Ever wonder what happens when executives from across the office imaging industry spend nearly four days together? Look no further than Scottsdale, Arizona and the Executive Connection Summit to find out.
If you’re the least bit serious about what’s going on in the office imaging industry and about understanding the trends, new technologies, and issues and how they will impact your business, this event should be on your 2015 calendar whether you’re a dealer, OEM, or services or solutions provider.
This year’s Summit featured 15 speakers plus 13 additional speakers in panel discussions as well as the host and creator of the event, Mike Stramaglio, president of MWAi, who did a superb job of tying all the presentations together. As he noted in his opening comments the logic here is to be engaged and that’s exactly what went down.
We could write a book about this year’s event, but we don’t have the space, so we’re going to share a portion of our highlights and take homes from the two days of presentations:
As I pointed out in my “Between the Lines” column this week, the take home from Senior Vice President, SAP Global Indirect Channels’ Kevin Gilroy’s presentation on “SMEs at the Technology Inflection Point: Building a Next Generation Business,” was that the office imaging industry is at an inflection point brought on by the collision between the traditional print and IT industries. The inflection point centers around various dynamics, including the cloud crashing in with the dynamics of Big Data, mobility, social, and equally important, the emergence of millennials that are either running small businesses or influencing small businesses.
“If we don’t understand the dynamics of millennials combined with the dynamics of these technologies, then you’re on the wrong side of that inflection point,” Gilroy emphasized.
Stramaglio, after acknowledging the partnership between SAP and MWA Intelligence, and the emergence of a new and improved ERP system to serve as the backbone and infrastructure of the industry, acknowledged that Gilroy’s inflection point comments were spot on. “We have generational change, ERP change, partner change, we have a very informed end user, the millennials, but it is clearly happening.”
I don’t think anyone needed to go to Scottsdale to discover that Samsung is already making a big impact on the channel. Tod Pike, senior vice president, Samsung Electronics America, focused on “The Dealer’s Role in the Connected Enterprise” with an emphasis on where Samsung fits into all that.
Pike shared statistics that give Samsung plenty of credibility in the channel, including being the number two A4 printer manufacturer in the world with a 15.9 percent market share and having the seventh most valuable brand in the world. Samsung is currently a $217 billion company and looking to grow that to $400 billion by 2020. Narrowing the focus down to the Americas, Pike noted the Americas offers the largest revenue opportunity in the world. Samsung’s leadership in North America has lofty expectations over the years to come, particularly in B2B. “If we’re going to make these growth expectations we need to invest in and realize growth associated with the enterprise,” acknowledged Pike.
One of his key points, and one that might also be considered an inflection point, is the consumerization of IT. What that means from a Samsung perspective is that 10, 15 years ago we learned about technology in the office. “Now, it’s 180 degree difference,” opined Pike. “Today, the consumerization of IT is people in their family room with their tablet, posting photos on their TV. They’re moving information around, printing wirelessly in their home, and they’re sharing information with one another on multiple screens. Then they go to the office and they’re frustrated because they can’t do that because the enterprise and IT department locked it down and they’re not affording their employees the opportunity to have the same family room experience.”
Although Samsung is not advocating the same family room experience in the office, Pike emphasized that security is a big part of why this hasn’t been achieved yet along with the fact that a lot of different applications need to drive that mobile worker and the ability to share information. “That’s where we spend our energy and how we can make that experience to a mobile worker, particularly as you look at the millennials and what their expectations are of the work environment. If you think of a 25-year old with certain skills that goes into an office and is not able to realize the same type of experience that they have at home, they’re going to work somewhere else. Your customers are challenged by the fact that in order to recruit and retain these millennial workers, and it’s only going to get worse over time, they have to view the consumerization of IT in a new and exciting way.”
The presentation by Joseph Bradley, Managing Director, IoE, Cisco on “Building on IoT (Internet of Things) to Create New Revenue Resources” was arguably the most entertaining of the conference and the most thought provoking. Let’s look at some of the more interesting sound bites from Bradley’s presentation.
When talking about the Top 10 Implications of Digital Disruption, he emphasized how every company is a technology company. As an example he reported that 45 percent of Dominoes Pizza’s revenue comes from their application. “Real time information is important,” emphasized Bradley. “Value is not in the platform. A platform engages you to create new revenue opportunities and new values at very little cost.”
In an industry that thrives on vertical markets, Bradley observed, “The majority doesn’t rule. It’s not about a market of millions it’s about millions of markets.”
Referring to the book Stall Points: Most Companies Stop Growing Yours Doesn’t Have To by Bever van Derek, Bradley described how the author asked 50 CEOs of companies that failed to identify the one thing that caused their business to fail. The consensus: “It’s not what we didn’t know, but what we believed was true that caused us to fail.”
Bradley then asked the audience if they had a goal for failure. “You should. If you don’t have a goal for failure then you’re not trying hard enough.”
Anyone in the office imaging industry and points beyond is overwhelmed with the amount of data available to us now. What’s important about this data, however, is how one interprets it. “Insight is the new currency of the 21st century,” said Bradley. “Insight causes me to act. Context is king. Not content. I want to understand what you’re doing, when you’re doing, and the moment you’re doing it.”
Backtracking to value, Bradley noted, “As business professionals we want to answer where value is. Value is found in the connection itself, and it’s in four elements, people, process, data, and things.”
All of these are part of IoT (Internet of Things). “IoT is a great thing, you got to have it,” opined Bradley. “It’s an asset that contributes to a process that’s currently not connected today.”
He emphasized the need to look at processes that aren’t currently connected that can be connected today or in the near future. That’s what spurs the development of applications, which led Bradley to offer more words of wisdom regarding app development. “If it doesn’t work on mobile, it doesn’t work.”
In closing Bradley focused on digital disruption and IoE. “IoE is here today and it’s changing your customers. The implications of digital disruption are impacting the imaging business. There’s a lot of competitors you might not even think about today.”
He asked the audience to think about what they’d do to disrupt their business. “If you want to disrupt yourself, how would you do it? What would it take to put you out of business? Why wouldn’t you spend two or three days thinking about it? You’d be surprised at what you’ll find. That’s going to give you the road map of what’s happening and makes it personal too. Think about disruption. That’s what’s coming down the pike. As more and more data is coming down the pike everybody is thinking about this. What you are going to do is going to become more valuable than what you actually do.”
Finally, he laid out the keys to success in this IoE world, “Innovate outside your organization; apps are the oxygen of your business and Big Data is absolutely nothing without big judgment. Think about the outcome. To create value in the IoE world, it’s about people, it’s about process, it’s about data, and it’s about things.”
Paul Dippell, CEO, Service Leadership, on I doubt if Paul Dippell, CEO, Service Leadership, surprised anyone when he started his presentation “Success Traits of Office Equipment Companies with Top Managed IT Results” by telling the audience that the bad news is that Managed IT is a hard business model for a copier dealer, but the good news is it’s hard for everyone. “It’s hard for other copier dealers to be good at Managed IT, and most of all it’s hard for the customer to be good at running their Managed IT.”
He noted that just because the customer has an IT person, or 10, 50, 500, 1,000 or 5,000 IT people, doesn’t mean they know how to run IT well. “It doesn’t mean it’s running well, it doesn’t mean it’s on budget, it doesn’t mean it’s on time, it doesn’t mean the users are happy… if the customer has figured this out and they have the money to pay a fair price, then it’s an opportunity for you.”
The criteria he would look for in prospecting for a customer are those customers where IT is mission critical to them, they know IT is mission critical, they realize they want to delegate IT and don’t want to be in the business anymore, and they have the money to pay a fair price for it. “If you stack up those criteria, it ends up being about 20 percent of the customers you have under contract today,” estimated Dippell.
He added that a 25-user account sold properly is a $70,000 a year client.
However, the one insight that most dealers who are either selling IT or thinking about selling IT should consider is to avoid creating a menu of different plans of Managed IT to sell to their customers. Instead, focus on one because if there are multiple plans, sales reps won’t pitch the most expensive plan, or ‘Gold Pitch’ as he described it, and never get good at it and never sell it.
Among the highlights from day two was “Big Data, MICAS, and FORZA – a Great 1, 2, 3, Punch,” by Doug Albregts, President, Sharp, “a Case Study in Technology United Innovation: Intel and IntelliCloud – The Program IS the Product” by Matthew Chretien, President, Intellinetics as well as the Dealer Panel, “Tee’d Up or T’d Off,” which focused on new opportunities within the print imaging industry and the barriers inside and outside of print that might pose a challenge. Panel participants Bill McLaughlin, CTO, Atlantic, Tomorrow’s Office; Jeff Boate, President Perry proTech, Gary Rainsberger, President, CBI, and Chip Miceli, President, DPOE did an excellent job of sharing their insights on the topic.
Most Wednesday presentations were only 30 minutes long, enabling speakers from MWAi, Digitek, Greenhills Software, ESP, LMI, and GreatAmerica to hone in on the most relevant content. Also noteworthy was a panel discussion featuring Airwolf 3D, EFI, In-Map, N’Ware, moderated by Stramaglio on vertical and new business opportunities inside and outside of the print imaging industry.
Even though the event was a terrific way to be engaged as Stramaglio noted in his opening remarks, it was much more than that. It provided every attendee with food for thought as to how they might tweak their business plans or what they can do now to ensure they remain relevant and in a position to take advantage of the wave of changes and innovations that are transforming the imaging industry.
