If Frank Grasso, CEO of TGI Office Automation, could turn back the clock, he’d have hopped on that managed print services train sooner rather than later. Even though he missed the earlier train, that’s not stopping him from climbing aboard now and transforming his successful 45-year-old office technology dealership into an organization that does more than simply move boxes.
Grasso is second generation and has spent his entire career with the Brooklyn-based office technology dealership with offices throughout New York City, Long Island, New Jersey; and South Florida. TGI Office Automation has a reputation for providing customers with scalable solutions using technology from the likes of Toshiba, Lexmark, Kyocera, Lanier, and HP. Add to that document management solutions, which the company was offering long before they made the transition to managed print, and it’s easy to see why TGI is well positioned to navigate the brave new world of managed print services.
Business is good with revenues up more than 10 points year over year, which indicates that TGI is certainly doing something. What they’re doing right is positioning themselves as a clear alternative to the competition, which has increasingly become manufacturer direct branches, HP, and other independents.
Frank Grasso
“In this business when you look at who to partner with, there are certain companies who have the ability to compete on all levels with the critical mass and services in place, to be able to serve the customers properly,” explains Grasso. “With that we just work a little harder and a little smarter, and we present the TGI value proposition.”
He adds that customers appreciate the value TGI provides as well as their ability to take the time and expend the energy to understand them. That involves matching customers with the appropriate technology and enhancing their document workflow while at the same time introducing them to new concepts such as managed print services. Those may not be novel ideas in the world of office technology and solutions sales, but those are the basics that continue to make the difference for TGI.
Although revenues are up 10 percent this year, like everyone else, TGI has been affected by the economic downturn of the past couple of years. That climate called for some adjustments.
“We tightened up on the back end, improved our business processes from how we purchase things to how we turn our inventory to be more efficient,” notes Grasso. “We moved some people around who might not have been in the right position, but the nice thing is we didn’t really have to lay anybody off.”
TGI is big on lunch and learns and Grasso explains theirs are a little different than the average lunch and learn.
“It’s not just a PowerPoint presentation. It’s a tour of our facility, which we’re very proud of. We’ve been in business for 45 years and we started off in a brownstone in downtown Brooklyn and now we have a 40,000-square foot facility that houses all of our services and our people. We have not only our showroom, but our dispatch center, our distribution center, hot line, all of our admin, everything starts here.”
What customers see during lunch and learns is how TGI uses the technologies and solutions internally, such as document management systems. There’s also an emphasis on green initiatives. At press time TGI was installing solar panels on their roof to power their showroom. That’s powerful stuff when an organization walks the green walk in front of their customers.
“We show them our best practices when it comes to our green initiatives, the security on our devices, and all of that is demonstrated in real life in a mid-size business,” says Grasso. “It’s a good barometer of how we could affect their business along with the Brooklyn pizza we serve at lunch. Forget about it!”
A solutions division with 15 people takes the message to the street. That often begins with a simple document workflow assessment so TGI can help the customer optimize their workflow and ends with staffing and managed services. The company’s go-to document management solution is Docuware and Grasso acknowledges he did the right thing in adding that to the company’s solutions offerings.
“It was a big investment in training our solutions people and sales people on how to find the opportunities and have that technology conversation. The way we approach the market is we have our sales people responsible for cultivating relationships and knowing their products, but what I’ve done over the past couple of years is dovetailed in the solutions department that support the front and the back end of our sales initiatives. It’s a good resource for our salespeople who are out there with the relationships to have the resources internally for production print, GPS, “Green Print Save” which is our managed print services, Docuware, mailing solutions, wide format. We have all the necessary support lined up.
As far as managed print services, TGI is firmly committed to growing this portion of the business even though Grasso contends they aren’t exactly newbies in this area.
“Believe it or not we’ve been doing managed print for a while, we just didn’t realize what the definition was,” says Grasso.
He traces the company’s initial foray into what would become known as MPS to the company’s background in fax. You heard him right, TGI’s fax background. At one time TGI was the world’s largest Panafax dealer with more than 15,000 devices in the field. The focus back then was a CPC or CPP (cost per print) model. Again, not a novel concept, but one that was familiar as Grasso and company recently began learning about the intricacies of MPS.
Now that TGI is out talking to customers about MPS, they’ve found most are aware of the concept even though definitions for MPS out in the real world are just as diverse as they are from various MPS providers. TGI’s mission is providing customers with a higher MPS education. That’s accomplished in numerous ways—via the Web, TGI’s marketing and sales efforts, and lunch and learns.
Despite their familiarity with CPC and CPP pricing models, it’s not like the fundamentals of MPS was second nature to Grasso and company. They had a foundation, albeit one with a few cracks in it that needed to be filled. That’s why they called on Strategy Development to help them learn how to price deals, put a program together, and understand the metrics, and the profit centers related to MPS.
“That was the hardest things to adjust to,” says Grasso. “We didn’t have the statistical information available to make those decisions, which is why we partnered with Strategy Development. Their knowledge base and experience in the business along with their best practices and benchmarks bridge that gap and provide a clearer picture on how we can present price and support the programs we want to offer our customers.”
TGI is focusing initially on existing customers, presenting MPS as a new service.
“Obviously these customers have already heard the term or been approached at some point in time by somebody else, so it’s refreshing to have us come in the door and offer a program because they already know who we are and the quality of the services we provide,” says Grasso.
Those existing relationships certainly make a difference.
Besides the guidance they’ve received from Strategy Development, TGI is also leveraging the programs and expertise of Toshiba, an office technology provider that knows a little bit about MPS themselves.
“Toshiba has been instrumental in getting our initiatives off the ground,” says Grasso. “They have a dedicated business specialist that supports us on a weekly or as-needed basis in addition with their PageSmart+ program—a turnkey, off-the-shelf program that we can use locally, but is really helpful when we have service deals outside of our territory.”
TGI has a GPS (Green Print Save) team and a director of business development that they brought on late last year whose responsibility is managing the program. Grasso is also recruiting specialized GPS reps. TGI has also hired an aftermarket manager who is responsible for making sure TGI can support its customers and aftermarket.
Even TGI’s general line sales reps are expected to help sell MPS.
“We’ve made it part of their quota, which is getting us a lot more opportunities,” says Grasso. “They’re responsible for making the introduction and supporting the relationship. We’ve taken the onus off the rep to drive that transaction and put that on the GPS people, and the rep receives an override or commission for the transaction. It’s a combined effort.”
That approach is a wise one since the rep already has the relationship with the customer. They engage the MPS specialist and work together on securing the first appointment. If there is an opportunity, the GPS team takes over and handles the transaction, and the GPS specialist manages the contract.
That approach came to Grasso through a combination of trial and error and at the suggestion of Strategy Development who advised TGI that was the best strategy for taking their MPS message to the streets. And Grasso couldn’t be happier after seeing the results of those efforts.
He concedes it wasn’t easy getting buy in from long time sales reps about this new business model.
“Like everything else it’s always a slow digestion of what’s being presented but through success and through the opportunities of potential hardware services the company and reps could benefit from, everybody’s eyes are opening up,” beams Grasso.
Grasso’s vision now is to create a scalable, off-the-shelf program for MPS for any size of account where it’s second nature to TGI staff as it is when selling traditional office technology.
“Customers are going to benefit from is those quarterly or semi-annual reviews of what their fleet looks like, their output, where the documents begin in an organization, where they end up, and engaging our professional services people to offer them suggestions on improving their document workflow,” notes Grasso.
After so many years in the business, Grasso has been through transitions before, so this move towards MPS represents another one of those transitions. It certainly hasn’t soured him in the business in the least.
“It’s one of those things, I wake up every day and I feel blessed with a great opportunity here and a great head start in life, and my goal every day is to improve the services we offer and to support the best people in the business who work at TGI. We have a great team. It’s challenging at times and sometimes the service business is a thankless business, but day over day we work hard and also have fun.”
And thanks to a growing MPS business and the guidance of Strategy Development, a new round of fun is just beginning.
