Nora Schulz
It’s not often you meet someone who’s been in the office imaging business for 45 years who looks like they can do it for another 45. That’s Nora Schulz, president of NEP Co., Inc. in Appleton, WI. To clarify, even though she’s been in the business for more than 45 years, some of those years were spent working as a teenager in her father’s copier dealership, a dealership he founded in 1960.
Schulz worked at NEP while going to college and then after she graduated, before purchasing the business in 1986. She’s since made additional acquisitions and has grown NEP into one of the most successful office technology dealerships in the state of Wisconsin.
How’s business this year at Northeast Photocopy?
Schulz: Better than ever. Our new product offerings have our customers excited, not about buying a product, but about finding a strategic partner that can help them guide their business. We love doing that and we are very good at it.
What do you attribute that to?
Schulz: The NEP culture and great people.
Are certain segments of the business doing better than others?
Schulz: The MPS/Education vertical has really taken advantage of some of our newer strategic solutions.
What solutions are those?
Schulz: The education vertical in Wisconsin has been hit hard with budget cuts and many organizations came face to face with the reality that people would lose their jobs if they kept things status quo. We have always had a focus on helping schools but this change demanded that we step up our game. Our team got together and developed several proprietary solutions focused towards the education vertical. These solutions delivered through a strategic partnership approach save time, money, and ultimately jobs. We are now taking this strategy to the other not-for-profit and even for profit businesses and the feedback has been amazing.
Who are your customers?
Schulz: B2B; anyone that has a business.
Why do they like doing business with you?
Schulz: Transparency. Clear clean billing. Many see us as an extension of their business because we are regularly delivering best practices that are specific to their business.
NEP also makes a concerted effort to be a strong part of the community. As mentioned on the NEP website, “We strive to do our best to help our community grow and flourish, and we believe that every local business must do their part to create a community that we can all be proud of.” How does NEP do that?
Schulz: We have always been involved and financially sponsored fundraisers held by our customers. Our staff also gives back personally through areas of their own interest such as being a scout leader, singing on a worship team, teaching first responders, teaching hunters safety classes, and volunteer firefighting as well as coaching sports teams for children. Our list is varied and surprising, but the dedication is not.
What do you personally like about this business?
Schulz: The constant change and the way the industry has evolved.
Looking back over the years you’ve been running NEP, what change had the biggest impact on the business during this time? And you have to narrow it down to one.
Schulz: Wow, that’s a tough one, but I’d have to say the most exciting change was the change from black and white to color. Just like it did for the television, color opened up all sorts of new opportunities. Nobody buys a black and white television anymore, do they?
Can you explain your IT Partnership Strategy to me?
Schulz: Much of our strategy is proprietary so I can’t share our secret sauce, but I can tell you that our strategic partnership approach revolves around our desire to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do—being transparent in our customer relationships to hold all parties accountable, and setting up win-win strategies that align our goals with our customer goals. This has been particularly successful in education and with businesses that have sustainability, cost reduction, or lean strategies.
Is that what some people might call Managed IT? Some might. Managed IT much like Managed Print Services is often over used and vague. As an example our Managed Print encompasses much more than managing output devices.
What exactly does your Managed Print encompass beyond managing output devices?
Schulz: It’s difficult to answer that question because the managed solutions vary as much or perhaps even more than our customer’s business challenges vary. We don’t like to take a canned approach to fixing business problems because it would constrain our creativity and ultimately the strength of our solutions. In today’s world we are working with customers to assist with their strategies relating to all sorts of initiatives including BYOD, cloud, mobility, document management, virtualization and asset management to name a few. These initiatives are all intertwined and it can sometimes be daunting for our customers to keep current on best practices. That’s where we step in.
What’s been the key to your success in that segment?
Schulz: Understanding what customers want versus what they need. Being able to explain it, implement it, and do it correctly. Totally understanding all the resources of the industry available and supporting that customer within their financial ranges and expectancies is also key.
What’s your biggest challenge?
Schulz: Finding good people. Once I find them, they stay forever. The average tenure at NEP is long. The culture is one of great accountability and helping out the team.
What about challenges in the marketplace?
Schulz: Our marketplace has done a poor job of bringing value to the businesses we partner with, so at the beginning of a new relationship it is sometimes difficult to get new customers to truly understand the implications of having a partnership relationship rather than a vendor relationship.
You’ve been in the industry for 45 years, do you still find it fun?
Schulz: Actually longer than 45 years, much longer. It is more fun now than it ever was. Working with old school coworkers, generation X’ers, Y’ers, and Z’ers is definitely interesting and frequently fun. An open mind is a necessity and being flexible where I can.
What’s the one task that you most enjoy doing each day?
Schulz: The morning greeting of all staff. [I enjoy] walking around and saying hello, seeing everyone buzzing with the excitement of the new work day; watching the new machines in plastic roll out to the delivery trucks, and the trade-ins that at one time were the latest and greatest, roll back in. That lasts about 15 minutes. I also love signing and sending the personal thank you letters for each machine sold.
What’s the one task that you least enjoy doing every day?
Schulz: Addressing e-mails. The never ending strands of messages waiting for the delete or the reply keys. When I started working here, all communication was verbal or by fax…fast, efficient, friendly. Now it’s read, write, and reply. And countless “un-subscribes.”
What one thing do you know now about this business that you wish you knew when you first started?
Schulz: I wish I had known where it was going and what part we were going to play in it. I would have liked to become immersed in many other types of industries sooner so I could assess their needs earlier and determine how our offerings could impact their business. Also, I would have used professional industry recruiters earlier to shorten ramping time for sales reps.
What gets you excited about coming to work each day?
Schulz: Everything. Knowing who is coming in to get a demo, knowing who is celebrating something special, personally or professionally, and anticipating new products/software to be set up for trial run- learning. When you’re green you grow, when you’re ripe you rot, my father used to say. I love learning.
How does the rest of the year look for Northeast Photocopy?
Schulz: Fantastic. When all the right people are in all the right positions, doing all the right things, magic happens. I like magic.
