April 2023 Office Technology

CONTENTS

FEATURE ARTICLES

10

Workflow Simplified Dealerships embrace document management/ECM

by Brent Hoskins Office Technology Magazine

Looking for a way to further diversify your dealership’s portfolio? If so, perhaps it is time to take another look at offering a document management/enterprise content management (ECM) solution. To provide you with a better view into the opportunity, this month’s cover story includes profiles of three dealerships focused on their document management/ECM offerings. Perhaps their comments will provide you with some welcomed insight and guidance.

Spring Break

16

BTA Southeast hosts event

March 17-18 in Orlando

by Elizabeth Marvel Office Technology Magazine

The 2023 Spring Break event, hosted by BTA Southeast, was held March 1718 in Orlando, Florida. The event featured a keynote address, four additional educational sessions, vendor showcase breakouts, networking time and a visit to a Walt Disney World theme park. The keynote, “Unity Leads to Change: The Amazing Power of a Common Purpose,” was presented by former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy. The additional educational sessions were led by Derek Shebby, Mike Riordan, Melissa Whitaker and Bob Goldberg.

Company Culture

18

Build a successful business through

these attributes

by Dale Stein

Technology Assurance Group (TAG)

Over the years, thousands of business owners have asked me to solve the culture riddle for them and the answer I tell all of them is simple, but incredibly challenging: “You have to build a company that you’d actually want to work for.” We often assume that company culture is a nebulous goal, but after examining and advising hundreds of managed IT services companies over the past 25 years, we have distilled company culture into seven attributes that will make your company one of the “best places to work.”

FEATURE ARTICLES

24

Q&A: Chris Ryne

GAP co-founder discusses

IT, on-demand training

Compiled by Brent Hoskins

Office Technology Magazine

Recently, Office Technology magazine had the opportunity to interview Chris Ryne of Growth Achievement Partners (GAP) about the managed IT services opportunity for dealers and the launch of his new offering, the BTA On-Demand Managed IT Services Workshop.

COURTS & CAPITOLS

26

Be Careful What You Sign

Take advantage of a BTA contract review

by Robert C. Goldberg BTA General Counsel

For more than 40 years, BTA has provided members with contract analysis to provide guidance on the concerns and suggestions regarding proposed agreements. Take advantage of a BTA contract review to fully understand contract provisions.

DEALERS HELPING DEALERS

29

Help-Desk Responsibilities

What do dealers require & what do they pay?

Compiled by Brent Hoskins

Office Technology Magazine

This article includes two related questions submitted by dealer members as part of BTA’s Dealers Helping Dealers resource, and several of the answers received. These answers and many others can be found in the members-only section of the BTA website.

28

BTA Dealers Forecast Revenues for the Year

We are now entering Q2 of 2023 and I am wondering how your year is going. With this in mind, I was reminded that, in the first quarter, I sent out a Dealers Helping Dealers request to member dealers for questions they would like answered by their fellow dealers. One dealer asked: “What can you share about your dealership’s revenue forecast for 2023?” Following are many of the responses received from member dealers. I believe you will find them of interest. You can find all of the responses at www.bta.org/DealersHelpingDealers. You will need your username and password to access this member resource.

n “We have an aggressive growth plan for 2023 of 23% for a few reasons, including adding some larger IT contracts at the end of 2022, which will be on plan for all of 2023, as well as three new additions in sales who will be on payroll 100% of 2023 versus 35% to 42% of 2022.” — Chap Breard, president, MOEbiz, Monroe, Louisiana

n “We had a 10%-plus hardware increase from 2021 to 2022 and look for even more this calendar year. Our goal is a 20% increase this year. We are very optimistic about 2023. As other dealerships are acquired, customer service fades and fees replace in-person service, we excel.” — Brian Bence, executive director of sales, Shenandoah Valley Office Equipment (SVOE), Verona, Virginia

n “$150 million.” — John Lowery, president, Applied Innovation, Grand Rapids, Michigan

n “We expect to grow by 24% through acquisition and 9% through organic growth. The strongest growth areas are managed IT, production and our traditional imaging business.” — Thomas Fimian, CEO, Docugraphics LLC, Charleston, South Carolina

n “Our hardware revenue was down by 50% in 2022 (from 2021) and our revenue dipped by 15% as a result, thanks to the equipment shortage. We are well ahead of our 2021 numbers year to date and expect to see 25% growth overall.” — Jeffrey Foley, COO, Apollo Office Systems, Alvin, Texas

n “At this point, we are expecting a record year for revenue and profit. The first two months are proving that out to this point.” — Evan Said, director of sales, Coastal Business Systems Inc., Eureka, California

n “We are looking at double-digit growth in 2023. We will hit more than 40% growth in MNS and cybersecurity.” — Jim George, president, Donnellon McCarthy Enterprises (DME), Cincinnati, Ohio

n “We are forecasting continued growth. We overachieved an aggressive growth plan in 2022 and, given our results in 2022, we are anticipating another banner year in 2023.” — Ken Staubitz, COO, Modern Office Methods, Cincinnati, Ohio

n “We are forecasting $1 million more in revenue than in 2022.” — Tony Sanchez, principal, C3 Tech, Santa Ana, California

n “$25 million.” — Chip Miceli, CEO, Pulse Technology, Schaumburg, Illinois

n “$3.5 million.” — Jose Hernandez, owner, JCM Distributors, Miami, Florida

n “We are looking at our revenue to increase 20% over 2022. Barring any unforeseen supply shortage, we expect to exceed this number.” — Sam Stone, president, Stone’s Office Equipment, Richmond, Virginia

n “We anticipate slight year-over-year growth.” — Jim Clark, CEO, MOS/McCrimon’s Office Systems, Gainesville, Florida

Note: There is another Dealers Helping Dealers question and dealer responses on page 29 in this issue. If you have a question you would like your fellow dealers to address, email it to me at brent@bta.org. n

— Brent Hoskins

Executive Director/BTA

Editor/Office Technology

Brent Hoskins brent@bta.org

(816) 303-4040

Associate Editor

Elizabeth Marvel elizabeth@bta.org

(816) 303-4060

Contributing Writers

Bob Goldberg, General Counsel Business Technology Association

Dale Stein, Technology Assurance Group www.tagnational.com

Business Technology Association

12411 Wornall Road

Kansas City, MO 64145

(816) 941-3100 www.bta.org

Member Services: (800) 505-2821

BTA Legal Hotline: (312) 648-2300

Valerie Briseno Marketing Director valerie@bta.org

Brian Smith

Membership Sales Representative brian@bta.org

Photo Credits: Adobe Stock. Cover created by Bruce Quade, Brand X Studio. ©2023 by the Business Technology Association. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher. Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of published material. However, the publisher assumes no liability for errors in articles nor are opinions expressed necessarily those of the publisher.

FLASHBACK

The association’s magazine cover 66 years ago this month — the NOMDA Spokesman, April 1957.

BTA PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Capture the Magic June 9-10 in Denver

The Business Technology Association’s (BTA’s) next event, Capture the Magic, hosted by BTA West and open to dealers from across the country, will be held June 9-10 at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. Prior to the event, from 5 to 8 p.m. on June 8, BTA member All Copy Products will host a pre-event reception and tour of its new headquarters in Denver.

Capture the Magic will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, June 9, with breakfast, followed by opening comments and the keynote address, “Building Unstoppable Teams,” led by Curt Cronin, a former Navy SEAL and CEO of Ridgeline Partners. Following the keynote, attendees will have time to visit the exhibiting sponsors, participate in exhibitor table discussions and/or attend one of three breakout sessions. The sessions to choose from will include:

(1) A sales dealer panel, “Optimizing Your Dealership’s Sales Team,” with panelists Mike Ardry, Automated Business Solutions, Warwick, Rhode Island; Jose Lopez, Barlop Inc., Miami, Florida; and Carol Mitschke, Frontier Business Products, Aurora, Colorado

(2) A mailing dealer panel, “Why Mailing Is a Good Fit for BTA Dealers,” with panelists Will Champlin, All Copy Products; Patrick Cunningham, Cunningham Business Systems, Alexandria, Louisiana; and a third panelist to be announced.

(3) “Key Metrics for Service Managers” session led by Gary Lavin and Mike Kirkpatrick of CEO Juice

After the breakout sessions, a dealer panel, “Positioning Your Dealership for Greatness,” will be held. The panelists: Brad Knepper, All Copy Products; Tim Renegar, Kelly Office

Solutions, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and a third panelist to be announced. After the panel, lunch will be served until 1 p.m. After lunch, attendees will have another hour to visit with peers and exhibitors, and/or participate in exhibitor table discussions. After the exhibit time, featured speaker Anthony Sci of Keypoint Intelligence will present “Preparing for the Future: Key Strategies for Success.” Additional exhibit time will follow.

The first day will wrap up with “Demystifying AI: Practical Insights & Tools for Business Growth,” led by West McDonald of West McDonald Co. That evening, attendees will enjoy a San Diego Padres versus Colorado Rockies Game at Coors Field.

The second day of Capture the Magic will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 10, with breakfast, followed by “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” led by BTA General Counsel Bob Goldberg. A break and breakout sessions, as well as time to visit with exhibitors and attend exhibitor table discussions, will follow. The second round of breakouts will include new panelists in the sales dealer panel (Scott Flaherty, Altek Business Systems, Telford, Pennsylvania; Jim George, Donnellon McCarthy Enterprises, Cincinnati, Ohio; and Tim Stanley, TDSiT, Lowell, Arkansas); a mailing session, “Mailing Equipment Decertification”; and the “Key Metrics for Service Managers” session.

After the breakouts, another dealer panel will be held. “Meeting the Challenges Faced by Today’s Service Departments,” will include panelists Wendy Hagerstrand, Imagine Technology Group, Chandler, Arizona; Juan Maldonado, UBEO Business Services, San Antonio, Texas; and Dale Scheuerman, All Copy Products.

To learn more, see pages 2 and 3, or visit www.bta.org/BTADenver. BTA dealer members receive $199 two-for-one registration. n

— David Polimeni

2022-2023 Board of Directors

President

David Polimeni RITE Technology Sarasota, Florida dpolimeni@ritefl.com

President-Elect

Don Risser DCS Technologies Corp. Franklin, Ohio don.risser@dcs-tech.com

Vice President

Adam Gregory Advanced Business Solutions LLC St. Augustine, Florida adam@goabsinc.com

Immediate Past President

Tim Renegar Kelly Office Solutions Winston-Salem, North Carolina trenegar@kellyofficesolutions.com

BTA East Mike Ardry Automated Business Solutions Warwick, Rhode Island mardry@absne.com

Mike Boyle BASE Technologies Inc. Bethel, Connecticut mboyle@baseinc.com

BTA Mid-America

Brantly Fowler Zeno Office Solutions Inc. Midland, Texas bfowler@zenotx.com

Greg Quirk JQ Office Equipment Omaha, Nebraska gquirk@jqoffice.com

BTA Southeast Debra Dennis CopyPro Inc. Greenville, North Carolina ddennis@copypro.net

Jim Buck Carolina Business Equipment Inc. Columbia, South Carolina jimb@cbesc.com

BTA West Dan Bombard Yuma Office Equipment, a Fruth Group Company Yuma, Arizona daniel@yumaofficeequipment.com

Mike McGuirk ProCopy Office Solutions Inc. Mesa, Arizona mmcguirk@procopyoffice.com

Ex-Officio/General Counsel

Robert C. Goldberg Schoenberg Finkel Beederman Bell & Glazer LLC Chicago, Illinois robert.goldberg@sfbbg.com

Workflow Simplified

Dealerships embrace document management/ECM

by: Brent Hoskins, Office Technology Magazine

Looking for a way to further diversify your dealership’s portfolio? If so, perhaps it is time to take another look at offering a document management/enterprise content management (ECM) solution.

To provide you with a better view into the opportunity, below are profiles of three dealerships focused on their document management/ECM offerings. Perhaps their comments will provide you with some welcomed insight and guidance.

Metro Sales Inc.

With approximately 260 employees, Metro Sales Inc. is the largest Ricoh-authorized dealership in the United States; Ricoh is the only imaging line the dealership carries. With these thoughts in mind, one would assume that DocuWare — acquired by Ricoh in 2019 — was the automatic choice for the dealership when the decision was made in 2021 to offer a document management solution.

“No, not really; we had other options,” says Dan Tuohy, president and CEO of the Burnsville, Minnesota-based dealership, which has seven additional locations in the state and another in North Dakota. The dealership’s footprint also includes western Wisconsin, northern Iowa and South Dakota. “When we signed on with DocuWare, Ricoh had very little influence or connectivity with the company,” he says. “They later became more collaborative, but at the time they were truly distant cousins.”

So why did Metro Sales take on DocuWare? Tuohy states it simply: “DocuWare was the best choice.” That choice has paid off. By 2022, Metro Sales was among DocuWare’s top five dealer partners. “We did $700,000 our first year and should do $1 million this year in new business,” he says. “So, $700,000 last year will renew this year, and then this year we’re looking at another $1 million. I anticipate this being a $4 million to $5 million business in the next four or five years.”

Wouldn’t any dealership of Metro Sales’ size automatically achieve great success with DocuWare? No, Tuohy says. “If a

dealership signs on but then essentially just ‘lets it sit on the shelf,’ it will die,” he says. “Instead, you need the right compensation and incentives, and you need weekly funnel reviews.”

What does that look like at Metro Sales? Tuohy shares some insight. “We’ve got 70 sales reps in our 100%-straight-commission sales force,” he says. “We pay more on net new. We said: ‘Any DocuWare that you sell to current customers will be considered net new.’ We also made DocuWare part of our President’s Club trip. Every sales rep had to sell one DocuWare [implementation] to qualify for the trip.”

The 70 sales reps have access to an in-house team poised to provide guidance and support, Tuohy adds. That is, Metro Sales has a team of five advanced technology specialists and four sales support personnel to participate in the DocuWare selling process and manage implementation.

In the form of advice to other dealers, Mike Franczyk, software and technology support selling manager at Metro Sales, notes that the support team has transformed since its inception. “Make sure your engineering [at Metro Sales, advanced technology specialists] and sales specialists collaborate with each other and work closely together,” he says. “When we first started this, the groups were siloed from one another. What we learned was sales would get its part done and then would go to service. Service would then ask such questions as: ‘What about these questions that needed to be answered? What was the thought process here?’ What we ended up doing was merging the two teams together so that now they sit right next to each other. Today, we have a very agile team. We run into fewer ‘hiccups’ along the way with all team members being able to communicate quickly and effectively with each other.”

Tuohy says “there is no other ‘stickier’ part of our business” than document management. “I mean, we also do managed network services, but you can remove that in 30 days,” he says. “However, if I pulled DocuWare out of our organization [yes, the product is used internally at Metro

Sales], it would be a challenge. We are now deeper and wider in our customers because we’ve changed their whole work environments.”

DocuWare is one of the dealership’s four pillars “right up there with managed network services,” Tuohy says. “We’ve got a managed office approach. That’s where you need to be as a dealer; look within the four walls of your customers and understand how to capture every technology dollar spent.”

PERRY proTECH

John Swalwell had a unique opportunity to influence his future prior to joining PERRY proTECH, based in Lima, Ohio, where he serves as director of operations. Before he joined the 250-employee, eight-location (across northwest Ohio, northeast Indiana and southern Michigan) dealership nearly 16 years ago, he worked at Kyocera and supported Perry Corp., now PERRY proTECH. “Kyocera didn’t have its own document management solution,” he says. “In the day, it was all about which vendor gave the best support in your region. Well, Prism Software gave great support in the Midwest region. So, as the solutions manager for Kyocera for that region, I would recommend Prism’s products a lot.”

PERRY proTECH heeded Swalwell’s advice and began selling Prism. “We started with DocRecord [Prism’s ECM platform] and DocForm [automating business communications] in 2006,” Swalwell says. “We had a lot of manufacturing clients with a need to do away with line printers or archiving transactional printing from older host environments. DocForm has the ability to capture those print streams, overlay them on electronic forms and archive everything into DocRecord with appropriate tags based on all of the metadata. It was just a fantastic, relatively turnkey solution for those clients.”

Prism’s products are always improving, Swalwell says. “They are really a proactive partner; they continue to grow their product line,” he says. “That is key for us. When you are successful with a given product and have a comfort level with the vendor, and all of a sudden there are four or five other things added that look intriguing, it’s so easy for us to expand with the product. That’s what Prism has done over the years; they continue to add features.”

The fondness for Prism reached new heights around 2014 when the company “changed the entire structure of its maintenance plans; that really catapulted our Prism sales,” Swalwell says, citing the move from an annual renewal only

— Dan Tuohy Metro Sales Inc.

to a five-year-plan option, paid upfront but providing the customer with a 40% savings. “That makes a lot of sense for our customers and it helps to ensure our revenue stream long term. Today, there is no ‘back and forth’ with the customer about annual renewals, which is always a good thing.”

Even with all of the praise for Prism, “it’s not about going out and saying: ‘Let’s sell some Prism today,’” Swalwell says. “Instead, it is: ‘Let’s find a client who has a need.’” That begins with a simple question, he says. “When a rep knocks on a door and asks, ‘Who is in charge of your copiers?,’ that rep is the third person asking the question that month. Instead, the technology sales executive needs to walk in and ask: ‘Who’s in charge of your content management and business process improvement?’”

Today, there is “so much opportunity” for document management/ECM, because the need is intuitive and widespread, Swalwell says. “Anyone who uses paper or emailbased workflows knows that they are time consuming and ‘break’ easily,” he says. “Plus, we also now have the situation where knowledge workers want to work from home ... We have been leveraging that whole digital transformation the media is playing up, which is good for us.”

Swalwell shares advice for others only now considering offering document management/ECM. “Stick with it and leverage your vendor,” he says. “It is very common to see a dealer dive into this, hire a specialist and, six months later, because $250,000 worth of software was not sold, kill the whole program and walk away from it.”

Today, it is “much easier for dealers to get into this, but they have to stick with it,” Swalwell says. “It will only be a matter of time before reps are really, truly successful at identifying the opportunities ... We want to get our piece of that pie, because if we don’t sell it to the customer, somebody else will. We’re currently averaging two to four installations a month. We anticipate that will grow in the future.”

TGI Office Automation

Nearly 60 years ago, what is today TGI Office Automation was established in the founder’s garage. The product line: Paper and office supplies. Today, the company, based in Brooklyn, New York — with Ricoh, Toshiba and HP as its primary office imaging product lines, and offering a broad range of other products and services, including Lexmark printers and MFPs — has about 500 employees working from nine

“ ... If I pulled DocuWare out of our organization ... it would be a challenge. We are now deeper and wider in our customers because we’ve changed their whole work environments.“

locations in New York, New Jersey and Florida.

“TGI has migrated from office supplies to office equipment to office technology to office automation and, now, to office optimization — it’s been this natural progres sion,” says Brian Sampietro, CIO. “Like a lot of dealers, what we’ve found over the years is that whether it’s in print, print security, ECM, au tomation or integration, most of our clients don’t have that natural skill set because they only see their environments where we see hundreds or thou sands of different but similar situations where we can take what we learn in one case and leverage that to help many other clients with similar problems.”

That has been particularly true with ECM — “the busi ness automation side” — Sampietro says. “Anytime there is

a repeatable process, you get better at [implementing] it as time goes on, and you are able to make money at it,” he says. “That’s been a huge benefit to us.”

How huge? “If we look at regular commercial business

“We want to get our piece of that pie, because if we don’t sell it to the customer, somebody else will. We’re currently averaging two to four installations a

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BTA Partner since 2006.

Why M-Files? “Over the years, we had gone very wide, offering 10 different [document management/ECM] products,” Sampietro says. “However, a few years ago, we looked at the different systems out there and decided to reach out to M-Files because we found that it had a tight integration with the Windows operating system. That way, people who are used to accessing documents and working on them in a ‘native space’ don’t have to learn a new piece of software. They can simply go into their M: drive [the M-Files integration into Windows Explorer], open it up, start working on their document, modify it, save it and have the M-Files capability behind the scenes manage it and make sure the indexing is updated property and the document is sharable so that they can collaborate on it.”

Sampietro’s praise for M-Files extends to the level of support it offers to TGI as well. “They are constantly sending out new documents for marketing and battle cards you can use to enhance your sales tactics,” he says. “They also offer to assist with demos. Plus, they give us leads in our area. We won a pretty large account that way where M-Files also worked with us to configure a complex workflow.”

In their interactions with customers, TGI general sales reps and in-house ECM specialists do not convince prospects by talking about the M-Files product by name or listing its features, Sampietro says. “They don’t want to hear about all of the capabilities,” he says. “They just want to know what is going to make their problem go away.”

Sampietro emphasizes that the key to success in solving customers’ problems with ECM is understanding their business processes. “You cannot sell ECM if you do not truly and deeply understand your customer’s business processes,” he says. “If you don’t understand their business, there is no conversation to be had.” n

Brent Hoskins, executive

director of

the Business Technology

Association,

is editor of Office Technology magazine. He can be reached at (816) 303-4040 or brent@bta.org.

“You cannot sell ECM if you do not truly and deeply understand your customer’s business processes. If you don’t understand their business, there is no conversation to be had.“

— Brian Sampietro TGI Office Automation

Spring Break

BTA Southeast hosts event March 17-18 in Orlando

by: Elizabeth Marvel, Office Technology Magazine

The 2023 Spring Break event, hosted by BTA Southeast, was held March 17-18 at Disney’s Beach Club Resort in Orlando, Florida. The event featured a keynote address, four additional educational sessions, vendor showcase breakout sessions, plenty of networking time and a visit to a Walt Disney World theme park.

The keynote, “Unity Leads to Change: The Amazing Power of a Common Purpose,” was presented by former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy. The additional educational sessions: “Developing the Post-Pandemic Salesperson,” by Derek Shebby, Modern Sales Training; “Building a Quality Organization” by independent consultant Mike Riordan; “11 Core Competencies in Sales to Dominate Your Marketplace in 2023,” by Melissa Whitaker, Melissa Whitaker International; and “Why BTA?” by BTA General Counsel Bob Goldberg. The vendor showcase breakout sessions featured speakers from Brother, Modern Sales Training and Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America.

The exhibiting sponsors were: ACDI, AgentDealer, Brother (lunch and vendor showcase sponsor), Clover, ConnectWise, Cranel, Crexendo, ECI, Epson, Equipment Brokers Unlimited, First Citizens Bank, FP (breaks sponsor), GreatAmerica, Hytec, IBPI, Intermedia, Keypoint Intelligence, Kodak Alaris (breakfast sponsor), Konica Minolta, LEAF, Midwest Copier Exchange, Miramar Copies, Modern Sales Training (vendor showcase sponsor), NA Trading and Technology, Ninestar, Printerpoint, SalesChain, Sharp (keynote and vendor showcase sponsor), Toshiba, Wells Fargo, White Cup, Xerox (reception sponsor), Y Soft and Zultys.

BTA’s next event, Capture the Magic, will take place June 9-10 at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. For more information, see the ad on pages two and three, the President’s Message on page eight or visit www.bta.org/BTADenver. n

Elizabeth Marvel is associate editor of Office Technology magazine. She can be reached at elizabeth@bta.org or (816) 303-4060.

Clockwise from top: Former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy presents the keynote address; Spring Break featured a keynote address, four additional educational sessions, vendor showcase breakout sessions, networking time, a welcoming reception and a Disney theme park ticket; Riordan; Goldberg; Whitaker; and Shebby.

Clockwise from above left: 2022-23 BTA Southeast President Jim Buck, Vice President Blake Renegar and PresidentElect Mike Hicks serve as the Spring Break

Unity Leads to Change

Spring Break’s keynote address, “Unity Leads to Change: The Amazing Power of a Common Purpose,” was presented by former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy. He received a standing ovation for his comments encouraging Americans to overcome their differences and unify in order to change their country and their lives.

He began the keynote with some well-received jokes about his family and members of Congress, and then moved into his thoughts on the state of the country and his goal for the speech. “We are divided,” he said. “We are disunified. We are in a state of conflict ... And we figured out how to monetize fear and anger ... We are a 50/50 country. And you would expect there to be different viewpoints in a society as pluralistic as ours, and that’s good. But when that contrast morphs into what I think we have now, which is conflict — sometimes manufactured conflict — it’s debilitating ... So, what do we do? I’m going to try to persuade you of the value of ... an unlikely relationship.”

Gowdy told the story of his friendship with Tim Scott, a senator from South Carolina who served in the U.S. House of Representatives with Gowdy at the beginning of their political careers. While the pair have many things in common — and are both Republicans — there are also significant differences in their childhoods, careers and lives in general. This led to him speaking about the importance of seeing the world through others’ eyes.

“The differences always exist whether we see them or not,” he said. “As a litigator, the last thing in the world I needed was to talk to a bunch of cops who saw my cases the same way I did. How does that help me? It doesn’t even make me a better advocate for my side ... If you want to be a better advocate, even for what you believe, why would you not expose yourself to what other people believe, think and how they see the world?”

He encouraged attendees to thoroughly vet their beliefs as well. “I want you to just think about what you believe and why you believe it,” he said. “Do you know why you believe what you believe? Have you vetted it? Have you put it through the cauldron of cross-examination? Have you analyzed it?”

He also asked the audience to consider how they communicate. “We’re trying to move people we don’t know,” he said. “We don’t know where they are in life. We don’t know what their position is on this or that. So are we persuasive? Do we communicate in a persuasive way? ... So, [regarding] the manner in which we communicate, what works is ... sincerity, authenticity, having a relationship, expressing interest. What doesn’t work? Hypocrisy doesn’t work. Telling people to live their lives one way while you live your life another way doesn’t work. Insults don’t work ... They’re not persuasive.”

Gowdy’s final point focused on how to “morph this conflict into contrast, to [create] something we can live with, something that doesn’t feel so debilitating and so unsustainable. We need someone to deliver that message.” He encouraged attendees not to depend on politicians, but on themselves, referencing the anonymous soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. “I can’t name five people there, but I would ask you: Who founded and fought for and preserved and sought to improve this republic?” he asked. “They are the names you don’t know ... Anonymous everyday Americans who find something a little bigger than themselves ... If you are waiting on politicians to do it, you will have a long, unfruitful wait. Politics reflects. It reacts. It doesn’t lead. If you want leadership, it has to come from average, everyday Americans — and that means you.” n

— Elizabeth Marvel

emcees.

Clockwise from top: Shebby presents a vendor showcase breakout session; Kelly Hyde of White Cup Solutions visits with Brian (center) and Eric Charlton of BXI Consultants Inc., Tonawanda, New York, during a break between sessions; Mike Sullivan (left) of Mossmans Business Machines, Pomona, New Jersey, visits with Bryan Smith (center) and Joe Caruso of Brother during a break; Cranel’s David Roquemore (left) and Tom Wright (center) visit with Gary Hyman of Hyman’s Ink Center Ltd., Port St. Lucie, Florida, during a break.

Left: Attendees enjoy a welcoming reception at the Yacht Club Marina on the evening of the first day of Spring Break.

Company Culture

Build a successful business through these attributes

by: Dale Stein, Technology Assurance Group (TAG)

While most 10-year-olds are busy trying to remember the correct spelling of “Wednesday,” how to handle a first crush or what the state capital of New Mexico is, entrepreneurs at that age are just wired differently. In fact, I distinctly remember making a promise to myself at that age that every entrepreneur eventually makes to himself (or herself): I swore I would never work for someone else.

I refused to work for a moron. I refused to work for someone I did not respect. I refused to work in an environment where my contributions were meaningless. And according to almost every adult I knew as a 10-year-old, bosses were those people.

However, decades later, something funny happened. Once I was the one in charge of building and scaling my own businesses, I quickly realized I needed to offer something more than high wages to attract top talent to my teams. While it is true the money may motivate someone to join your team, company culture will dictate whether or not he will stay, perform or care about actualizing your vision.

Over the years, thousands of business owners have asked me to solve the culture riddle for them and the answer I tell all of them is simple, but incredibly challenging: “You have to build a company that you’d actually want to work for.”

Employees Want to Escape Poor Company Culture

So many business owners I talk to who are suffering from turnover issues are scratching their heads and saying things like, “How come nobody wants to work anymore?” While many people would point to buzzwords like “COVID-19,” the “workfrom-home (WFH)” movement or “quiet quitting” as reasons why so many individuals are refusing to work, those are all just surface-level excuses for the underlying issue: Employees are using whatever trend they can latch on to in order to escape poor company culture. The “great resignation” is merely a response to how bad most company cultures have become.

Even though many business owners are quick to assume

they do not have any culture issues, you would be stunned to hear how many of them view their employees in private conversations. I cannot tell you how many times they have considered their employees to be a “necessary evil” or another problem vector they simply have to deal with. Just as you would expect, these companies typically have the highest turnover levels and struggle to retain talented individuals because they need to adjust their core philosophies. Your employees are supposed to be solutions, not problems.

Would a Younger You Work For Your Company?

If you are having a difficult time retaining employees or getting peak performance from your team, the first question to ask yourself should not be, “What’s wrong with this generation?” but, instead, “Would a younger version of me want to work at this company?”

We often assume that company culture is a nebulous goal, but after deeply examining and advising hundreds of managed IT services companies over the past 25 years, we have distilled company culture into seven attributes that will make your company one of the “best places to work.”

Before we start, the first thing to realize is employees are not looking for a job, they are looking for the job. The members of Generation Z are actually leading a revolutionary transition in the workplace where they are expecting their employers to be mentors, they expect their companies to be contributing something positive to the world, and I would even go as far as to say they only want to work for people who are enlightened.

Just like all entrepreneurs, they want to know they have the potential to make a real impact on the world through their work. They want their creativity to be valued and they want to be surrounded by talented individuals who can clear obstacles from their paths to achievement instead of placing them in the way. Here is how you can accomplish that with your company culture.

Seven Attributes of a Successful Company Culture

There are common traits among companies that build strong company cultures. You can transcend the little tips, tricks and hacks that everyone studies frenetically by mastering the following seven core attributes. They will inform all of the little things that create a positive company culture.

(1) Your company must be a vehicle for constant learning — Growth is a fundamental human desire. If your company is a place where people are constantly learning, it is only a matter of time before they will flourish beyond your expectations for them. We thoroughly encourage our member companies to invest in employees through books, courses, workshops, training and certifications.

However, some business owners are reluctant because they fear they might invest all of this money into their employees only to have them trained and then leave the company. The real question is not, “What if I invest and they leave?” but, rather, “What if I do not educate them and they stay?”

Education is the cure for stagnation, as long as it is driven by your employee’s curiosity. If you treat an employee like a valuable asset, he will perform like one. If you treat your employee like a bad investment, he will perform like one.

(2) Your company must have an aspirational vision — The CEO’s job is to see a better vision for the future and to communicate that vision to everyone in a way they can understand. Ultimately, the CEO’s job is to embody that vision and be an enlightened example of it.

Studies are starting to back this up and it is obvious that one of the core values that drives Gen Z is a strong sense of meaning in their work. In fact, according to Randstand’s 2022 Workmonitor report, 42% of Gen Z workers would even take a pay cut if it meant working a job that makes a difference in the world, and 49% would not accept a job at a company that does not align with their values.

Even though you know how impactful your products/services are to your customers’ lives, do your employees regularly get to see that impact? Ask your employees how their personal success (and the company’s success as a byproduct) could positively impact those they care about.

Apple’s vision is not to sell more iPhones, laptops and headphones than Samsung. It is to empower every creative person in the world to be more creative. Tesla’s vision is not to sell a ton of electric cars. Its vision is to save the planet through cars. Meta’s (Facebook’s) vision is not to amass as much personal data as possible. Its vision is to connect the world.

But you do not have to be a giant company with a giant budget to have meaning. For example, have you ever walked

into a fancy coffee shop where the barista tries to explain to you, in excruciating detail, the specific topography of the particular Colombian hillside from which the native coffee bean farmers carefully extracted your coffee beans?

Even though you might not care about the origins of your cappuccino, the process and people involved mattered so much to the minimum-wage barista that he took the time to learn about them. Imagine if you could galvanize that type of commitment to your projects. If you can connect your vision to your employees’ personal values, you will inspire their passion.

(3) Your company must recognize the four different communication styles — Business is relationships. And your team’s communication skills determine the quality of their relationships — with their colleagues, their managers, your customers, etc.

In previous articles, we have mentioned the four different DiSC communication styles and how essential it is to adapt our communication style so we can build rapport with others. You can read more on the four styles in the May 2022 Office Technology article, “Hiring & Mentoring,” and the February 2023 article, “Increasing Engagement.” But the main point is: If we learn to speak other people’s languages, we can accelerate collaboration and mutual respect more quickly than any “company initiative.” When your employees realize that everyone they know can “speak our language,” they feel seen, understood and heard.

If people do not have an opportunity to contribute, if they are not listened to or regarded with genuine respect, why on earth would they remain engaged? Would you? As a leader, it is your job to give them the skills to be successful in their communication. Additionally, you can do this by maintaining an open channel of communication. It is not about agreeing with them on everything; it is about allowing them the opportunity to contribute — even bad ideas.

When you disagree with your employees, they deserve the right to know why management is not going to go in their direction. If you refuse to tell them why their ideas are incomplete or may negatively affect another area of the organization that they have not considered, they will eventually clam up, withdraw their passion, become indifferent and stop attempting to contribute anything toward your company’s growth. In the short run, you will gain some speed, but in the long run, you will lose their engagement. As a leader, the point is to nurture a culture where ideas are welcome contributions, rather than annoyances.

Most importantly, ask your employees about their ideas for improving their own performance. You might be shocked

If your company is a place where people are constantly learning, it is only a matter of time before they will flourish beyond your expectations for them.

by their responses. Most employees are just waiting to be asked.

(4) Your company must accept change as an opportunity — How many other business owners do you know who try to bad mouth, resist or ignore any change, even at the cost of their business’ survival? Employees are not blind to this. Of course there is a time and place to remain conservative, however, if we want our company to be exceptional, we need to venture out into a bit of uncertainty and that demands we face challenges and reframe them as opportunities.

In other words, it is our job as leaders to see the silver lining in every challenging situation. Every giant obstacle can be alchemized into a giant competitive advantage — it just depends which side of the problem you are on.

If you have not figured it out yet, it is a big problem. However, once you have overcome it, there is now a huge barrier to entry your competitors will struggle to overcome. If it was this difficult for you to overcome, just imagine how much more difficult it will be for competitors to figure it out and catch up to you.

The reason all of this is important is because optimism and pessimism are contagious. When you exemplify an opportunistic attitude, it rubs off on your team members and they will start to see opportunities where they once saw brick walls. It is extremely powerful when you have a large group of people who collectively understand that there is always a solution.

(5) Your company must facilitate personal achievement — Your employees already have plenty of goals for themselves. In fact, they probably have much more demanding goals for themselves than you could ever impose on them and get away with. The problem with goal-setting occurs when we try to impose our goals, quotas, etc., on others, while ignoring their personal aims. Behind every unmotivated employee (with potential) is just an individual who does not understand how the success of the company connects to their personal goals.

The solution here is not to hit them over the head with quotas but, instead, let them set their own goals. Your job as a leader is to help them to achieve those goals, to remove those hurdles and to guide them toward personal and professional success. The more they realize they can set goals and accomplish them, the more bold they will be. And that is how you lead by inspiration versus fear.

If you are having a tough time getting your team motivated to hit your goals for them, ask yourself, “When is the last time I asked my employees what their goals are for themselves?” If you expect your employees to honor the company’s broader goals, the company should also know and honor their goals.

Their personal success is synonymous with the company’s success. It is not a trade-off — it is an amplifier.

(6) Your company must incite passion — Your employees will only be as passionate as you are about the business. This might mean you need to step back, think bigger and expand the business into forbidden territories. But just like optimism, passion is contagious as well.

If you are struggling to remember your passion, it may very well be because you have shrunk your dreams down to more “realistic expectations.” However, it is critical that others in your organization can feel your zeal for life.

For example, imagine a bunch of eager young cooks working for a tired, dissatisfied, despondent chef — one who used to make food he loved, but is now just copying trends. Once the head chef loses his passion for cooking and is just making whatever the competitors across the street are cooking, and he has restricted all creative ingredients from entering the kitchen because they are too expensive, why would anyone passionate remain there for more than a day or two?

Sometimes, we need to refresh our own spirits and enlarge our vision for what is possible to reconnect to the passion that incited our vigor at the beginning of our entrepreneurial journey. If a head chef is taking risks, making food that he loves and is willing to serve controversial dishes to customers because he believes in them, everyone wants to be a part of that magic. Regardless of industry, that is the energy you want in your company. If you can remember a way to keep yourself inspired, than you will bring out the passion that is inside of your employees, too.

(7) Your company must be a vehicle for you to give more than you take in life — One of the greatest joys in life is to give to others. How many other business owners do you know who are always trying to “get more out of their people?” Obviously, your business is not a charity, so you do need your team to perform at a high level, but the mindset to achieve that is backward.

When we can give more than we take in life, it fulfills us. We feel proud of ourselves, we know we are doing something beautiful and people want to be part of that. And the greatest irony is that the more we give to others, the more they feel compelled to reciprocate.

It is so obvious to us to overdeliver to our customers through exceptional customer service, but often we forget how much of an impact this approach can have on our employees. Imagine a younger version of you worked for a boss who genuinely valued your feedback, spoke to you with the same respect he would show an intelligent business partner

Your employees will only be as passionate as you are about the business. This might mean you need to step back, think bigger and expand the business into forbidden territories.

and actually implemented your ideas (whenever you gave a really good one). And, if you gave him an incomplete idea, he taught you why it was incomplete and challenged you to become more strategic. Imagine that this boss asked you things like, “What are you most excited to learn about, right now?” and then invested in those trainings for you with the understanding that he would enthusiastically want you to try out the best new ideas you get in his business to improve the health of the company. Would you work harder or slack off for that kind of boss?

Imagine that this boss actually took the time to learn about all of your personal goals and he would connect you to friends, resources and opportunities that improved your life outside of your standard roles and responsibilities to the point where you knew he sincerely cared about making sure you hit your commission goals so you could afford that vacation to Mexico. Imagine if he would offer to listen to your sales calls in order to teach you more about communication styles, or to share techniques that have worked for him in his career, not because he needs you to follow his script, but because he wants you to succeed. Imagine that you could sense how passionate this leader was about embodying the success you are after in life and you just wanted to be around him to absorb this passionate excitement for life like a sponge. And no matter how hard you worked for him, he always found creative ways to be generous to you because you knew that he fundamentally appreciated you as a person in his life. Would a younger version of you work for someone like that?

Company Culture Is Not a Luxury, It Determines Your Success or Obsolescence

Most business owners are so busy “putting out fires,” that “company culture” is relegated to a place of low priority. However, the real source of those endless “fires” is a symptom of a lackluster culture. “Endless fires” are the hallmark of a disengaged team that feels disempowered or indifferent to proactively charging forward and taking the initiative required to bring a business to the next level.

As always, this change starts with the leader. It is a commitment to transform your business back into a place that inspires you and is a joy to be part of. Ultimately, it is your decision whether or not you want to recommit to excellence, but even though it is difficult, I cannot stress how worthwhile this endeavor is. Yes, your organization will become more profitable. Yes, you will reduce your turnover issues. Yes, you will start growing again. But the most important factor about investing in company culture is that if you decide to invest the time, energy and mental bandwidth required to turn your

company into a environment that enriches everyone, not only will you get more out of every team member, but you will renew your own love for entrepreneurship as a consequence. n

Dale Stein is co-founder of Technology Assurance Group (TAG), an organization of managed technology service providers (MTSPs). Collectively, TAG’s members do $800 million per year in IT, cybersecurity, telecommunications and video surveillance. They are located in 148 cities across the United States and Canada, and are presently serving more than 780,000 SMBs. He is responsible for developing TAG’s strategic planning and guiding its business development.

In addition, Stein is the managing partner for TAG’s MTSP, i-NETT. He is responsible for i-NETT’s daily operations and serves as its president. Stein also founded Westec Security Corp. and served as its CEO. He can be reached at dales@tagnational.com.

Visit www.tagnational.com.

As always, this change starts with the leader. It is a commitment to transform your business back into a place that inspires you and is a joy to be part of.

Q&A: Chris Ryne

GAP co-founder discusses IT, on-demand training

Compiled by: Brent Hoskins, Office Technology Magazine

Since co-founding Growth Achievement Partners (GAP) in 2010, Chris Ryne has produced a successful record of helping progressive office technology dealerships with establishing, developing, accelerating and maturing their managed IT services businesses through direct consulting, peer group interaction, specialized training, proven tools and MSP M&A services. Previously, he served 10 years at IKON Office Solutions/Ricoh in various sales and area leadership roles.

Recently, Office Technology magazine had the opportunity to interview Ryne about the managed IT services opportunity for dealers and the launch of his new offering, the BTA On-Demand Managed IT Services Workshop.

OT: To what degree do you believe that the BTA Channel has embraced the managed IT opportunity at this point? Is the channel lagging behind where you thought it would be by now?

Ryne: Many dealers have established significant managed IT businesses, and not just when measured against other dealers, but across the entire MSP market. There are dealers who have decided to sit it out or are still on the fence, and plenty of dealers in between. But that could also be said about MPS, digital signage and A/V, security cameras, etc. So, I wouldn’t say the channel has lagged in managed IT adoption as there are plenty of dealers who are “in” the business. But the dealers who have waited, or have entered and treated it as just another offering, are lagging behind those who have truly embraced it.

OT: It is often stated that the road to profitability with managed IT is a slow one. Please address what dealers should be considering when facing/understanding this concern?

Ryne: Winning dealers recognize the required investment, particularly in people, and usually ahead of revenue. I

understand the difficulty in this, particularly with economic uncertainty and rising costs. It may seem like a sound strategy to task existing resources with both MFP and managed IT duties. But fractional resources deliver fractional results, and it is typically at the expense of managed IT progress, as the priorities of the traditional business will take precedence. The result is they are slower to gain the confidence, consistency, momentum and, ultimately, revenue and profit that is needed to grow any business, especially one with a recurring revenue model.

OT: What are your thoughts on office technology dealers who are interested, but have not yet proactively pursued the managed IT opportunity?

Ryne: The 2023 version of the BTA Managed IT Services Workshop is now available on demand. In the first recorded session, I address the question of those just getting into managed IT as analogous with deciding you want to race in a NASCAR event. Build, buy or partner for the car? Who is going to drive it? You will need a pit crew with specialists. A pit boss as well. What about someone who understands the rules of NASCAR? How many of those people are already on your team and how many do you have to hire or partner with? Did someone say insurance? And if you do not know much about NASCAR (like me), who are you going to trust to lead this and know he (or she) is doing the right things with your money? The point is, they are behind those who are already “racing.” It is moving fast. It is about more than just the car, and it is not enough to just enter the race — you need to win. The BTA On-Demand Managed IT Services Workshop helps dealers of all levels identify and overcome common obstacles and provides guidance to help work through concerns.

OT: What are the primary goals of the workshop in preparing dealerships to move forward

with managed IT services? How prepared will they be to successfully move forward after going through the various ondemand modules?

Ryne: I have been honored to deliver the BTA Managed IT Services Workshop since 2010. From 2010 to 2015, the workshop focused on educating dealers and helping them “get to market.” From 2015 to 2020, the workshop shifted to more “go-to-market” and “take-advantage-of-the-market” strategies as the market grew and matured. At the beginning of 2020, seeing that there were dealers in so many phases of their managed IT journeys, I engineered the content to give guidance, insight and value regardless of where a dealer was on his path, be it just starting out, getting to the next level or improving a mature business in certain key areas.

It is not a “getting started” workshop but, rather, a “fundamentals” course based on 13-plus years of delivering it specifically for BTA dealers. Dealers across all three of those categories have said the approach has been spot on. They also liked the convenience of the remote sessions, the ability to have the entire dealership join, and the access to go back and listen to the recordings and revisit the materials at their own pace. So, for 2023, all six of the sessions have been recorded and the library of supporting materials is accessible on demand, so dealers can affordably get the imaging industry-specific managed IT information they need, when they need it, comprehensively curated all in one place.

OT: What are the dealers who were early adopters — or who have been comparatively more successful — focusing on improving today, or incorporating next?

Ryne: The sales process and the dealers’ particular ideal client profile (and why it works for them) have been well established. They have dedicated managed IT services sales specialists and have allowed them to call on current copier/MFP accounts. They are working on broader list development, vertical specialization, nurturing the ICP targets and hiring dedicated business development reps (BDRs) to own that process.

I am spending a lot of time helping dealers who are filling those roles and want to get them started off right, or helping existing sales staff members improve their skills, processes and tools to level up their results.

Another area is vCIO development. It is such a key role to the success of the program, and refining what they should do and not do, the skills that should be developed, the keys to efficiency and productivity, and lessening stress and burnout are all evolutionary elements of the role. My client

group is also busy adding tech talent, specializing roles and refining processes to keep up with sales success.

OT: What is your advice to dealers in terms of the acquire/build/ partner decisions they must face as they pursue the managed IT services opportunity?

Ryne: They will do all of them. They may not acquire an MSP, but they will acquire talent that is not within the dealership today. They are going to build local competency in areas including service delivery, repeatable processes, knowledge base and documentation, and staff training and development. And they are going to partner (and should!) with many different service providers, distribution partners and cloud/SaaS brokers to support their tech stacks.

OT: How do you characterize traditional managed services providers (MSPs) as compared to office technology dealers? What do you see as the advantage of the dealer channel over the MSP channel?

Ryne: Great question. It is one I talk about frequently with my consulting clients. Nearly 70% of MSPs are under $5 million in revenue, have fewer than 20 employees and deal mostly in IT hardware and services. Office technology dealerships are typically larger and can handle challenges with greater resiliency, provide more resources, and deliver a more comprehensive set of services that can be sourced, contracted for a monthly payment and supported under one roof. It is a compelling story.

OT: Looking to the future, how commonplace do you believe managed IT services will become as an office technology dealership offering? Will it one day become parallel with or surpass the focus on imaging devices within the typical dealership?

Ryne: I believe the office technology channel will have an adoption rate of more than 50% and, for the typical dealership, no, it will not surpass the focus on imaging — and it does not have to. Even the dealers we talked about earlier who really embrace it are planning for it to represent 30% to 50% of total revenue “in the future,” with some being there today. But I do see the two businesses (imaging and managed IT) being “separated but not siloed” in the dealerships that will have the most success. n

Brent Hoskins, executive director of the Business Technology Association, is editor of Office Technology magazine. He can be reached at brent@bta.org or (816) 303-4040.

It is not a “getting started” workshop but, rather, a “fundamentals” course based on 13-plus years of delivering it specifically for BTA dealers.

Be Careful What You Sign

Take advantage of a BTA contract review

by: Robert C. Goldberg, BTA General Counsel

In 1977, when my tenure as general counsel began, the most important aspect of the position was negotiating fair, equitable and ethical dealer agreements with suppliers. As the copier industry developed, products had defects and suppliers offered contracts that insulated them from claims. The National Office Machine Dealers Association (NOMDA; now the Business Technology Association [BTA]) had four essential requirements for a NOMDA-approved agreement: (1) Mutually agreed-upon quota; (2) Open-ended term; (3) Mediation of disputes; and (4) Interpretation in a fair, equitable and ethical manner. Several suppliers accepted these requirements while others rejected them.

For more than 40 years, NOMDA/BTA has provided members with contract analysis to provide guidance on the concerns and suggestions regarding proposed agreements. In discussions with dealers, it was often determined that it was more prudent not to negotiate any revisions and merely accept the agreement as presented. A dealer would return the document with a cover letter stating that while he (or she) objected to certain provisions, it was understood that the agreement was non-negotiable and must be returned as presented. This approach acknowledged an “adhesion” or “one-sided” agreement. The question is: If certain provisions are so one-sided, will a court enforce them?

A recent decision from Ohio’s 10th District Court of Appeals illustrates the risks of that kind of thinking. While BTA continues to review supplier contracts for members, this decision suggests it may be better to negotiate troublesome provisions rather than counting on a judge or arbitrator to do it for you in the future.

In Cleveland Construction Inc. v. Ruscilli Construction Co. Inc., the court confronted a long-running construction dispute between a general contractor, Ruscilli Construction Company (Ruscilli), and its subcontractor, Cleveland Construction Inc. (Cleveland). The subcontract at issue contained an indemnification provision that stated, in relevant part, that Cleveland would “indemnify and hold harmless [Ruscilli] from and against claims, damages, losses and expenses, including but not limited to its actual attorneys’ fees incurred, arising out of or resulting from performance of” the subcontract. The provision further stated: “This indemnity shall include, but not be limited to, the following: ... The prosecution of any claim by [Ruscilli] against [Cleveland] or any of its subcontractors or suppliers for breach of contract, negligence or defective work

[or] ... The defense of any claim asserted by [Cleveland] against [Ruscilli] whether for additional compensation, breach of contract, negligence or any other cause.” Simply stated: Cleveland agreed that if it ever brought a claim against Ruscilli, or Ruscilli brought a claim against Cleveland, Cleveland would pay all of Ruscilli’s attorneys’ fees.

Various disputes arose between the parties and the case was ultimately heard by a three-member arbitration panel. Ruscilli asserted claims against Cleveland for more than $900,000 in damages resulting from Cleveland’s alleged breach of contract, while Cleveland asserted various counterclaims totaling just under $1.4 million. Of particular note, both sides requested an award of attorneys’ fees.

The arbitration panel ultimately determined that Cleveland was entitled to an award of just over $100,000 on its claims, but was not entitled to an award of attorneys’ fees. However, the panel determined that Ruscilli was entitled to such an award. Relying on the indemnification language, the panel reasoned that “[t]he Parties are two sophisticated commercial entities that entered into a negotiated, lengthy Subcontract agreement that included several specific provisions that shifted the risk of [Ruscilli’s] attorneys’ fees and costs onto [Cleveland] in any dispute between the parties.”

Although 99% of all BTA supplier agreements are signed, filed and never considered again, it is important to understand what you sign. Take advantage of a BTA contract review to fully understand contract provisions. Do not rely on a court to protect you. n

Robert

C. Goldberg

is

general counsel for

the Business

Technology

Association. He can be reached at robert.goldberg@sfbbg.com.

BTA would like to welcome the following new members to the association:

Dealer Members

Harris Business Machines Inc., Panama City, FL

Mossmans Business Machines, Pomona, NJ

Smart Print Pittsburgh LLC, Coal Center, PA

Star Business Machines Inc., Stevens Point, WI

Vendor Member

Digitech Systems, Greenwood Village, CO

For full contact information of these new members, visit www.bta.org.

Dealers Helping Dealers Resources

BTA offers three Dealers Helping Dealers resources to facilitate opportunities for BTA member dealers to help other dealers through the sharing of insight, strategies and experiences:

With the Dealers Helping Dealers Q&A, BTA regularly solicits questions from BTA member dealership employees and asks dealer members to answer those questions to assist their fellow dealers.

BTA has set up five Dealers Helping Dealers Discussion Groups for the purpose of addressing strategies for optimizing sales. The groups meet regularly via Zoom.

The Dealers Helping Dealers Repair Network is composed of BTA member dealers providing service for imaging devices placed in remote customer locations by fellow BTA dealers.

For more information, visit www.bta.org/DealersHelpingDealers.

For information on BTA member benefits, visit www.bta.org/MemberBenefits.

For the benefit of its dealer members, each month BTA features two of its vendor members.

PEAC Solutions provides capital solutions for small businesses worldwide. It offers financing programs to equipment manufacturers, distributors, dealers and customers. PEAC Solutions is the largest independent financing solutions provider globally. This impressive reach gives the company the ability to stay on the leading edge of the financial services industry. This also provides a stable platform to showcase PEAC’s commitment to environmental, social and corporate governance. Its multinational presence allows access to a wide set of opportunities to expand existing operations and pursue acquisitions.

https://peacsolutions.com

IN2communications is a digital marketing and web design agency founded in London, Ontario, Canada. The company creates personalized, impactful marketing messages that drive awareness and generate leads for customers. The IN2communications team provides experienced expertise in the following areas: creative strategy, B2B campaigns, web development, video production, social media, paid advertising, SEO, email campaigns, blogging and original content creation.

https://in2communications.com

A full list of BTA vendor members can be found online at www.bta.org.

For more information, visit www.bta.org.

Help-Desk Responsibilities

What do dealers require & what do they pay?

Compiled by: Brent Hoskins, Office Technology Magazine

Following are two related questions submitted by dealer members as part of BTA’s Dealers Helping Dealers resource, and many of the answers received. These answers and many others can be found in the members-only section of the BTA website. Visit www.bta.org/Dealers HelpingDealers. You will need your username and password to access this member resource.

What are the responsibilities for personnel serving in a help desk/analyst position at your dealership? (You may have a different but similar title for this employee.) A related question submitted by another dealer: What compensation are you paying an entry-level help-desk software technician?

“We don’t have a dedicated help-desk position. Service technicians use remote sessions to resolve most of the issues related to print, scan-to-email, connectivity, etc. Note: We only offer this service to support our devices.”

Michael DelBorrello, owner Cyan Sky Copier Technologies, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania

“We do not have a dedicated help-desk person. Our entire IT team takes help-desk tickets. Our least experienced IT support person is only permitted to do Level 1 triage calls and then escalates as needed. Pay here in metro New York City for this position is $22 per hour.”

Wayne Piskin, vice president CCP Solutions, Farmingdale,

New York

“We use our entry-level help-desk software technicians to field copier/MFP calls also. This creates many phone fixes that reduce the number of field calls.”

Les

Harris, vice president of sales

UTEC, Ann Arbor, Michigan

“They [help-desk employees] will handle print and scan issues for our customers and techs. They assist with user questions and assist in part number lookups on certain occasions. They can also clear service calls.”

Stephen

Valenta, president/owner

OFFIX LC, Gainesville, Virginia

“Remote serviceability, hardware connectivity, and responsibilities that go beyond parts and a screwdriver; $40,000 to $50,000.”

Mitchell Mawby, vice president of sales

Professional Business Systems Inc.

Rogers, Arkansas

“We utilize all our techs to work the help desk on a rotating schedule. This way, no person is saddled with working the desk daily.”

Sam Stone, president

Stone’s Office Equipment, Richmond, Virginia

“Our help-desk [employees] cover initial triage for service calls, driver support and some software support. They do site surveys for sales and we compensate them for each site survey. They help with meters as well. They are paid salary and it depends on capabilities. A starter would be about $17 per hour.”

Nick Lioce, president

The Lioce Group, Huntsville, Alabama

“Level 1 entry IT software help here is anywhere between $40,000 to $50,000 per year.”

Rick Salcedo, president & CEO

KDI Office Technology, Aston, Pennsylvania

“We only have a help desk for our MNS department. That is usually a Tier 1 technician and we pay in the mid-$40,000s.”

Tim Renegar, president

Kelly Office Solutions, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

“The help desk performs first-level problem identification and potential fix. We have not hired any new help-desk personnel.”

Tom Minuti, president

Copy Products, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

Do you have a question for your fellow dealers? If so, email it to brent@bta.org with the subject line: “Dealers Helping Dealers.” BTA will then share your question with the full dealer membership with a request for guidance from your fellow dealers. n

Brent Hoskins, executive director of the Business Technology Association, is editor of Office Technology magazine. He can be reached at brent@bta.org or (816) 303-4040.

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(845) 999-6743 / www.docuware.com/partner

27 • ENX Magazine

(818) 505-0022 / www.enxmag.com

5 • Epson

https://epson.com/business-inkjet-printers

19 • Evo Security

www.evosecurity.com

32 • GreatAmerica Financial Services

www.greatamerica.com/1nvoice

7 • Intermedia

(800) 300-1310 / www.intermedia.com

11 • Prism Software

www.prismsoftware.com

21 • ProFinance 3.0

(800) 843-5059 / www.bta.org/ProFinance

30 • UPS

(800) 636-2377 / www.savewithups.com/bta

23 • VETech

(800) 843-5059 / www.bta.org/VETech