How to Position Your Business for Success in 2021

all right folks i got one-on-one so we will go ahead and get started uh welcome to today's roundtable webinar how to position your business for success in 2021 brought to you by clover imaging group my name is tim cahill i'm the inside sales manager with clover and i'm going to be your host today but before i introduce our presenters i do want to do a few quick housekeeping notes um all of our attendees are in listen only mode so if you do have a question please type them into the q a section uh in zoom and they will be answered in the order that they come in once a question is answered the question and its respective answer will become visible to all audience members the chat sections typically are you are lively during these sessions that we have so using the q a field will allow me to make sure that all of our questions are answered and responded to also this webinar is being recorded so if you have a hard stop or if anyone in your organization is unable to attend today we will provide you with the full presentation recording via email so with that i have the pleasure of introducing uh our panelists today who likely don't need any introduction uh but first is uh patricia ames who you know is the president and senior analyst of bpo media brian stevenson president of footprint managed services and mclaughlin president er i'm sorry the co-founder of predictive insight and mike tucker the president and ceo of the independent office products and furniture dealers how this is going to work as each panelist has been assigned a question in which they're going to lead their response but all of our panelists are going to have the ability to give their perspective on each question if you do have a question for a specific panelist please note which panelist you would like that question directed to in the q a section that way we can make sure we get it answered as efficiently as possible with that we will get our first question pulled up and this question is going to be led by patricia and patricia what are the most relevant trends that they're watching in 2021 and how do you feel that they're going to impact our industry good question uh to kick this off we actually uh just finished fielding our annual survey uh from the dealers on trends so i have some very fresh data for you it's actually not uh it has not been revealed anywhere so i'm gonna uh outlay a couple of details to give people an idea of what the what the channel looks like right now according to the dealers and where there may be some changes uh so i thought that might be useful to uh go along with this discussion uh so the first the first trend that i i see is the up and down trend which hopefully is a down and up trend and that that we will all see the dealers are reporting that their clicks are of course down our survey is showing an average of around 15 to 20 which is pretty significant 28 of the dealers also indicated that their contract renewal rates are down which poses a problem that is then ongoing uh so is a bit of concern and then a majority of the dealers of it was a slight majority of 52 said that business decreased more than 10 so those aren't a very positive indicators however on the positive side some of the things that we've seen is that 26 percent of the dealers have sales targets for 2021 that are six to ten percent higher um so there's some upward motion that they're looking for in this year 25 of the dealers uh have sales targets that are 11 to 20 percent higher for 2021. the other interesting thing that i saw in the survey was that 64 said that they believe that print will stay really important to their business and still contribute 50 or more of their business revenue and profits just despite the the decreasing clicks that we're seeing so it's a bit of a mix mixed bag i'm hoping the down goes up the next trend uh that i see um from the dealer survey is that dealers are actually uh indicating that they're looking for some new inspiration they're looking to add products and services to their lineup uh to mitigate the erosion that we're seeing from the service and supplies revenue uh so the two areas that they're interested in picking up um more business in are taking on new um just starting new a new business arm for them are in believe it or not mps and then the second one is network security applications and both of these were in a virtual tie with each other as the two most likely additions according to our survey which i found very interesting from the oem side um i want to touch upon a couple trends uh that i'm seeing first of all is i'm calling it the expect the unexpected uh i think there's going to be some things happening we know that some of the oems are on the bubble right now uh and we're just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop but we really don't know how the pieces are going to interact or fall together so i think there's going to be some really unexpected events that happen this year in 2020 uh that are going to be really interesting and perhaps extremely creative uh and being set up to solve some problems we were taking a look inside in our analyst side of the business uh in the last 24 hours at the xerox earnings report that just came out and there's some notable items in there uh first of all um it's a very jumbled story from what we can see 22 year-over-year decline in earnings is not great and uh is an indicator that uh it's xerox is remaining a troubled uh company they are valued at around 7 billion now they were probably about double that a decade ago so the market value has halved in a decade they are recycling past ideas they are looking at standing up a separate business arm for their leasing which they had already talked about back in 2018. they are also talking about uh standing up as a separate business in the software side of things now if you'll recall xerox sold off condo in it which was their acs software arm in the past so it feels like they're looking at everything and going trying to go back to some things they had tried in the past the conclusion that we have is that they probably really don't know um what to do and uh what we see right now is probably not going to be sustainable over a long period of time so some something's going to have to move for those guys i think so given that and looking at some of the others i think new alliances are going to form and maybe not in the most likely places i think that will should probably stage up the conversation tim so yeah that's fantastic patricia thank you very much and i wasn't aware we were going to get a preview of that so thank you i'm just going to go in order that uh you're set up on my uh my zoom setup so brian uh what are your thoughts with the most relevant hey thanks tim hey everybody it's quite a treat to follow patricia and her data um maybe i'll take it more from a view a view from the field uh and and and this question i i think the the word relevance an interesting one here like i actually believe print has become less relevant to end customers through the pandemic patricia talked about the overall page declines and that i suppose would support that i think the end result could mean uh could actually mean more resellers participating in selling managed print and again patricia noted mps to be a growth area it's a bit counterintuitive but i think it'll be a case where you know call it less is more uh there's going to be fewer print dedicated providers in the market we're already seeing these dedicated print resellers extend into new non-print categories um but i think there's also going to be a real expansion in like the number of providers that offer print to their customers and that may cover most areas of our industry from traditional you know print resellers bta mps it bars to the very large office products channel and into the large reseller partners like cdw insight shi soft choice and others and in this model i think the participants that will be gaining share will be the ones that have that you know sophisticated and strong inside sales force they have the share of wallet that's expanding and as print becomes less relevant i think customers uh won't seek out a print dedicated provider but they'll go to somebody that you know print might just show up as a secondary or tertiary offering but but they'll still move in that direction and um i guess finally like this groundhog day will eventually end but i think the end customers won't return to what it was and you know and looking at who's got momentum in contracted print today uh you know what we saw in 2020 anyway it was the resellers that were already stood up as a virtual business they already had the strong sales engine and i i think that you know it's empirical it's definitely it's not the same data that patricia's coming forward with but i believe the shift to be uh permanent tim yeah thank you brian um mike i'd like to pass it over to you okay well this certainly compared to the rest of the um speakers today is not my uh core competency but um with independent dealers the office products group that i mostly have as membership and work with you know very few of them are focused on a category they because office products has been a declining category they continue to adapt in different ways whether it's jan's hand furniture promotional products and so forth i and from my back when i own my own business i know we were doing more with managed print services and moving into contracting to try and make up for some of that losses and also become a canon copier distributor so i see a lot of it just being where they have some strength either in their customer base or in their sales base or management team that they can adapt into you know a category of print that works for them and and i like the idea of the the network security application i know that's something we've uh done some webinars on with our association and i can see them if they can partner with the right type of company being able to to market that to their customer base successfully so and that would be uh my thoughts absolutely thank you mike and and so last but certainly not least what are your thoughts on uh the trends that they're um watching in 2021 i think thank you i think there's going to be a period of of evolution of we're going to see a lot of different trends developing over the next year and um certainly the the whole idea we've touched a little bit on the process and the impact it's had to print we're going through very much like what we went through in 2007 2008 but we're going to go through it a little bit slower and and one of the reasons is that the enterprise organizations haven't really finalized uh what their processes are going to look like but one thing we know for sure that print will not be a part of the major part of the process for remote workers and there's going to be more remote workers come the end of 2021 than there was in the beginning of 2020. there's no

question about it and what percentage is going to be there's been a lot of people predicting it but i can tell you emphatically from watching and behaving and having conversations with men of the enterprise organizations that they don't really know exactly where they're going to go just yet who's going to be in the office who's not going to be in the office and one thing for sure more knowledge workers will not be in the office that were in the office before and it's going to make a lot of changes print is changing because prince importance is changing it's no longer part of the actual word process or the information process that it was before its destination is the shredder so uh there is some print that makes it to the end user usually in the form of the pdf but the document has to be created and along the way while it's being created prints are being made uh and then finally end up in a shredder so what we do with print the value of print changes which means that we have to think about how we change our business accordingly and have to become more focused on increasing our efficiency in the back end uh we have been a sales focused industry for decades and everything that has to do with sales we're quick to go do spend money try it we're going to have to get a little bit more innovative and start thinking about the administrative impact and how that can influence our profitability and our positioning because it's not just the profitability aspect of it it's actually going to improve our market position and our ability to support uh customers and expanding into other horizons if you haven't done it it may be too late but certainly we need to start looking at other things besides print because uh the value of print will decline which means that you've got to manage it better yeah thank you ed um and that's all great feedback uh there is one question that's uh directed uh that's following up on this uh this feedback for uh patricia and that's um is chris patricia do you have any data on hp as an a3 copy or player moving forward since they are relatively new compared to traditional brands so we actually have a lot of data uh on hp in this survey because we've been tracking them very closely uh since they bought the samsung division and uh so that is the exact question that we're really taking a look at we don't have there's an increase of dealers stating that they sell hp i have a feeling that the work from home exodus created scenarios where there was an immediate need to be placing lots of a4 machines um in in people's homes and uh so there is an increase in people saying dealers uh saying that they sell hp as one of their lines i don't know yet um what impact the a3 part of this question has we have been trying to get some information on that i do know that hp is having an analyst event next week uh that i'm going to be a part of as are some of the analysts other analysts at our house so i think um we're gonna find out more on what the kind of longer term strategy is for hp with their a3 products um going forward but it's been a question we've asked at every meeting we don't really have a clear indication i think i think hp knows what they're going to do and it may be you know going forward as as planned and everything's the way it is but there may be other things going on behind the scenes that we're unaware of and obviously everyone's watching that closely given the the click issues and the exodus and the the transfer of prince from a3 to a4 so um or just stopping or just stopping printing so um it's a good question i and so the answer is i don't know and this uh this next question before we get to our next one i think uh was uh was stirred up by brian's uh comments has covet caused a slowdown in the roll-up strategy of consolidators like the nationwide uh vta dealers or do lower valuations create even more consent rapid consolidation that's a that's a great question i look at the biggest uh maybe the biggest players in this space that were consolidated rapid or consolidating rapidly over the past few years a lot of them have kind of finished their story on this they're into that three 400 million dollar range and they're probably they're probably um consolidating those and cleaning them up and maybe looking for their next next move or transaction uh around that larger larger base i would look more regionally whether it's from an oem buying regionally or it's you know there's there's some really impressive 100 million dollar dealers out there now that are buying share regionally and they're you know they're coming out of uh the midwest there's a couple of them there that are growing nicely there's obviously a couple up in the minnesota area one really big one but a couple others that are in that hundred million dollar range that are that are also acquiring so i i think a lot of the ones a lot of the top-end you know mps bta guys that wanted to sell it probably sold and then this is yeah covid's definitely brought a new a new light forward i think 2021 will be interesting to see like there's still i i'm here in lockdown toronto there's you know there's a fantastic mps dealer located here in a midsize dealer that didn't want to sell before and who knows maybe maybe things change or maybe they maybe they become the next springboard to um you know to to start bolting on other smaller ones that to the point earlier if you haven't expanded beyond print um and you're a two three four five million dollar dealer then then you might be looking to uh to get your chips off the table as quickly as you can tim can i layer on to that a little bit um i i do think that uh some of these purchases that you're seeing right now are opportunity buys uh that are coming up and maybe they're different players that are buying than what we've seen in that big big cluster of m a activity in the past another thing that is happening is the this push to virtual is allowing some of these larger regional dealers to perhaps expand their geography because they can remote uh offer services and set up some kind of an a network for for this the few times that they need something in person so i i do think that that might be a trend going forward uh it may actually allow some of these regional larger regional players to expand their map across the nation in a more efficient manner so very good point all right thank you very much we're going to move to our second panelist question and brian hope you didn't get too far away from the mic because you're leading this one um what uh what or where are the biggest opportunities for dealers and what do you view as the biggest challenges um okay well then um well i think i can start by saying it's obvious we're in a period of incredible innovation disruption and the economy that's you know that we're going to see in 2021 2022 uh it's going to look really different and you know much of this change including social change that's that's obvious and apparent will be good um you know i think for from an industry perspective no longer are we that frog that's slowly being boiled right literally like we were thrown into that pod of scalding water march 25th and we needed to figure our way out and many dealers have like i look to the most progressive dealers i love their refreshed mindset i love their elevated risk tolerance um one of my favorite dealers i was speaking to last week he said that if if um you know he'd sell false teeth to his customer if that's what they wanted and um and dealers like this have been quick to react and they've seen significant success in new lines whether that's ppe safety janitorial and obviously mike can speak to that much better than i um and hey tim like clover is a great example of a company that you know quickly added ppe to backfill lost revenues and um and so i think all those things are really relevant as a backdrop now if i was look to look maybe at the um maybe on the downside so if i could say there are um two um two challenges uh one internal and one external so if you thought of a swot analysis or a swat perspective this probably sits under that weakness bucket and that's gonna be shifting the sales strategy to i think one that reflects the new reality um you can can dealers figure out how to sell virtually fast enough uh i had some my initial upbringing was with lanier and then i spent five years uh heading up the office products business for pitney bowes in canada um my very early days in this industry and it's not a myth that a significant percentage of the industry has followed this winem dynam signum approach to selling um and and that's over right it's clearly over and so can these providers shift to a value-based selling motion quickly enough um and if it's anything like the dealers i work with like 2020 you know it's they're like it was definitely a decline in terms of new wins and their ability to to access a customer um or a prospect and the second challenge i think this sits more more around a threat i guess in your swot and that's that is the reality that print will never matter as much to the end customer as it did in 2019 or before um you know the environments rapidly decentralizing security and safety trump everything if you only offer print do you offer enough value for the end customer you know in some situations at the enterprise level the upper end of the mid-market yeah absolutely you do but in other situations i i doubt it um and so that's one of the reasons why i believe you know we're about to see a significant influx of new resellers entering the contracted print space and that might be more where the opportunity lies op resellers it resellers itvars are all winning new mps contracts at a pace much faster than they ever did before and i don't see that slowing down anytime soon and quite quite frankly it doesn't matter that they outsource their mps to another partner these you know these resellers live with a partnering strategy and this totally works for them i think it also doesn't matter that prints a tertiary conversation they're having with their customer because it's it's probably the only print conversation that's happening with that customer today um and these resellers under understand how to sell through an inside sales motion um so i i think that's you know i think those things are all really important and you know the other one may be specific to traditional print uh and personally what what i'm seeing or what we're seeing in terms of real expansion i look at xerox and other oem agents that are becoming hp authorized they're outsourcing their non-xerox nps opportunities to a third party partner and they're wrapping hundreds of machines under contract and for some of them this is survival and i think independent dealers have that innate ability to survive so um you know so i think that's that's primarily it and you know for for other dealers that are out there that may already be on the on the a3 side and the mps side you know your next concentric circle could you know if it goes beyond outsourcing mps or securing an a3 line you know obviously barcode printing is booming 3d printing is is clearly growing and and other managed services out there are uh are definitely developing and are options so like that's maybe maybe my perspective on it but i think any way you look at it there's like there's never been a better time to make a decision and to jump out of the pot literally so yeah thank you brian uh now i'm going to pass over to mike mike what are your thoughts on the biggest opportunities well that plays to the strength of the independent dealer is because they generally work with their customers very closely and whether they deserve it or not are often their most trusted advisor and consultant so um you know i like brian's example of the false teeth you know they will find a way to get you whatever you want so that that's absolutely true and i owned a business for over 20 years and uh i made a lot of those kinds of trips out there to find things i didn't know uh even existed before i had to supply them to somebody but i think that you know you'll see a lot of uh them trying to do what they can to help support the work from home movement whether it's you know laptops whether it's ergonomic products whether it's seating whether it's you know other things they need to function effectively in their new office environment but the challenges that come with that are going to be significant because now you're dealing with more small orders sometimes to residential locations which doesn't play to the strength of trying to consolidate your order size and and you know supply the whole office on a you know much more um efficient manner and then you know the new products that you know are in demand now do the dealers have the the supply chain and the relationships and and with the manufacturers and and distributors in that industry to to do what they need to do so um that would be uh my perspective on that adam what are your thoughts uh it's an interesting question because i i think the opportunities are are and some of the biggest opportunities are really to uh are across the the entire industry and across the country probably the same really need to diversify your organization you be into if you haven't shifted to doing some more i.t services and other types of services you really need to be there and if you're already there you need to really get focused and learn it and actually make it a serious part of your business we're in a mature industry now and it's not uncommon that you now have to become from a from a transactional perspective which we still are very very transactional as an industry we've got to become account centric we need to become customer intimate understand exactly what our customers needs are and where our knowledge fits we have to become someone that helps them improve their business and their competitive advantage through the services that we offer and that's where the opportunity lies and it's different geographically as we go across the country that's where the variances will probably break out a little bit particularly as it comes to the challenges because the challenges are going to be quite different as we go across the country in the areas that have been most affected by shutdowns and things of that nature just as new york and california uh it's significantly different both in volume loss and the impact and the things that they have to focus on than it may be in some of the states that we're less affected by shutdowns but across the industry we're all affected by the fact that paper as part of the process has changed and it's changed permanently the other aspect is a4 some people talk about it as being sort of a revolution to a4 in fact it's been an evolution to a4 and it's been there for quite some time back i remember giving a talk back in in 2009 stating that a4 was the fastest growing part of our industry in fact it was the only segment that was actually showing increased placements that trend has continued from 2010 on forward it hasn't changed and but it's getting faster now what's kept it slower in our piece of the business has been commission structure commission salesmen weren't as inclined to sell these products we have to get over that we have to look at how we compensate people to make sure that we reward the right things because it costs less to service the a4 than it does the a3 and we have to start thinking about what does it cost to service what's the total life cycle cost of this product and how can we help our our customers i don't know that a need exists at all for a black and white a3 device very candidly i don't know that there's a place out there that actually needs it so we really need to rethink our sales organization to so that we can become more focused on presenting the right products the right way and compensate our people properly which may mean get away from the transactional model that we've had for many so many decades excellent point thanks ad and patricia what are your thoughts on the opportunities and challenges for 2021 so uh i would say for the dealers to follow the growth and uh the natural growth we're seeing is a all things security security's been a predominant topic for years but particularly this past year security has been critical our entire country has witnessed the fallout from security breaches so brushing up on your security knowledge and looking at different services that you can offer your customers uh is probably a key area of opportunity for dealers and then on in addition to that is the cloud of course and uh the flexibility and new opportunities that the cloud can bring in the form of new solutions that could be offered to your customers so i think cloud and security are the opportunities and then for the challenges maybe a little surprisingly we did ask what the biggest challenges uh were for the dealers this past year and they were indicating that staffing was an issue right right sizing staffing but then getting staffing back into the office uh when they needed them there um coordinating a hybrid work environment all of those have created large headaches for the dealers this year and a lot of bandwidth has been spent and trying to figure that out and it doesn't look like there's any resolution to those issues yet either so i think that's going to continue to be part of the struggle this year and the other large challenge was um keeping keeping their employees healthy a lot it came down with covet so there were you know clusters and then isolation and quarantining and uh it it affected the flow for for a lot of dealers um and i i you know intuitively of course that makes sense but i don't think that that i anticipated that response to that question so um it is a real thing so i'd say those are the noted uh opportunities and challenges for the dealers in this next year yeah thank you patricia um and mike your response um actually uh generated a question um i think you may have answered it right now but it says if the future of work includes uh more and more uh remote workforce how do dealers leverage this trend and how do they support single users working from home you mentioned a few different areas that they can support correct i i think that might be the uh the silver bullet the the question that everybody would like to answer because when you're running a distribution business it's difficult and you know the more you can fill your trucks up and limit the number of stops you have to make to empty it the better off you are and you know that's been a challenge for dealerships for a long time as people especially you know using amazon and getting used to placing smaller and smaller orders and expecting them to show up the next day so that you know significantly adds to the distribution cost and you know if you have it in your warehouse is it still um you know financially viable to do it on your own truck or do you outsource it to a delivery service or a courier or whatever so um that's just to really challenge a real challenge in trying to figure out how to balance that with your overall business and you know the different categories of products that dealerships are now finding themselves involved with just because you know all the changes that are happening thank you mike and ed i believe that your response uh generated this one regarding the whole a3 versus a4 discussion does a business user really need a3 at this point um pre-kovit mentioned that a4 was already uh gaining market share and a3 seems less desirable postcoded that's a swallowed dust i think that simply stated yes they still need a3 for the office print for most of the office print that's going to be done really a4 is going to do the job i'm sorry but the but there is going to be application for a3 where it fits and uh there still is a large print oversized print done in color and as the color applications uh are are as you start to run into more and more color applications then then the a3 is going to be a requirement but for the most part for the vast majority of jobs a4 will do the job and the problem there's another problem also and and that lies with the oems the oems have not really developed the a4 product sufficiently to do all the jobs that they need to do and they they haven't put the the heavier feeders on uh scan squared capabilities or scanning both sides of the said they really handle the scanning jobs and things of that nature they need to start doing more with their a4 line to make it more productive and more suitable for the end users too but um in terms of application eight force almost completely in charge in my opinion thanks dad all right we will move to our next panelist question which will be led by mike uh mike given the considerable changes brought about by the pandemic what approach should businesses take uh or should the uh the dealer community take mike you're on you sorry about that okay um this is really an important question it's um one that speaks to the real core strength of the independent dealer community it's pretty much why they exist and the value they bring to their customers and the community as i said before a lot of the independent dealers are considered you know not just the supplier but the problem solver and the consultant for the customers that they have um and i mentioned earlier and others did before the pandemic hit dealers were already exploring ways to restructure their businesses because office products in particular depending on who you ask has been declining at a five percent give or take range and people are trying to make up for that loss of file folders and binders and you know file cabinets and other things that the industry has supplied to support the use of paper so you know now we're seeing more in furniture and jan san and break room and promotional products um that being said with the pandemic there is so much noise in the industry right now and there's a lot of conflicting chatter about what's needed to safely reopen a business and and keep them safe for employees and customers going forward and it was just really um some you know good timing whether we deserved it or not that our association ended up partnering with issa the worldwide cleaning association in this past year which put us in a unique position to help with this type of thing issa offers many types of training not only on how to clean and disinfect but also effective communication about these activities because that that's as much of the you know solution as as the products themselves are so knowing how to do a proper risk assessment proper use of things like disinfectants avoiding the overuse of strong chemicals when increased frequency is what is needed best practices for uh ppe and safety products personal protective equipment um proper use of other types of cleaning and disinfecting equipment um so our association now you know has access to this type of training and is able to share that with our members another thing that is important to keep in mind is exploring and taking advantage of the other resources that you have out there that can help you whether it's your buying group your wholesalers manufacturers um especially with regard to new products and just distribution or distributors because these other companies are are also changing and also bringing new um things into the industry that dealers can take advantage of and need to know about so that's very important um making sure that your website and your sales collateral reflect this new commitment commitment to um safety and cleaning products and procedures and things like that so you can't just post a um you know a manufacturer's logo up there you have to be telling the whole story and offering and updating that on a regular basis so that your customers recognize your commitment to that and the last thing i'll say on this dealers need to make this part of their culture this can't be something that you just you know have one big sales meeting and a you know kickoff and and everybody's supposed to be on board with you know the new uh uh new normal as far as your commitment to cleaning and safety and so forth that you need to have regular meetings and trainings for the employees and the companies needed leadership needs to be recognized as being committed and invested in the effort so those would be my uh thoughts on that excellent thank you mike ed what are your thoughts um on the approach that our dealers need to take ed you're on mute too as well my coffin made me stop and put it on mute a lot i apologize for that a little bit uh you can't add a lot more to what mike has already said it really is uh very comprehensive the only thing i would emphasize is that because of this pandemic uh and and the impact it's had on our business the efficiencies that we've ignored in the past and the back office efficiencies that we've probably ignored is a strong word we haven't paid as much attention to as we should have we need to get really focused on how efficient we are and we're going to have to start looking at how we're staffed i mean patricia mentioned that that is one of the things that everyone's struggling with staffing the organization and that's understandable but we have to find ways to make the jobs easier for our people and we have to become much much more productive in what we're doing uh we need to rethink our sales organizations we said before and and their effectiveness and ability to get uh to be effective on a remote basis as well as they were on a face-to-face on a personal basis because it's going to be with us for a while longer and we're going to need help we're going to have to know how to deal with that so but i think mike covered it really very extensively yeah thank you patricia what are your thoughts on that the approach required in 2021 uh so i there's a couple refreshing trends that we're seeing in that people are seeking out education so learning has has increased actually during this time this last year which i think will bear fruit for everyone on an ongoing basis so that's a refreshing trend that we're seeing but i do think as an approach that uh it's important to get as close to your customer as possible now when the face-to-face is eliminated that means that you're going to need to lean more heavily on digital marketing techniques and and maybe trying out different solutions that are out there there's a lot of them now uh that can be leveraged to to reach out and make sure you're communicating with your clients on a regular basis i think that would be my advice thanks patricia and brian what are your thoughts yeah if i were to wrap it up i'd say you know what's that saying we've we've heard thousands of times we're all in this together right and so deep conversations with interesting people i think get us thinking in general and i believe sharing like the pandemic wins and the experiences in a group have never been more important um and i've got an obvious bias here i'll call it out i'm uh head up the intec group which is a pure network of non-competing mps dealers and it's part of isg which is an 800 member office products group and i also sit on the board of the managed print services association but all these groups i think really right now uh appreciating the bias they do offer a lot of education they offer these real experiences that have happened over the last year and to the point mike made earlier there's like a list of new vendors that you've probably never heard of before whether it's in the print space or it's outside the print space um you know i would i'd strongly recommend that that that independence align with you know with one of those with one or more of those groups to be able to help them see their way through and and to serve their customers through this through the disruption yeah absolutely thank you brian alrighty and we will move to our final panelist question ed if you could please break out your crystal ball because you'll be leading this one do you have any predictions for what 2021 will hold unfortunately the prediction is is i think going to be a little easier than normal we're going to see we've already saw what we're going to see uh we're going to see a lot more of what we saw in 2020 in 2021 unfortunately uh i think a lot of people got excited that the change of the year is okay we're starting a whole new year and yes we are but it's going to be a year of transition the enterprise organizations have already stated that they're really not going to standardize on their new processes until sometime in 2022 in fact most of the knowledge workers will not are not even destined to be back in their offices if they're coming back at all until 2022 so we're going to have a whole year of transition of of the way that we go about doing things and as i mentioned before as they're starting to build out these processes it says only fantasy in our mind to think that print is going to have something more to do with processes that support more remote workforce than they did when they were in the office so uh print's going to be less concerning is that standpoint the uprise is going to be in security as it may come up a couple different times today and security is is at the heartbeat of everything and we've seen that actual attempts to penetrate things have been uh happening at a about a fifty percent increase rate no expecting that to change in any way shape or form mainly because of the lack of security risks or lack of security that would affect the home network and so we're seeing more phishing we're seeing a lot more types of penetration of uh networks and things that nature so focus on developing good security practices protocols and services around that are are critical going forward so we'll see significant increases in that in terms of of the actual print and print applications it's going to be very much what we've experienced in 2020 before we see the the cloud rise i'm afraid before we see it in 2022. thank you patricia i'll push it over to you what are your predictions for what 2021 will hold i wonder if we're going to see a really effective all-in-one bundle for print as a service that that really works given the greater access to data uh that transition from kind of a b2c model to a b2b model for a print as a service uh option i we'll see that's one thing i'd like to keep an eye on and then the other prediction is that is the print isn't the only answer and i think we're seeing that i we're seeing the desire from the the dealers and the resellers to look for ancillary products to add to their portfolios um there's obvious reasons they need to do that um but uh the more emphasis and growth um that comes out of those additions will will prove that print isn't the only answer for folks so um i think those two are my predictions and then i also predict on the positive side and i'm hoping this becomes the case that the uh outreach outreach and support from the oems to their dealers uh will increase they will start um supplying more marketing services to their dealers perhaps um sharing some some data that they're gathering from their direct operations showing them where there's opportunity uh we can follow some trends from the enterprise that will flow down to the smb that that flow down is is happening quicker and quicker whereas before it would take years before um certain things would that that were used in the enterprise would start being adopted in the s b now it's like four months so some of those trends that they're experiencing already i i that sharing of that information with the dealers for their s b markets uh would be very helpful and i think brian said we're all in this together the oems know that they need these independent dealers um absolutely need them so i think all hands are going to be on deck and they're going to be throwing as much as many resources as possible out there uh to help help everyone uh succeed in a really rough kind of turbulent environment absolutely brian what are your thoughts yeah hey i love that patricia i think you're bang on i think that's really cool um maybe i'll uplevel this just a little bit i i actually think the uncertainties um i'm with that that it's going to continue in 2021 i actually think it's going to accelerate we need to still figure out what the future of work is going to look like in 2022 and and nobody really has that picture figured out um and then beyond that like i think the massive political disruption that we saw in 2020 has set the stage and it's gonna and i think this is real whether it's equity climate change and and transparency i think those three things are going to be really relevant in 2021 and and i think that applies to the imaging space like we're seeing uh so personally we're seeing a lot of companies that are adding a csr component to their purchasing decisions like literally right down to the toner cartridge if it's a single use plastic that can't be recycled it won't be a consideration doesn't matter the price they they won't buy it they'll demand their vendors use products that you know minimize impact on both landfill and carbon emissions i think that's i think that's here to stay um as it relates to transparency i think customers are going to be ultra concerned about the health of their employees mike mentioned that earlier and if we if we drill back down to a toner cartridge several studies out there that raise some alarm bells around compatibles or clones or new belts whatever you want to call them and i'm clearly not here to promote clover or hp or any other manufacturer but if you've been selling against new builds i think you're in a better position to compete if you've been selling uh new builds i i i'd say be aware of the data and be transparent to your clients like no secrets anymore and from a social perspective this might be more of a hope than than a prediction but i think our industry needs to start to become more publicly diverse uh the loudest voices all look more or less the same you know when we founded the managed print services association 10 years ago i was part of that and and and so were 11 other white men today that board's much more diverse and as we look across the industry you see more diversity and mps leadership at supplies network at cenex at hp in tech great america upland on the software side the list goes on um i think elevating these these voices are important for for many reasons not least of which it's the right thing to do but it's also critical to attracting that next generation of leaders and the innovators into our industry and so i actually have a belief that that we are going to start moving in that direction so so i'll put that out there as a 2021 prediction yeah thank you brian and last but not least mike what are your thoughts well i don't know if i have as many predictions as i do prayers going into 2021 but uh it's going to be an interesting year and um you know a lot of b2b has changed how much it's going to change permanently into the future you know it's going to be who knows it's anybody's guess i'm particularly interested in seeing what happens with the federal government and some of the state municipal this or county governments and and in particular the school systems because a lot of them have been greatly impacted by what's going on and i think how they come out of this and and are able to um hopefully get things back to the something that resembles norm for our student population is going to be important and that's also going to create a lot of opportunities for people that sell in that space and i i think that's a key is is is being out there and having a relationship with your customers and your finger on the pulse and being able to recognize unique or niche opportunities as they come up and i think companies that you know are listening and paying close attention and react quickly you're going to be able to to find a lot of opportunities to you know as i said earlier to help companies reopen but more importantly you know keep their customers and their employees safe when they do reopen so um that wasn't as much a prediction as i said is is my hope for for all our industries yeah absolutely thank you mike all right so that's the end of the formal questions that we have um i'm going to use the uh the q a time so we do have a few minutes left to go through a few of the open questions uh luckily uh a lot of them are directed to specific panelists uh patricia the first one's yours um regarding uh the uh uh content that you presented earlier the decline clicks that was indicated 15 to 20 seems a little bit low is there any breakdown by region or are these uh projected future numbers yes so there's a couple of reasons why um they may seem low re uh ed brought this up uh as a matter of fact earlier but depending on which region you're you are in you're going to be experiencing the pandemic differently a lot of it related to the shutdowns uh the hardest shutdowns have been on the east coast in the new york new jersey boston massachusetts area and then on the west coast with california but also seattle and oregon uh washington and oregon so um dealers in those areas are going to have different uh a different impact than perhaps parts of the midwest that never really fully shut down at all the other thing that's impacting those figures are um which verticals the dealers happen to serve right some verticals have been in and operating the whole time i think medical might be a good example of that but education has been drastically affected there's been more printing and less printing uh in the education sector so um it really is dependent upon the dealer where they're located but also what verticals um they're involved in and it is just an average but that's so far that's that's the average range that we're looking at so there's definitely some that have had far worse of a performance but there's also others that have seen less so yeah thank you patricia um our next one is for brian um if and when uh kova debates what will the future of nps look like do you believe that it'll ever rebound to pre-covered rates or is the mix of um in the office and um work from home or work remotely uh going to have a an unrepairable negative impact on worker printing yeah hey that's awesome awesome question i'd love to go deeper on this one with whoever pushed that out i think manage print becomes way more relevant and i think contracted contracted business uh which we've seen really springboard in 2020 continues to elevate so from the very low end the work from home you can look at instant ink from hp that's going to cost 10 million users in 2021 it's an unbelievable number you move into smb that's that's growing so rapidly with that with these new entrants into the space and then you've obviously got the upper end of the market still well covered by some by some strong mps providers so i i agree that the pages will go down overall so but in terms of manage print historically that has been more of a decentralized a4 environment and all of that is is growing and so the offset on pages but the increase in distributed print um my sense would be there you know there won't be much in terms of a decline in overall pages in mps and so it's probably still a great time to to look to contract uh your customers and wrap them up yeah thank you brian next one's for mike mike um our dealer community has some uh some well many outstanding companies um however certain dealers seem to find a way to excel even before and during cobit from your perspective what are these quote-unquote superstar example dealers doing or what are some traits or practices that enable them to remain successful um good question very good question and some some of it's luck but a lot of it is intuition and experience in the uh the marketplace over years and the people that had started gravitating especially into the jam sand and cleaning supply industry earlier on seem to have fared very well over the past year i heard numerous stories about people how their office supply business might have been down 50 or 60 percent at some points in the um year but then they gravitated to products that they were able to get for the cleaning for the disinfectants the gloves the wipes the masks that kind of thing and because they had started a little earlier they had you know more access to those types of products and relationships with companies that could help them so i i think that having been a little future thinking and and following the trends in the industry that other people were being successful with over the last five plus years um you know was a good road map and the ones that um took advantage of that were um very um you know fortunate and how they were able to turn their year around and um it was interesting people telling me that what i used to have to fill a truck up with and it was you know two or three hundred different products that were my core products that were so far down and now i'm selling 10 or 12 products that are making up almost the same amount of dollar volume that you know i was doing with such a larger mix so it was really strange strange times yeah thank you mike and our final question is for ed ed um there's a lot of talk about the remote workforce becoming the standard of the future um and there have been arguments made that larger corporations are concerned that it's going to have a negative impact on their culture do you feel that there's any merit to that concern or do you feel that um the return uh for the workforce is going to be larger than originally anticipated i think there's a that's a really great question earlier i had mentioned that many of the enterprise organizations are still evolving what their standards are going to look like and who's going to be coming back and who's not going to be coming back into the office it's interesting though as soon as people started to work remotely there was this immediate reaction that everybody's going to be working remotely and everybody likes it and it's really a great way to work and we've increased productivity many of the large organizations have found out that's not really the case uh some management don't like it some people feel that their culture doesn't fit uh and candidly speaking some people have been looking at the effectiveness of zoom meetings versus face-to-face contact and they found out that it takes two to three zoom meetings to accomplish what you might be able to do in a single face-to-face situation so many people are thinking coming back into the office and and and walking down having the hallway meeting something that comes up that you solve the problem immediately and you don't have to chase after someone to get onto their schedule is actually something that they want to make sure doesn't go away so it depends on the company it depends on their culture but there is some merit to the philosophy that the remote workforce is not everything it's made out to be many of the management processes aren't there right now to get the job done the way it's supposed to be done we kind of fell into this uh through this pandemic and we were migrating towards a nomadic workforce at some point in the future particularly with the development of 5g which even though you have it on your phone right now you don't have 5g more than likely you have the top end of the lte category and they're calling it 5g if you look closely it's 5g e which doesn't really mean it's 5g so we're not getting that bandwidth of productivity that we could have in the nomadic workforce and we don't have the management structures and the people to really i define who should be working more remote and who shouldn't be and that's still an evolving figure quite frankly there's a lot of merit to more people going back to the office and i think more enterprises are considering getting back to the office and i don't think we're going to have 50 60 percent that we thought we were going to have working remote probably a number somewhat smaller than that that's an excellent point thank you ed and before we wrap things up here i would like to uh to quickly announce that clover's next webinar um is going to take uh place february 24th uh also at 1 pm central um we're going to be opening up the registration in a couple days um but like this one um it is sure to provide some unique insight into a into an area that i think everyone on this call can relate to you um and that's the impact of clone compatibles uh flooding e-commerce market um and it's gonna have a guest speaker of trisha judge uh of the iitc um to uh to present and share her uh her expertise on it so with that i would like to uh to once again thank all of our panelists on behalf of myself and on behalf of clover um additionally we'd like to thank our attendees for spending an hour of their time with us hopefully you found it to be just as valuable as we did um and as a reminder the clover marketing team will send out uh the recording of this presentation to everyone um that registered so if you were unable to attend please send that to whoever you think would benefit from it thank you again to everyone and uh stay safe out there you

2021-02-08 12:25

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