Success is rarely an absolute, at least for the majority of businesses. Unless a company sets lofty goals that are accomplished—and if you did, proper kudos go out to you—it will take stock of all the pluses and minuses and reach an overall conclusion.
For example, perhaps your dealership increased its service revenue by 15% year over year and added 8% in net-new accounts. On the down side, two salespeople left and you lost a smaller, but longtime account. The positives outweigh the negatives, even though in the long run, the departed reps may have joined your competition and filling their shoes can take time. But the upshot may ultimately be that you’ll onboard even better account representatives.
This explains the somewhat wishy-washy take, but it goes both ways. Yes, you had a good year, but…or no, it wasn’t a good year; however we’re poised to yada, yada. Twelve months from now, your impression of how good or bad 2023 was may actually change with the benefit of hindsight.
Applying this standard across an entire industry is impossible. Still, we’ve surveyed a number of industry experts as part of our State of the Industry report on trends and predictions for the coming year to weigh the positives they witnessed against the negatives. It’s an interesting exercise to gauge how your company, dealer council or peer group assesses the previous year, and whether they conclude it was largely successful or somewhat lacking. We’ll let your contemporaries take it from here.
Jay Cartisano, president, Prosource
Step Forward: “Definitely the supply chain. In 2023, many dealers were able to fulfill product backlog which helped get out of the gates fast. This brought nice tailwinds and good momentum to start the year.”
Step Backward: “The continued pressure from clients looking to save money and consolidate vendors. Cutting costs should not mean cutting quality—and that is the responsibility of the dealers and partners to help clients grow their business while also streamlining and meeting their financial goals.”
Fernando Marionene, Brother International
Step Forward: “The printing industry as a whole is still continuing to adjust to the new way of work and its impacts. We have seen partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions at the manufacturer and channel levels (OEM). The industry has improved by simplifying customer experiences by prioritizing technology so that machines and services can operate seamlessly, allowing customers to focus on their work and have confidence in their products.”
Step Backward: “We have seen a decline in printing volumes, but dealers and channel partners have done a terrific job at prioritizing sustainability and print consolidation to level out the industry shifts.”
Erik Crane, CPI Technologies
Step Forward: “Overall, I feel the industry did well in 2023. Taking advantage of the opportunity to correct pricing in all areas of our business due to perceived inflation was very important to maintaining margins as manufacturers did the same.”
Step Backward: “Building our industry up instead of racing to the bottom is where we need to do the most work.”
Bob Madaio, Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America
Step Forward: Describing the industry’s performance in 2023 is a difficult task. Many OEMs had positive results in 2023, but these results were often compared to the disastrous supply chain and pandemic of previous years. A very few, including Sharp, are showing growth over pre-pandemic levels and are able to continue investing in dealer programs and product enhancements like in the past.
“From a dealer perspective, it’s a mixed bag across markets, industries, and geographies. But one thing is clear within the Sharp dealer community. We are seeing that dealers that are successful in diversifying their product sales appear to be growing better within the MFP space than those that are not. Whether this growth stems from the better all-in-one value proposition, the easier ability to hire IT salespeople than copier salespeople, or other reasons, the results seem to show that it is working.”
Dan Larkin, Marco
Step Forward: “Collectively, we get a solid B+. Although supply chain issues continue to be a factor, we’re seeing a slow and steady rebound. We’re also seeing print volumes stabilizing as more companies welcome more workers back to the office for at least part of the work week.”
Step Backward: “Geopolitical issues around the world continue to add a level of uncertainty that we’ll need to keep a close watch on moving forward.”
Steven Sauer, Toshiba America Business Solutions
Step Forward: “Page volumes in 2023 have settled at a new normal of 85-90%, which is obviously not where we would like to see them, but higher than many prognosticators believe. Clients have become comfortable with remote work and remotely delivered services, and it appears while there is a push for more in-person work, the workplace has permanently changed.”
Step Backward: “Security remains a significant issue and all industry participants must remain diligent. Toshiba helps protect organizations’ information from creation to deletion, including advanced technologies such as our proprietary self-encrypting drives and BIOS protection to shield the confidentiality of personally identifiable information.”
Chip Miceli, Pulse Technology
Step Forward: “Where the industry has advanced is in the efforts of dealers to assess the market conditions and diversify their product and service offerings. It has helped us, and it will result in our exceeding last year’s numbers. We’ve done some deep dives into a number of areas, including our office supply offerings over our ecommerce website. Within that area, copier paper and supplies have declined, but we have added janitorial supplies and coffee. Another area that has helped us in diversification is Audio Visual (video boards). Since we completed an outdoor video wall for a local baseball team, people are coming to us with more opportunities. This particular offering is one we could do anywhere, not just in our immediate market.”
Step Backward: “The industry took a step backward with copy clicks, and that affected us as it has almost everyone else.”
Mitch Leahy, GreatAmerica Financial Services
Step Forward: “Many of our customers would categorize 2022 as their best year from a top line revenue aspect. We anticipate 2023 being another very strong year as net new business has been an opportunity many have capitalized on. The industry has come a long way in the last three years. It’s impressive how dealers in this channel adapt and find ways to add value to their customers while working through challenging times.”
Ray Belanger, Bay Copy
Step Forward: “This last year has been about getting some level of stability in the post-COVID era. Businesses are getting back to normal, although I have some questions about how much people will return to an office schedule as things start to stabilize. There will most likely be a hybrid office environment for many businesses for the years to come, and office dealers will have to factor that into their business plans.”
Laura Blackmer, Konica Minolta Business Solutions
Step Forward: “The industry has learned from the challenges presented by inventory issues and has gotten a much better handle on it by placing safeguards in order to minimize issues in the future. While fewer pages are being printed, the industry has adapted to the decline in pages by looking for new market opportunities such as packaging and labeling.”
Step Backward: “The hiring and onboarding of new sales and new technical resources is definitely an area that will continue to be a challenge in 2024. Lastly, the industry seems to have come to terms with the new reality of hybrid work, how we approach the market and how we help our customers continue to navigate it.
Frank Cucco, Impact Networking
Step Backward: “Performance overall, from a hardware perspective, was not very good.”
Step Forward: “…but from a service perspective, it was robust. It improved because more dealers evolved into a service model, compensating for the decline of hardware being sold overall in the United States.”
Jen Healy, Ricoh USA
Step Forward: “We saw the growing importance of engaging with customers digitally as well tracking and measuring marketing performance to understand our customers. We learned how to further leverage technology to improve supply chain and logistics, making deliveries to dealers more efficient.”
Step Backward: “High inflation and interest rates as well as labor costs caused a step back in the industry this year as we see the cost of sales increasing.”
