Proficiency Index

Productivity is up!

2010 Reseller Review

Will 2009 leader Shoplet be overtaken? Who will lead the ‘stocking’ league?

30 Nov’10 (Updated)

I have been asked to bring forward the very popular Annual Productivity Review of US/UK resellers. We will publish this on Friday and invite resellers not previously listed to submit any claims over $400,000 sales/employee (£250,000). Please email Peter Frost before Monday 5 December 2010

New rules of branding

with social media 

Advance advocacy!

The funnel is finished...

learn the loyalty loop

27 Nov 10 (Updated)

The web has overturned how consumers engage with brands. It is transforming marketing methods and dismissing traditional strategies. For marketers, the old way of doing business is unsustainable.

Proficiency Index
2010 Poll Results

Top 6 women
OP marketers

The winners + mini-profiles are:

27 Nov 10 (Completed)
Many thanks for submitting nominations and voting for the top female marketers in the OP industry. We list the top 6 in alphabetical order with a mini-profile of noted achievements…

Carbon cutting

co-operation

Unlikely partnerships forming
between Wal-Mart and FedEx

By Lucy Jermyn
27 Nov 10

Although aggressive climate action is basically frozen in the U.S., the hard work of carbon emissions reduction continues among states, cities, corporations, and nonprofits.

Colour-Coded

Climate Counts

Will sustainable shopping guide

help brands make green strides?

By Lucy Jermyn,

25 Nov 10

Humans are well intentioned, but lazy creatures; give us a long-winded report about sustainable retailers and we will quickly forget about it.

Best Buy’s

into Twitter

Consumer electronics king’s

insight ahead of Black Friday

By Brian Dunn CEO Best Buy

25 Nov 10

Tomorrow is Black Friday, the biggest US retail shopping day of the year, followed by Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopper day. Best Buy is forecast to attract bumper traffic. Brian Dunn talks about the Twitter effect

Reliant: refreshed
and ready to roll

Houston dealer committed to full
customer productivity partnerships

24 Nov 10
It is almost 2 months since we first interviewed the Reliant Business Productsmanagement team. We apologize to them and our readers for the extended delay. So we called them again yesterday to refresh their profile. It was worth waiting for!

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Exclusive Interview

The HiTouch house
of service brands

Strategy lowdown with Michael Brown... sales development or acquisition?

21 Nov 10

Two weeks ago, the legendary leaders of the newly formed HiTouch Business Services, Howardand Michael Brown, announced the acquisition of MyOfficeProducts, their first major move since returning to the OP market in May.

We posed 8 questions to CEO Michael on the grand expansion plans. Here are the answers....

Proficiency Index Poll

Top 20 Women
OP Marketers

Please make your reasoned nominations

21 Nov 10 (Updated)
Both leading Fortune and Forbesmagazines have recently published their lists of the most powerful women in business. We thought it was a good idea to recognize the top female marketers leading the OP industry’s transformation from box shifters to productivity service providers.  

All entries have now been received and results will be published in a special feature on Monday

Ethonomic trends

Sustainability
Scorecard

Suppliers urged to green-up!

By Lucy Jermyn,
20 Nov 10

When Wal-Mart sent out its pioneering sustainability survey in 2009 it started a chain reaction initiated by its major vendors

Crystal Rock cuts
into OP market

Acquires Northeast office dealer

20 Nov 10

On 1 November, publicly owned Crystal Rock, the US northeast region coffee and waterdistributor made its first move into the office market…

UK Green Business Awards

A very green

ambassador

Green office week initiative

16 Nov 10

Congratulations to Avery Office Products a winner at the prestigious Green Business Awards, the UK's most comprehensive awards scheme for environmental business performance.

Depot in pay-

to-play scam?

Better Business Bureau urged
to cease dodgy rating system

14 Nov 10

ABC News announced today an investigation into ‘pay-to-play’ allegations against Better Business Bureau (BBB).This raises serious questions about how Office Depot’s summer downgrade (F) was suddenly upgraded to A-?

Depot the serial
d e f r a u d e r

Unethical arrogance and
incompetence still rife

13 Nov 10

“Office Depot overcharged Florida District until the bitter end" wrote Dave Breitenstein, government and education reporter, of Fort Myers News-Press.

Corporate Social Responsibility
Comparison report

Who leads? Soul
train or green bus?

Is Office Depot really ahead
of Staples in the green race?

12 Nov 10 (Completed 1900ET; 2400 GMT)

Newsweek magazinerecently featured the Top 100 greenest public companies in America. Commendably Office Depot were listed 18^th and Staples 23^rd. Both recently released their CSR reports. We compare and draw conclusions and comment.

Annual Brand Design Review

Are you proud of
your brand image?

Who will rate the best? Who is dressed to impress? Who gets its message across best to user-choosers?

5 Nov 10 (updated)

Last year we attracted an impressive number of entries from US and UK dealers, to our first Reseller Brand Design Review. We invite dealers again to email with their brand image, logos, message and webstore designs and the Proficiency Index team will assess and constructively comment.

To date we have received 42 responses...

Yuletide has
the growth gift

Memphis marketers becoming

high-frequency radio stars

4 Nov 10

The energetic Millerfamily, leaders of Yuletide Office Solutionsof Memphis (TN) are on a roll with a number of initiatives that could come out of the best practice play book of the most progressive dealers on the planet.

Government Health Warning

Depot’s dirty ‘bait
and Schmidt’ tactics

TCPN contract full of dodgy deceptions: random discontinuation; inflated list prices to enable deeper discounts; disguised delivery charges

2 Nov 10

Office Depot may have cleaned out its unethical CEO, but it has not cleaned up its dishonest ‘bait and switch’ contract pricing methods…