Office Technology Service Excellence Diamond Award Winner
Kevin Heitritter, President of Innovative Document Solutions in Murrieta, CA, knows great service. He ought to. He began his career as a service tech in the mid 1980’s before starting his own office technology dealership in 1989.
That’s not a career path most dealer principals take and Heitritter knows it. “I am cut from a different grain, I carried a tool bag before I carried a briefcase,” he concedes.
Considering Heitritter’s and his service manager, Frank Birtcher’s backgrounds, along with the dealership’s 26-year emphasis on service, it’s not much of a surprise that Innovative Document Solutions is a BEI Services and ENX Magazine Office Technology Service Excellence Diamond Award winner. It’s not surprising either that their scores are among the highest of any dealership tracked. Equally impressive is that Innovative is a small dealership serving a niche market. An authorized Canon dealer, Innovative focuses on the Inland Empire aka Southwest Riverside County. Besides its Murrieta headquarters, there’s a branch office in Palm Desert, CA.
Approximately 75 percent of Innovative’s customers are small to medium size businesses while the rest fall into the enterprise segment. Customers tend to choose Innovative because they appreciate their proactive approach to service.
Innovative’s biggest competitors are Canon and Konica Minolta branches. Xerox has a strong presence too. “I probably have five Canon Solutions America offices within a 70-mile geography around me,” reports Heitritter. “They’re everywhere!”
(left to right) Kevin Heitritter, President, and Frank Birtcher, Service Manager, Innovative Document Solutions
That’s okay, Innovative can deal with it, and has historically held its own against larger, better funded competitors. “Being a local around-the-corner dealer helps,” states Heitritter. “Customers appreciate our ability to act quickly and take care of their needs. If they go to a branch or a larger dealer, they’re just an ID number. Here, they’re more than an ID number and we get to know them intimately.”
Heitritter has understood from the beginning that his background in service is a huge differentiator. “I’m more of an operational guy and technical guy,” observes Heitritter, who does his share of selling like any other owner.
The difference between him and his peers who started in sales—and Heitritter’s been a member of SDG for more than 10 years and a past president—is that it’s a different conversation when he’s in front of a customer. “It gives me a competitive edge,” he says. “I spend more time on metrics, looking at profitability and parts usage and stats in our service department than sales GP or sales goals. That’s our mantra and we realize if we give good service the renewal process for our sales reps is easier.”
If renewals are easy, then why would a dealership with a well-documented history of providing great service need a program from BEI Services?
“When we started working with Innovative, their numbers from the get-go looked better than the average dealer starting out with BEI,” acknowledges Steve Sharkey of BEI Services. “That simply speaks to Kevin and Frank’s backgrounds in service.”
“We weren’t a complete train wreck and didn’t need to reinvent the wheel,” explains Heitritter. “We were providing great service. BEI helps us validate and build off of that.”
As a result, Innovative now has a snapshot of what they look like compared to everybody else from a service and parts perspective.
The technician compensation piece of the program was another reason. “We wanted to pay our guys to do a good job,” states Heitritter. “If it’s green in their jean the tech’s going to march to that. On the 15th when we pay sales commissions, we pay our BEI commissions and it’s a good feeling to see our techs receive an added bonus.”
Innovative also uses the program to data mine. “A lot of times we’re comparing ourselves to other dealers and what parts are being used with different models, especially a new release model that we may not be selling a lot of yet,” notes Heitritter. “We can see ahead of time what parts are being used. We thought we’d always done a decent job, but it’s also helping Frank write his employee reviews every month. It’s just a great tool.”
As far as Innovative’s scores, Heitritter is quick to identify who is responsible for the dealership’s performance. “Frank is the biggest reason,” he says. “I can only lead so much, but it takes someone to take the reins and run with it.”
Besides his unparalleled technical expertise, Birtcher is adept at resolving issues over the phone.
“Our phone fix rate is extremely high,” emphasizes Heitritter. “Frank is like having another tech and a half to two techs.”
Reviewing Innovative’s scorecard, their hold for parts rate was 9 percent. “Which means their numbers are well within the threshold we’re looking for from a benchmark standpoint,” says Sharkey.
Copies per tech is 80 percent, a reflection of the niche market they serve. “They don’t sell to production environments like other dealerships in bigger markets do,” adds Sharkey.
Over the past six months Innovative’s first call fix rate was 66 percent while call backs were running at 25 percent.
“That puts them in the upper echelon of each of those categories,” reports Sharkey. “Those are the three big metrics that look at how good these guys are at fixing the equipment the first time. That speaks to the department and company profitability, and speaks largely to their customer’s experience. Their customers have to feel confident the vast majority of the time when their techs come through the door they’re going to have the skills, the parts, and the wherewithal to get that problem fixed on that first trip and that’s huge.”
Innovative benchmarks itself against the Johnson model and Heitritter says they exceed that profitability benchmark when everything is mixed into the stirring bowl. He’s now looking to take things to the next level.
“The biggest challenge now is supplies gate-keeping on managed print as well as supplies gate-keeping for color devices. That’s a big hidden loss center if you’re not measuring it properly. Our CPC prices have dropped and you don’t want to send more toner than you need. We’re also rolling our contract profitability on a lot of major accounts and gate-keeping the supplies piece of the business. The functionality break-fix, we have that strong and do a good job, now it’s how to mature the profitability of a whole contract whether it’s MPS or MFP and to get a better handle on that in 2015.”
Heitritter hopes this acknowledgement creates more opportunities for Innovative. “We support populations of 100+ [devices], but we want to get into more major accounts,” he says. “Even though we’re a small dealer this makes us look like a larger dealer. It’s just going to help us grow the business.”
Asked if he has any advice for other dealers looking to enhance their service operations, Heitritter replies, “Any dealer principal not involved in their service department and relies on someone to run reports and doesn’t look at it on a monthly or daily basis, ought to invest money in software [that does that for you]. That’s where the money is made, on the service side of the house, and every dealer principal across the country should know that. Partnering with a software solutions provider, you owe it to your customers, you owe it to your employees, and you owe it to yourself as an owner. This is what renews leases, this is what makes customers come back, and this is what customers rave about to other potential customers.”
Innovative Document Solutions
Murrieta, CA
President: Kevin Heitritter
Service Manager: Frank Birtcher
Brands Serviced: Canon, HP, Samsung
Territory Covered: Southwest Riverside County, CA
Why They Stand Out:
- Hold-for-parts rate of 9%
- Copies-per-tech rate of 80%
- First-call fix rate of 66%
- Call-back rate of 25%
