{"id":9216,"date":"2014-11-02T17:18:50","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T22:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=9216"},"modified":"2014-11-02T17:18:50","modified_gmt":"2014-11-02T22:18:50","slug":"the-greatest-solutions-ever-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/state-of-the-industry\/2014\/11\/the-greatest-solutions-ever-sold\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Solutions Ever Sold…"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the Dealers Selling Them<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How often do you hear or use the word solutions? Probably every day, right? Your customers may not use the term, but it\u2019s a buzzword that most of us in the office technology industry can\u2019t get away from whether we like it or not. And when we talk about solutions, we\u2019re mostly talking software.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

My original intent was to focus only on new solutions that office technology dealers are selling successfully. What I discovered was that there was far less excitement about brand spanking new solutions and more excitement about tried and true solutions that customers have a defined need for. In addition to discussing their hottest selling solutions, many dealers were kind enough to share their strategies for marketing those solutions.<\/p>\n

At <\/span> Systel Communications<\/span><\/strong> in <\/span> Fayetteville<\/span>, <\/span> NC<\/span><\/span>, the number one solution sales reps are moving these days is NSi\u2019s Autostore. \u201cIt is by far the leader in the business for middleware integration,\u201d states <\/span>Lew Watson<\/span><\/strong>, senior account manager. \u201cNSi is top shelf, provides great support, and the value add is an important piece.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The strategy for selling NSi\u2019s AutoStore at Systel isn\u2019t radically different from selling anything else. \u201cIt comes down to true selling where you can go into an account and distinguish yourself by uncovering that workflow solution that nobody else has uncovered and you\u2019ve added value to the account with the transaction,\u201d explains Watson.<\/p>\n

\"

John Lowery
Applied Imaging<\/p><\/div>\n

At Applied Imaging<\/strong> in Grand Rapids, MI, the one solution that resonates most with customers is Canon uniFLOW, a print and scan management solution. \u201cWe really got serious about it after our software guys went to a Canon seminar on the program the early part of this year,\u201d reports John Lowery<\/strong>, president of Applied Imaging. \u201cThey came back and were well versed in making a presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n

uniFLOW with its many modules is just the ticket for Applied Imaging\u2019s customers. Because of uniFLOW, Applied Imaging doesn\u2019t have to piece together a separate document output management program with a separate cost accounting program to solve a customer\u2019s problem. \u201cuniFLOW offers a lot of the modules so you can buy one solution,\u201d says Lowery. \u201cThat\u2019s less expensive than if you were to piece everything together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although some sales reps shy away from software and solutions by nature, Lowery says his reps are fired up about selling uniFLOW. \u201cIt works well with customers who have different MFPs and many single-function devices, or if they\u2019ve got a big fleet of machines to deploy, or the machines are in many different locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian Sampietro<\/strong>, CIO of TGI Office Automation<\/strong> in Brooklyn, NY, has found any solution having to do with document routing from MFPs is scorching hot. Specifically, he\u2019s talking about software like Drivve Image, NSi AutoStore, and eCopy.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsers can walk up and scan documents into their folder structures on their server or route them to specific people via e-mail in a more efficient way than scan-to-email or the preprogrammed folder structure that people used in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"

Frank Grasso
TGI Office Automation<\/p><\/div>\n

TGI\u2019s customers are also gravitating towards PaperCut for print accounting, cost recovery, and job control. \u201cThey\u2019re able to lower their total cost of ownership of their devices by routing documents to more efficient MFPs where they can get secure release and print confidential documents and can run reports so they can see what\u2019s being printed and who\u2019s printing, allowing them to better control costs,\u201d adds Sampietro.<\/p>\n

The reason TGI has been more successful selling these solutions of late is a commitment to training. \u201cIt starts with arming your reps with the right talk track and internal and external support to speak intelligently about solutions and how it can impact an organization\u2019s business,\u201d says TGI President Frank Grasso. \u201cWe just talk about it more.\u201d<\/p>\n

The solutions TGI sells aren\u2019t necessarily resonating with specific verticals, but tend to be\u00a0 popular in all sorts of businesses. \u201cCustomers everywhere are trying to do more with less, especially since 2008,\u201d notes Sampietro. \u201cThey\u2019re reducing staff and trying to make processes more efficient. Where they could devote 15 minutes to find a file to answer a customer\u2019s question, now they want to retrieve those documents in under a minute.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>At <\/span>EO Johnson<\/span><\/strong>, an office technology dealership with offices across the state of <\/span> Wisconsin<\/span>, <\/span><\/span>Dan Rickert<\/span><\/strong>, solution sales manager, has seen a lot of traction with document management and workflow process solutions with advanced capture. He\u2019s also seen a lot of<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dan

Dan Rickert
EO Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

interest for cost accounting solutions and solutions for securing devices such as HID proximity cards and PIN codes as well as solutions that enable secure print release.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Three of the top solutions sold by EO Johnson include Square9\u2019s SmartSearch, uniFLOW, and PaperCut.<\/span><\/p>\n

EO Johnson has a separate sales division that works off referrals and leads from its general territory reps. Besides Rickert, three additional sales reps cover the company\u2019s various locations while 10 specialists handle implementation on the backend.<\/p>\n

Typically, EO Johnson reps don\u2019t walk in the door and start talking about a specific product. \u201cWe take a consultative approach,\u201d explains Rickert. \u201cWe find out what the customer needs and based on that need we steer them towards a product. We try to get away from \u2018Here\u2019s our product and this is why you should buy it.\u2019\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0He\u2019s found that customers in all types of industries are interested in document management solutions. \u201cIt\u2019s everywhere, there\u2019s no specific industry or vertical we can narrow in on as to where we\u2019re having the most success,\u201d says Rickert.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, cost accounting, secure print release, and device security solutions have been embraced by verticals like education, healthcare and insurance. \u201cOrganizations that either have budget constraints or the need for more security,\u201d states Rickert. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Al

Al Scibetta
Copier Fax Business Technologies<\/p><\/div>\n

Copier Fax Business Technologies<\/span><\/strong> in <\/span> Buffalo, NY<\/span> is rebranding the dealership as a solutions provider rather than a technology provider in response to the business becoming less hardware centric and more solutions centric. The new brand, Documentelligence is the focus while the two most popular solutions moving out their door are DocuWare and PageScope Enterprise Suite, Konica Minolta\u2019s secure print program.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span> DocuWare has received a lot of interest from the medical industry, especially with the latest initiatives related to electronic medical records. \u201cGetting a DMS in place is mission critical for them and DocuWare does the trick as far as interfacing with their programs, and the strength and power of DocuWare is unbelievable,\u201d says <\/span> Al Scibetta<\/span><\/strong>, owner. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0DocuWare is also popular with Scibetta\u2019s manufacturing clients. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jason Habbal<\/span><\/span><\/strong>, vice president and sales manager with <\/span> Vision Office Systems<\/span> in <\/span> Charlotte, NC<\/span>, reports Square9\u2019s Smart Search is an ideal solution for larger clients while for low-end applications, NSi AutoStore is going strong. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>NSi AutoStore has been a great solution for Vision Office Systems too, primarily because of NSi\u2019s relationship with Ricoh and because Habbal<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jason

Jason Habbal
Vision Office Systems<\/p><\/div>\n

finds it an economical solution. Square9\u2019s SmartSearch represents Vision\u2019s high-end document management solution. \u201cWhile being on the high end of the price scale for what we offer, SmartSearch does so much to give people a complete document management system from the archiving and indexing to the retrieval,\u201d notes Habbal. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of things automated within it which makes it a nice solution for anybody looking to take their documents digitally.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things that drew Vision to SmartSearch was the program\u2019s ease of use. \u201cIf it\u2019s easy to use sales people find it easier to sell,\u201d states Habbal.<\/p>\n

A new solution that Habbal has high hopes for is Virtual Works\u2019 ViaWorks, a solution that he describes as the middle ground between a full-blown document management system and not having anything. \u201cThe product is great, our IT manager likes it, we just haven\u2019t done a lot with it yet,\u201d says Habbal. \u201cIt\u2019s a search engine for files, it has a data mining piece, and finds the files you\u2019re looking for; it\u2019s not for indexing and things like that, just searching for the files you have in digital format. It\u2019s a nice middle piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

LDI<\/span> in Jericho, NY is a solutions selling powerhouse and has been successful with a number of different software solutions. \u201cThe Nuance Suite<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Brian

Brian Gertler
LDI<\/p><\/div>\n

featuring eCopy has been our de facto standard for document distribution,\u201d reports <\/span> Brian Gertler<\/span>, vice president. \u201cEquitrac, Copitrak and Sepialine have shared the limelight for job accounting and cost recovery.\u00a0Nuance\u2019s PDF Pro and Omnipage still represent our industry\u2019s best desktop replacement and cost competitor to Adobe Acrobat.\u201d<\/span> is alsog wse that recognize value over cost.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a world that is saturated with very proficient MFPs, our ability to integrate the workflow and software applications are the differentiators that allow us to give our clients a competitive edge,\u201d states Gertler.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although LDI spends significant time and dollars training and certifying their account representatives and account managers in the strategic solutions in their portfolio, they always seek to involve their Professional Services team when placing a solution.\u00a0 \u201cThis way there is greater proficiency in the pre-sale engagement and continuity through the installation and implementation process,\u201d concludes Gertler.<\/p>\n

With so many solutions available to the dealer community, it\u2019s refreshing to see that both old and new solutions continue to secure a prominent place in many dealers\u2019 solutions portfolios<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the Dealers Selling Them How often do you hear or use the word solutions? Probably every day, right? Your customers may not use the term, but it\u2019s a buzzword that most of us in the office technology industry can\u2019t get away from whether we like it or not. And when we talk about solutions, we\u2019re mostly talking software. My original intent was to focus only on new solutions that office technology dealers are selling successfully. What I discovered was that there was far less excitement about brand spanking new solutions and more excitement about tried and true solutions that customers have a defined need for. In addition to discussing their hottest selling solutions, many dealers were kind enough to share their strategies for marketing those solutions. At Systel Communications in Fayetteville, NC, the number one solution sales reps are moving these days is NSi\u2019s Autostore. \u201cIt is by far the leader in the business for middleware integration,\u201d states Lew Watson, senior account manager. \u201cNSi is top shelf, provides great support, and the value add is an important piece.\u201d The strategy for selling NSi\u2019s AutoStore at Systel isn\u2019t radically different from selling anything else. \u201cIt comes down to true selling where you can go into an account and distinguish yourself by uncovering that workflow solution that nobody else has uncovered and you\u2019ve added value to the account with the transaction,\u201d explains Watson. At Applied Imaging in Grand Rapids, MI, the one solution that resonates most with customers is Canon uniFLOW, a print and scan management solution. \u201cWe really got serious about it after our software guys went to a Canon seminar on the program the early part of this year,\u201d reports John Lowery, president of Applied Imaging. \u201cThey came back and were well versed in making a presentation.\u201d uniFLOW with its many modules is just the ticket for Applied Imaging\u2019s customers. Because of uniFLOW, Applied Imaging doesn\u2019t have to piece together a separate document output management program with a separate cost accounting program to solve a customer\u2019s problem. \u201cuniFLOW offers a lot of the modules so you can buy one solution,\u201d says Lowery. \u201cThat\u2019s less expensive than if you were to piece everything together.\u201d Although some sales reps shy away from software and solutions by nature, Lowery says his reps are fired up about selling uniFLOW. \u201cIt works well with customers who have different MFPs and many single-function devices, or if they\u2019ve got a big fleet of machines to deploy, or the machines are in many different locations.\u201d Brian Sampietro, CIO of TGI Office Automation in Brooklyn, NY, has found any solution having to do with document routing from MFPs is scorching hot. Specifically, he\u2019s talking about software like Drivve Image, NSi AutoStore, and eCopy. \u201cUsers can walk up and scan documents into their folder structures on their server or route them to specific people via e-mail in a more efficient way than scan-to-email or the preprogrammed folder structure that people used in the past.\u201d TGI\u2019s customers are also gravitating towards PaperCut for print accounting, cost recovery, and job control. \u201cThey\u2019re able to lower their total cost of ownership of their devices by routing documents to more efficient MFPs where they can get secure release and print confidential documents and can run reports so they can see what\u2019s being printed and who\u2019s printing, allowing them to better control costs,\u201d adds Sampietro. The reason TGI has been more successful selling these solutions of late is a commitment to training. \u201cIt starts with arming your reps with the right talk track and internal and external support to speak intelligently about solutions and how it can impact an organization\u2019s business,\u201d says TGI President Frank Grasso. \u201cWe just talk about it more.\u201d The solutions TGI sells aren\u2019t necessarily resonating with specific verticals, but tend to be\u00a0 popular in all sorts of businesses. \u201cCustomers everywhere are trying to do more with less, especially since 2008,\u201d notes Sampietro. \u201cThey\u2019re reducing staff and trying to make processes more efficient. Where they could devote 15 minutes to find a file to answer a customer\u2019s question, now they want to retrieve those documents in under a minute.\u201d \u00a0At EO Johnson, an office technology dealership with offices across the state of Wisconsin, Dan Rickert, solution sales manager, has seen a lot of traction with document management and workflow process solutions with advanced capture. He\u2019s also seen a lot of interest for cost accounting solutions and solutions for securing devices such as HID proximity cards and PIN codes as well as solutions that enable secure print release.\u00a0 Three of the top solutions sold by EO Johnson include Square9\u2019s SmartSearch, uniFLOW, and PaperCut. EO Johnson has a separate sales division that works off referrals and leads from its general territory reps. Besides Rickert, three additional sales reps cover the company\u2019s various locations while 10 specialists handle implementation on the backend. Typically, EO Johnson reps don\u2019t walk in the door and start talking about a specific product. \u201cWe take a consultative approach,\u201d explains Rickert. \u201cWe find out what the customer needs and based on that need we steer them towards a product. We try to get away from \u2018Here\u2019s our product and this is why you should buy it.\u2019\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0He\u2019s found that customers in all types of industries are interested in document management solutions. \u201cIt\u2019s everywhere, there\u2019s no specific industry or vertical we can narrow in on as to where we\u2019re having the most success,\u201d says Rickert. Meanwhile, cost accounting, secure print release, and device security solutions have been embraced by verticals like education, healthcare and insurance. \u201cOrganizations that either have budget constraints or the need for more security,\u201d states Rickert. Copier Fax Business Technologies in Buffalo, NY is rebranding the dealership as a solutions provider rather than a technology provider in response to the business becoming less hardware centric and more solutions centric. The new brand, Documentelligence is the focus while the two most popular solutions moving out their door are DocuWare and PageScope Enterprise Suite, Konica Minolta\u2019s secure print […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1649,1814,1641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9216"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9219,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216\/revisions\/9219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}