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Today, office technology dealerships are striving to become trusted advisors to their customers, aiming to become single-source providers of technology and solutions for the workplace. For many, in light of declining page volumes, this includes cloud and on-premise document management, helping customers with digital transformation. Along with such products and services as VoIP and managed IT services, dealers are seeing document management as a means to take their dealerships to new heights.
If you have not pursued this opportunity as a source of diversification in your dealership, is it time to take another look? Following are brief profiles of three BTA member dealerships focused on their experiences with document management. Perhaps the insight they share will be of help to you as you consider the opportunity as well.
RJ Young
There is a good reason why document management is an ideal offering at RJ Young, an office technology solutions provider with roots in copiers and printers with locations throughout the Southeast. It fits perfectly, says COO AJ Baggott, with the company’s focus on “providing the ‘modern office’ — a comprehensive technology solution — to all of our customers.”
Since RJ Young was founded in 1955, there has been a constant desire “to be at the forefront of what our customers need,” Baggott says. “We’re constantly looking to evolve in order to provide solutions for those needs.”
Today, a primary need among RJ Young’s customers is clear. “One of the most overused phrases in America right now is ‘digital transformation,’ but it is a reality for everyone,” Baggott says. “We all have ‘COVID PTSD’ and we know we can’t get caught in another situation where it is difficult to conduct business. It is certainly a very viable talk track for us to ask customers: ‘What happens the next time you have to send everybody home to work remotely?’ Or, perhaps for some customers, the message is: ‘Going forward, your employees are going to work from home one day a week and you want to make sure they have the same level of productivity at home as they do in the office.’”
For RJ Young and its customers, the answer lies in DocuWare. About 18 months ago, the company began looking at the document management solution as a “centerpiece” offering, Baggott says. “It is a solid, comprehensive solution that is not industry specific,” he says. “We want to make sure we are selling the best solution. That’s how we settled on DocuWare. It is the best fit for the vast majority of our customers.”
RJ Young’s focus on DocuWare during the past 18 months reflects just how strongly it supports the product. “We actually went out and offered conversions to people who were on a different product that we sold them previously, doing so at a significantly discounted price in terms of the implementation fees,” Baggott says. “We truly feel like it is a better solution for our customer base, so that certainly helped us gain traction with our customers and our sales teams.”
RJ Young is making strides with the DocuWare solution with the help of its document management specialists working alongside its sales reps. “Typically, an account executive will identify an opportunity and then bring in the specialist,” Baggott says. “They work together; we are big on taking a team-selling approach. That gives customers some peace of mind, knowing that they have a team dedicated to them.”
Often, Baggott adds, the DocuWare sale and implementation is (or becomes) part of a bigger sale. “By having the account executive involved, he or she can see other opportunities in the customer location and can speak to those as well,” he says. “Recently, we were at a customer site for a document management opportunity and that led to the sale of a phone system. They were having trouble with their existing system and we were there to have that conversation.”
While document management results in welcome pull through sales, the software solution itself has proven to be particularly lucrative at RJ Young. “Document management was at around $4 million for us last year,” Baggott says. “I think it is going to absolutely remain one of the fastest growing segments of our business, doubling year over year. I don’t think that is outside the realm of being possible or reasonable at this point.”
For other dealers currently eyeing document management as a new revenue stream, Baggott offers some words of advice. “This is a different sales cycle than your traditional hardware sale,” he explains. “It’s a more sophisticated sale. It’s not, ‘Here’s a product, buy it.’ You have to go in and evaluate the workflows and needs of the customer and understand their business processes. That leads to a longer sales cycle.”
Document management is not something a company can “dabble in,” Baggott says. “You have to understand that it’s going to be time consuming and that you have to have some resources dedicated specifically to it,” he says. “You are better off to avoid any half-hearted attempt. That would cause you more heartache than it would be of benefit for your customer.”