BREAKTHROUGH’12 Report

Customers ‘expect response, relief, (cost) reduction’

61% users buy business supplies;
68% don’t know you! Act now!

13 Dec’11 (Complete)

BREAKTHROUGH’s trailblazing cast of speakers took delegates on a journey from austerity to prosperity by advocating personalised productivity services agenda. The leadership lessons were electric! Full report and pictures here...

Proficiency Group assembled another star-spangled cast of industry leaders for its 7th annual renewal of the BREAKTHROUGH marketing conference at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry: Jennifer Smith, CEO of Innovative Office Solutions... the fastest growing dealer on the planet; Laura Gale, the 'changemaker' that has driven the unique 'integrated marketing' agenda for the US #1 wholesaler United Stationers; Ron Books and Trevor Gruenewald, ECi's dynamic duo who are transforming the the #1 software house into an innovative tech services provider for resellers; Mark Heath CEO of Bluefish, one of the UK's fastest growing 'productivity services' provider; and Alan Ball, CEO and new driving force of the #1 OP wholesaler Spicers UK and Ireland.

Peter Frost opened the conference after the introductory 'sting' from the Wombats that took delegates from 'dirge to surge' or from 'Austerity to Prosperity' with a title lyric 'Please allow me to be your anti-depressant'. The message was highly appropriate in highlighting the opportunities for resellers to succeed in recessionary times by providing 'personalised productivity services' that cut costs and cut carbon from a single local source.

Frost ran through the fast expanding scope of the OP industry that had grown 10x in the past 30 years by moving from stationery through IT through FM supplies to business services including MPS, document management and recycling services.

Frost highlighted the demise of the bigbox players... down $11Bn in sales since 2007; the rise and rise of progressive independents e.g. WBMason and Danwood; the explosion of massmarketers e.g. Amazon, Costco and Tesco.

Frost confirmed market research studies that revealed that users choosers were now responsible for 60%+ of business supplies purchases; yet only 32% were aware of local independent dealers. Moreover that Lucy, the typical user chooser on 60%+ occasions prteferred Staples, Amazon or another bigbox/massmarketer as first source choice.

Frost strongly recommended the employment of a marketing manager and professional sales rep focused on reaching Freddy Finance the CFO. This would facilitate the cost saving agenda to cut both acquisition costs and product costs from a single local source. This 'trojan horse' approach was necessary to build user chooser relationships deeper into organisation; gain permission for personalised emails driving Lucy to a user friendly webstore.

Finally, Frost updated delegates on the huge trend in usage of iPhones and iPads by businesswomen like Lucy to 'browse and buy' business supplies whilst on the go and after normal working hours. "Work has become ubiquitous; the lines are blurring between business and social activity; the office is where you are!" he concluded

Jennifer Smith - CEO,
Innovative Office Solutions, Minneapolis, USA

Innovative are based near Minneapolis, probably one of the most progressive states featuring BestBuy, Target, 3M HQ’s in addition to some hot competitors in S&T, Bertelsons and BuyOnlineNow.

Owner/CEO Jennifer Smith is a high energy, progressive leader living up to the company slogan “Be Innovative”.  Innovative grew 20% in 2009 to $28m; up 25% to $38m in 2010; and running at $50m in 2011; picking up new regional and state contracts with a reinvigorated professional sales team. Jennifer’s leadership on eco-productivity is exemplary as a visit to their green and welcoming offices prove. The lean, clean and green champion.

Jennifer focused her presentation on the 'Innovative culture' that she had created by adopting a 'ground-up' totally open-book, information sharing philosophy.

"We train everyone continuously; we recruit top talent; we invest in specialists e.g. contract selling; marketing and Document Management Services; we celebrate success and provide clarity in our objectives and share results regularly. Our customer philosophy is based on: 'Expect (fast) response; expect (empathetic) relief; expect (cost) reduction'" Jennifer emphasized. "Everybody understands this and we  practice our philosophy everyday and treat our partners: our suppliers; our wholesaler and our customers with total trespect."

Laura Gale - VP Marketing,

United Stationers, Chicago, USA

“It’s time for you to own your marketplace and wield your marketing power in partnership with United!” proclaimed VP Marketing at United's Vision conference in May. “The comprehensive marketing support we offer enables you to compete and beat the bigbox players,” she continued.

Laura went on to describe the brand design services; OrbitPoint contract management system; the Smart Deals emarketing program; the Smart Search optimisation software; and the new ecommerce webstore-front to be launched in conjunction with MBSDev.

Laura reaffirmed the 7.7% growth being enjoyed by progressive resellers participating in the Integrated Marketing program; and the CRM strategy of Retention; Growth and Acquisition to support sustained growth with existing and new clients.

Laura’s leadership in creating United’s world-class suite of marketing programs has been remarkable. This was best illustrated by the 3^rd renewal of the ‘Marketing Power” pack for 2012; its enthusiastic reception from the United account managers and the increasingly positive response from resellers. Moreover, the Vision’11 conference ‘entrepreneur’ sting was the most creatively powerful we’ve witnessed.

Laura provided a terrific insight into the latest Vision market research for the US and Europe. She highlighted the growth of the 'empowered user' beyond the office supplies buyer who were now responsible for 61% of business purchases and particularly the discretionary (and most profitable) products e.g. shredders amd IT accessories.

Laura highlighted the growth of the massmarketers and particularly Amazon who were regarded as first choice by users with independents unknown to 68% of empowered users.

Laura concluded a tremendously inspiring presentation by running through the 'integrated marketing' program created by her marketing team to empower resellers in creating an attractive brand and reaching user choosers in a powerful way.

Mark Heath - CEO,
Bluefish Office Products, Northampton, UK

Bluefish  is one of the largest privately owned office providers in the UK and the leading independent office products supplier for Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

Based in central Northampton and established in 2000 by Mark Heath, who was pleased to carry on an office specialist service tradition, first practiced by his father Peter with his Northampton company, Arkle in the 80’s.

Now with 65 employees and an annual sales approaching £20 million Bluefish has the experience of working with with every type of business - small to medium. Productity levels were exemplary at £300,000 head ($500,000)

Mark is clearly focused on providing customers with low-cost office supply service and embraces the latest technology and marketing to achieve his goals.

Mark posed the question about ECI's software history in the UK initiated by the Progress system. 11 years ago Progress was installed on the day BLuefish started and was still the backbone of his success. Just recently Bluefish processed its 1millionth order. Its basic reliability was never the issue , just the speed of development to meet market needs and bigbox competitors's advances.

Over the past year under the new ECi regime support had advanced with Acsellerate installed and plans to optimise the Bluefish webstore for mobile users in train. Mark in an extremely succint presentation rammed home the importance of technology in driving down his 'cost-to-serve' and enabling Bluefish to extenfd its flexible 'low-cost-office-provider' model into new and special categories to suit its customer base.

Ron Books - CEO,

ECi Software Solutions, Fort Worth, USA

OP industries #1 software solutions company.

Ron (pic right) has served 10 years with ECi, taking over as CEO in 2008. A hands-on CEO Ron spends most of his time engaged with its 3000 OP resellers in US, UK and Europe. Ron will co-present with Trevor Gruenewald, COO (pic below) who joined the company over 12 months ago.

ECI’s focus is not only to provide software solutions for dealers back office operations but to equip resellers with the latest emarketing tools to maximise CRM, personalised email campaigns driving users to well designed open webstores to maximise sales and profitability. His greatest challenge is to help resellers understand the tremendous functionality available within the systems available.

ECi started in the US by acquiring the #1 back office systems provider DDMS; it later added Britannia and recently Acsellerate the CRM tool service provider. It now has over 2000 OP dealers using its software. Recently it developed EC Interactive as its latest generation total software including ecommerce.

In Europe ECi acquired Interactive Solutions the Progress software developer, Integrity and eBuzz and services up to a 1000 OP dealers mainly in the UK.

Over the past year, ECi has acquired another surround technology firm called FM Audit, that provides the software for MPS resellers; and just recently acquired Digital Gateway, a similar software house focused in the office equipment sector.

Ron and Trevor have developed a very effective and entertaining 'double-act' presentation style by describing their development plans in a concise and more specific way.

What is exciting for OP resellers is the continuous development of its sales and marketing tools to equip them with the best technology available. Acsellerate has just added CXi a self-management expense analysis tool for users; FM Audit enables resellers to manage printer performance and costs to achieve lower cost per page; the latest ecommerce software had been updated to create a more  user-friendly experience with minimum clicks; and the webstore itself was shortly to be optimised for the growing band of 'empowered' businesswomen wishing to use smartphones to 'browse and buy' business supplies.

Alan Ball - CEO, Spicers UK&I, Sawston, UK

Europe’s #1 OP wholesaler

Alan joined Spicers in November 2009 at a time of huge change in its leadership. He has set about transforming the wholesalers support services to help re-energise the independent dealer community

Alan has held senior management positions in FKI, GE and Wolseley. Before joining Spicers he was the Managing Director and Plc Executive Director for PTS, part of the BSS Group, a FTSE 250 business. In that time grew sales from £300m to around £700m and Alan oversaw the opening of 120 new locations, 2 acquisitions and several new ventures – including renewable energy where the business went from zero sales to over £20m in two years.

Alan brief concluding presentation underlined his commitment to supporting resellers with a high performance mix of consistently reliable logistics; plus top quality marketing and technology services.

He gave a brief progress report on the impending takeover of Spicers by Better Capital which had been held up by European Commission issues in Spain.

In summing up Peter Frost urged manufacturers, wholesalers, software houses to co-operate closely in creating prtoductivity partnerships with business clients and its user-choosers. "We are not in the office products business. We are in the office productivity services business. Our goal is to help users cut costs and cut carbon emissions. All innovations in product and processes should start with this goal. That's what busy users want so let's create together to achieve it. They want to save time, money and space. Let's deliver productivity in a personalised and eco-friendly way.Act now!"

Peter Frost concluded the half-day conference by thanking sponsors Spicers, M-real, Acco, Pilot and The Office Spa.