This week we wrap up our series where industry leaders talk about their highlights from 2016 and their expectations for 2017. This week we hear from Vision Office Systems, Zygoquest Group, and Muratec.
Vision Office Systems
“As I look back on 2016, we had a lot of things happening that are going to set the stage for 2017 to be a great year for our company. 2016 showed the same trend in the headlines with acquisitions and owners selling their businesses. Every time someone sells their company in our market, we see an uptick in business with clients looking for a local technology source to partner with. We gained some great clients and started what appears to be great partnerships with these clients. We also had some product changes this year. We are no longer a Savin dealer and have focused ourselves on the Canon, Samsung, and Muratec MFP product lines. We feel we are aligning ourselves with the best possible partners to ensure our clients have the best technology available to them.
Jason Habbal, Vision Office Systems
“As we look forward to the new year we have a lot of excitement as 2017 will be our 20th year in business. We just held our 2017 strategy, planning, and goal setting meeting with all of our sales staff and had a lot of great feedback from each member of our team. We have traditionally been a hardware-centric company but our sales staff has committed to the necessary learning and training of the software products and solutions from our technology partners. As of now we have already set up multiple-day training sessions with all of our manufacturer support reps to better understand and be able to sell advanced mobile print solutions, cost control solutions, and archiving and retrieval solutions. This will ensure we are able to get deeper and wider into our accounts. We have already seen the advantages of pairing these solutions with the hardware in several cases. We have some other things on the horizon that we are rolling out that details will be released for in the coming weeks. We are looking forward to a successful year and a large amount of growth.” — Jason Habbal, VP of sales
Mike Dudek, Zygoquest Group
Zygoquest Group “Seeking to Unite”
“2016 was an excellent year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the office equipment industry. We observed and personally experienced a very active market with many deals consummated of all different sizes, shapes and structures. You can find the deals we consummated in 2016 on our website at www.zygoquest.com. There was an excellent supply of interested buyers for sellers which we represented in 2016. We have experienced a wide gap in the purchase price offers and other key terms and conditions from competing buyers for businesses we sold which makes a big difference in the value proposition for dealer owners who wish to sell. There are many interested buyers in just about every region in the United States, Canada and beyond if any owners desire to sell their business during 2017. We expect a significant amount of M&A deal activity to continue throughout 2017 and beyond.
“Rich Wisniewski and I also hit the ground running in 2016 in teaming up with Mitch Morgan and Chris Ryne of Growth Achievement Partners on Managed Services deals. We consummated a number of sell-side and buy-side MSP deals in 2016 and expect an active market in 2017 as this fragmented Managed Services industry continues to evolve and consolidate.” — Mike Dudek, owner
Jim D’Emidio, Muratec America
Muratec America, Inc.
“Muratec America had a great 2016. We added several new products to our portfolio, including seven new color A3 MFPs ranging from 22 ppm to 55 ppm. We also refreshed two A4 mono 37 ppm MFPs with features like scan-to-cloud, blank page detection and remote panel, which enables real-time control panel viewing from a PC or tablet. Despite these innovations, like many manufacturers, we’ve seen traditional MFP sales slow in recent years. To combat this trend, we started offering both managed network services and managed document services several years ago. With many dealers being slow to adapt, we quickly realized we had to find other adjacencies to drive revenue.
“In January 2016, Muratec introduced the first of several short run digital label systems, including the PLS-2112 and PLS-5150. The label industry is unlike copiers and printers in the sense that currently either commercial printers or label converters print more than 90 percent of all labels. Our new short-run digital label systems allow end users to produce and control their label production on-demand and in-house. We expect dealers to expand their business in 2017 by learning how to sell and support this new segment.
“Short run digital label systems are unique because not only will dealers sell the hardware, but also the media, supplies, accessories and a service contract. This is a quickly expanding new adjacent market to your existing copying and printing business that even follows the same business model as a traditional MFP or printer. Like Muratec, to survive in the future, dealers need to look at adjacencies to drive revenue and margin. Short-run color label printing is a great way to become “stickier” in your accounts.
“Finally, we’d like to invite the entire dealer community to Muratec Label University, an ITEX front-runner event, on April 18 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. We’ll have education, live demonstrations and even new product launches. Visit muratec.com/MuratecLabelUniversity to register. See you there.” — Jim D’Emidio, president
