Sam Errigo
As the office imaging industry evolves, more OEMs are placing less emphasis on hardware and more on solutions and services. That’s not much of a revelation for those involved in the industry, but it is still fascinating to watch the OEMs reposition themselves as more than just hardware providers. One OEM, Konica Minolta, continues to travel that path in a big way. That’s reflected in the company’s latest acquisition, announced Sept. 16, of Results Engineering, an enterprise content management (ECM) solution provider. The acquisition, according to a Konica Minolta press release, “supports and further expands the company’s ECM business practice’s growth strategy.”
“This strategic acquisition expands our ECM practice with the addition of the highly-skilled team of product development, solutions design and consulting professionals from Results Engineering,” says Sam Errigo, senior vice president, Business Intelligence Services, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. “We will continue to support Results Engineering’s custom solutions, including CourtBase for the courtroom environment and legacy ECM migration tools, while building on our already-solid portfolio of services and solutions with additional innovative workflow products that support our customers’ key organizational processes.”
As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Konica Minolta, Results Engineering will become part of Konica Minolta’s ECM business practice and will go to market under the Konica Minolta brand. Its main office in Westerville, OH, will continue to support central U.S. markets, as well as house the company’s management and administrative staff.
Results Engineering was established in 1993 and provides end-to-end ECM solutions, including consulting services, software, product development and solutions designed to help companies of all sizes reduce costs and improve efficiency. Konica Minolta’s commitment to the development of a national ECM practice, vertical market expertise, Managed IT Services, application development, and more than 120 branch office locations across the country are cited as reasons for the acquisition in the Konica Minolta news release.
Prior to the announcement, I spoke with Errigo who shared additional details about the acquisition.
Results Engineering was also attractive to Konica Minolta because it is a reseller of Hyland Software’s OnBase™ ECM program and two of its executives sit on the technology board of Hyland Software. “They’re exceptional technologists, they understand enterprise content management, specific workflow, particularly in the areas of healthcare, legal, and financial—three core verticals that line up perfectly with our initiatives,” notes Errigo. “Part of our core strategy is building out our service delivery model. Our approach is a little different from our competitors and our main focus is going to be on software integration and resources available to our dealer community and direct.”
He added that strengthening its ECM offerings will allow Konica Minolta to go both horizontally and deeper into its vertical markets. “This will give us a long-term competitive advantage,” said Errigo. “It will also give us not only a greater understanding of our customers, but also the ability in those vertical markets to cover both structured and unstructured data. We will be able to provide an all-encompassing workflow solution designed specifically for our customers.”
Besides Hyland’s OnBase™, Results Engineering builds custom workflows specifically for legal, healthcare, government and finance. “The vertical expertise coupled with a proven track record in delivering custom ECM workflow solutions was key in our selection of Result Engineering,” stated Errigo. “Not only do we expand our employee skill set with the addition of ECM experts, but we also gain the expertise necessary for the custom development work specific to the various verticals.”
Results Engineering is also strong in government, another growth area for Konica Minolta’s business. Errigo expects this will help the company and its dealers become competitive in bidding for state contracts.
From a dealer perspective, this acquisition is core to what Konica Minolta has been doing for its dealers under its Business Intelligence Services organization.
“We’re trying to provide dealers with expanded services and solutions,” explained Errigo. “Our goal is to resource our dealers with comprehensive services that may be out of their reach due to the cost of entry and the expense associated with cultivating a new business service. . The resources we’re acquiring are highly skilled and have an extensive knowledge base . This will allow our dealer community to leverage the investments we’re making to better serve their customers and drive new revenue streams.”
The integration between the two companies is already in progress, which isn’t all that surprising since the acquisition closed on Sept. 5. According to Errigo, both the sales and the software engineering structure are aligned. The focus now is on-boarding the employees and the integration of financial systems, which is approximately a 60-day process. After that comes integration into the Konica Minolta sales organization and to Konica Minolta’s customer base.
With the acquisition, Konica Minolta will now have three tiers of solutions for document management and ECM. Their entry-level document management and collaboration solution is File Assist, , for the mid market its Prism Software, and now the company is going enterprise with the inclusion of , Hyland Software’s OnBase™ ECM program.
For each of those products, Konica Minolta has built integrated connectors via their bEST program to enable workflow solutions directly from the control panel of their MFP product line. “Dealers now have the ability to differentiate their offering to customers through software integration across multiple DM and ECM solutions., Our comprehensive lineup of ECM and DM solutions provide expanded sales opportunities for our dealers” Errigo explains.
“This becomes an immediate opportunity for all of our dealers to go back to their customers to sell more services that integrate with customer’s workflow,” says Errigo.
This may just be the latest in a fury of Konica Minolta acquisitions in the past year. But wait, there’s more.
“Our plan is to acquire a minimum of two more ECM companies this year to round out our national strategy,” concludes Errigo.
