“You’re in the unstructured data business. You have been all your life.” This is how Ed McLaughlin opened his keynote address, “A Vision for the Future of the Industry,” at the Business Technology Association’s (BTA) Grand Slam event in Boston last week. McLaughlin was making a point that technology is changing the way dealers should think of the industry, and those who still see themselves only as sellers of hardware will be at a competitive disadvantage.
Ed McLaughlin
With more than 40 years in the information and imaging industries, McLaughlin was the right person to deliver that message. He is currently the vice-chairman of electronic asset protection vendor Innovolt and CEO of holding company Valderus. He is also the former president of Sharp Imaging & Information Company of America.
Unstructured data is any data that resides outside of a business’s core database, transaction, and reporting systems–for example, email messages, social media content, statements of work, presentations, scanned documents, or meeting notes. Until relatively recently, unstructured data was stored and managed separately, with hardcopy in file cabinets or storage boxes and digital files archived on storage media.
Information and document/content management software now have features that make it easier to integrate offline, unstructured data with core business systems and processes. McLaughlin presented a vision of where that trend is heading and the technologies that will drive it. In a nutshell, that future is of interconnected devices and more powerful analytics platforms to make sense of the vast data those devices generate.
There are an estimated 2 billion people connected to the internet using 15 billion connected devices. The data generated by these people and devices is estimated to be 9 zettabytes (a zettabyte equals 1 billion terabytes). Connected devices might include smartphones, tablets, cars, medical devices, or machinery. The increased connectedness and improving software to analyze and manage the data guarantees change. “What’s next?,” asked McLaughlin. “Everything.”
McLaughlin advised dealers who might want to leverage change to not do it alone. “You’ve got to partner with people [who have the right expertise]. Otherwise, you’ll never catch the train.”
Participants in McLaughlin’s roundtable discussion agreed and advised using caution when evaluating new opportunities. Kelly Moran, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Gordon Flesch Company said that it’s easy to be enthralled with the future, but he takes a guarded approach. “We won’t take on a new line until we see what happens in the market,” he said. “We can’t afford a slip-up. It’s gotta work.”
“A new adjacency area can take years to learn,” said Leo Bonetti, CEO of Flo-Tech. “[It takes time to gain] the trade knowledge–how to price right, cost after sale. You don’t know the culture of the adjacency.
Offering a new area can help with a dealer’s image even if it is not a huge success. Jerry Blaine, president and CEO of LDI Color ToolBox, said that his company made a large investment in 3D printing. While he has not seen big success in 3D yet, it has reflected positively on his company. “Our clients are not really buying 3D, but they do think of you as forward looking,” he said. “It may become a wise investment in the future.” Blaine said that dealers should not take on a new line like 3D printing unless they can afford to make a mistake. “But you have to take some risk as a forward-looking company.”
