support this promise.” John Corley, President, Channel Partner Operations, Xerox Technology
“Epson continues its innovation in 2016 as we expand deployment of WorkForce Pro Replacement Ink Pack Printers and MFPs into enterprise customers and vertical markets. We are dedicated to drive more technological innovation in our printing solutions to penetrate and disrupt the color laser market.” Epson America, Inc.
