Fall Colors Retreat Schedule Friday, Oct. 21 2 to 2:30 p.m. Registration
5:40 p.m. Bus Leaves for the Biltmore Estate
2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Dealer Panel: Moderated by David Ramos, InfoTrends
6 to 7 p.m. Private Guided Tour of the Biltmore Estate
3:30 to 3:40 p.m. Exhibits Open
7:30 p.m. Dinner at the Lioncrest Veranda on the Biltmore Estate
3:40 to 5:27 p.m. Exhibitor Round-Table Discussions
Saturday, Oct. 22 7:30 to 8 a.m. Continental Breakfast
11:45 to 11:55 a.m. Exhibits Open
8 to 8:45 a.m. Educational Session: Bob Tangredi, PHSI
11:55 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. Educational Session: Steve Rolla, Pros Elite Group
8:45 to 9 a.m. Exhibits Open
12:40 to 12:45 p.m. Closing Comments & Exhibitor Prize Drawings
9 to 10:47 a.m. Exhibitor Round-Table Discussions
12:45 to 6:30 p.m. Afternoon Free to Enjoy Asheville & the Tour the Biltmore Estate on Your Own
10:47 to 11 a.m. Exhibits Open 11 to 11:45 a.m. Educational Session: Dexter Williams, ConnectWise
6:30 p.m. Cocktails and Dinner at the Doubletree
Dealer Panel
2020 — Outlook for the Office Technology Industry
Moderated by David Ramos, director of channel strategy service, InfoTrends.
Technology is changing the way employees work and, more specifically, changing when and how much they print. Office printing today has been impacted not only by changing business processes, but also by a significant shift in the makeup of the workforce itself. You do not have to think too far back to remember a time when offices featured single printers, single fax machines and single photocopiers. Today, we have the internet of things, wearable technologies, augmented reality, 3D printing systems and more. Join us for this panel discussion on the focus on adapting as print technology providers to true technology providers in today’s ever-changing business climate. Ramos is the director of channel strategy service for InfoTrends. He is responsible for managing custom consulting projects, providing forecast analysis, developing market-sizing estimates and marketing channel strategy services to independent companies in the office equipment and IT services space. Prior to joining InfoTrends, Ramos held positions at IKON Office Solutions and Xerox.
Panelists:
John Eckstrom is president and CEO of Carolina Business Equipment (CBE), located in Columbia, South Carolina. He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in accounting. After college, he went to a local firm working in the tax department and then moved to a firm where his focus was bank auditing. After two years, Eckstrom moved into private business where he became branch controller for a Fortune 500 company. He then became director of finance for a manufacturing company and was CFO to a mechanical contracting firm. Eckstrom came to CBE in November 1994 as the company’s controller and moved into the general manager position in March 1995. At the end of 1995, he purchased half of the company and became its president. In October 2000, Eckstrom purchased the rest of the company. CBE’s corporate office is located in Columbia, South Carolina, and over the past 10 years the company has moved into three new markets, including Charleston and Florence, South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia. CBE has also acquired two companies in the past three years and employs 38 people. Since 1995, CBE has enjoyed both steady growth and profitability. David Polimeni is CEO of Rite Technology, located in Sarasota, Florida, which is a single-line Sharp dealership with a large emphasis on MPS, utilizing HP and Kyocera printers. He graduated college with a ministerial degree and spent the next 10 years in full-time ministry. With a growing family and a burning desire for business ownership, he joined forces with Rite Technology, which is now celebrating 27 years in business. Polimeni has been with the company for the past nine years. Under his leadership, the company has entered into the Tampa, Florida, market and is experiencing record-setting net-new business growth with the past four years having been the best in company history. Embracing the industry progressions, he is positioning Rite Technology for continued exponential growth in new markets and new lines of business. Tim Renegar is president and co-owner of Kelly Office Solutions, a Canon, Konica Minolta and Savin dealership located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with branches in Greensboro and Charlotte, North Carolina. Renegar has 35-plus years of management experience in the industry. He has worked in corporate environments such as IKON and Sharp Electronics, where he served as president of North Carolina, and in dealerships such as Charlotte Copy Data and Triad Business Systems, where he was executive vice president and co-owner. Renegar has also served on various manufacturing and leasing company advisory councils, and his dealership has been a BTA member for 20-plus years.
Exhibitor Round-Table Discussions
In an effort to provide quality time for all dealers to meet with the exhibiting sponsors, BTA Southeast has established exhibitor round-table sessions on Friday and Saturday. Dealer attendees will be divided into groups of three. Each group will travel from one exhibitor to the next during these round-table sessions. Each exhibiting sponsor will make a six- to seven-minute “sales call” as each group visits its table.
Dealers will be given three minutes between each presentation to travel to the next table. They will visit nine exhibitors on Friday afternoon and 10 exhibitors on Saturday morning, for a total of 19. Attendees who visit all of the exhibitor tables and complete their stamp cards will be entered into a drawing to win one of five $100 American Express Cards.
Educational Sessions
Diversifying Your Revenue Stream With Water Systems Bob Tangredi, CEO, PHSI Pure Water Technology (PHSI)
Next-generation office technology businesses require diversified revenue streams and offerings to retain current customer bases and grow new opportunities in the marketplace. Building on lessons learned from 20 years in the water filtration business, PHSI strives to deliver refreshing results to a wider dealer population, often in combination with existing businesses. This session will discuss why office technology dealers are a particularly good fit for point-ofuse (POU) water system sales and the many benefits of selling PHSI units. Tangredi will also give an overview of tools and tips for launching a new type of business. USA TODAY reported that excessive lead levels were “found in almost 2,000 water systems across all 50 states.” Not only does PHSI differentiate itself with superior expertise and service, its units are tested to remove more than 96 percent of lead from a tainted water source (at NFS testing standards). There has never been a better time to experience the taste of pure water. Tangredi has been CEO of PHSI since June 2013. During his time at PHSI, he has been successful in leading the company’s transformation to a customer-focused growth business. Prior to PHSI, Tangredi was senior vice president and general manager of the Communication Solution Division at Stericycle Inc. In less than two years at Stericycle, he grew revenues to more than $130 million with 44 locations and a total team of 1,600. Tangredi’s first role at Stericycle was senior vice president of the SQ Healthcare Division, and under his leadership, revenues increased from $196 million to $550 million (a 23-percent CAGR) through a combination of organic and accretive acquisition growth. Prior to Stericycle, Tangredi was vice president of sales for Monster Worldwide Inc. He spent the first 15 years of his career with Xerox Corp., where he held many sales leadership positions. Tangredi graduated from John Carroll University with a bachelor of science in business administration.
Building a Managed Services Practice: Is Now the Time? Dexter Williams, manager of strategic markets, ConnectWise
There have probably been a hundred different presentations about the value of a recurring revenue model, but this one will be different. In this session, Williams will get real about the trends in the marketplace, explore the viability of these trends through real-life examples and look at how can you can build something that will be valuable to your customers, but not detrimental to your business. By having a process, best practices and the right tools in place, any business can become more profitable, more sustainable and, ultimately, more valuable with these proven concepts. Williams has a passion for improving businesses and helping business owners realize the freedom that comes with creating a business that works for them, and not the other way around. He has been an evangelist for the ConnectWise mission of creating success for small businesses since 2009, and has worked in several capacities for the company. Williams is now focused on expanding the ConnectWise footprint and helps bring industry-leading best practices, solutions and profitability to anyone who will listen. ConnectWise has more than 12,000 of the most progressive IT companies in the world and boasts the largest IT footprint of any business management software company out there. ConnectWise started in 1982 as an IT solutions firm and has grown organically to solve the problems of many IT service providers. The company works with all kinds of technology integrators and continues to invest heavily in the technology space.
Your Sales Playbook
Steve Rolla, senior partner, Pros Elite Group
Typical office technology dealerships have documented processes and procedures in place in their financial, administrative and service organizations. The need for documented processes and procedures in the sales department is no different, yet the average dealership has few, if any, documented sales management processes. The answer is a sales playbook that documents the processes and execution skills necessary for every aspect of an office technology dealership’s sales department. Establishing a sales culture; recruiting and hiring; tracking and inspecting benchmarked selling activity results; developing a prospecting continuum; and achieving benchmark production expectations based on benchmark territory design are just some of the sales processes that need to be documented. In this session, Rolla will show you how to construct your own sales playbook. Rolla has been in the office technology industry for 43 years and is one of the few company presidents in the industry who has come from a service background. Most in the office technology industry know him as the president of organizations that have achieved IKON’s CEO of the Year Award or the Global Imaging Systems Chairman’s Award. Rolla authored the first industry benchmarking model with Tom Johnson during their time together at Alco Standard and Global Imaging. Today, he is a partner in the Pros Elite Group and is responsible for the Pros Elite 100 Dealer Group. In 2012, Rolla published the “Pros Elite Sales Playbook,” which outlines 13 critical sales management activities, associated benchmarks and execution skills to achieve them.
Fall Colors Retreat Floor Plan
(1) Agent Dealer (2) PHSI - Pure Water Technology (3) Epson (4) ConnectWise (5) OKI Data Americas (6) EverBank (7) Innovolt (8) Carolina Wholesale (9) Tigerpaw (10) Wells Fargo
(11) SYNNEX (12) LEAF (13) LMI Solutions (14) ProcureIT (15) Panasonic (16) ESP/Ametek (17) Muratec (18) Buyers Lab (19) Xerox
Dinner Sponsor
Exhibitor Guide ProcureIT is a provider of “outsourced procurement” to help technology services companies efficiently sell cloud subscriptions and IT products. Its partners use ProcureIT to help their customers obtain Office 365, Dropbox, Adobe Cloud, Datto Cloud Backup and other cloud subscriptions. ProcureIT simplifies the IT procurement cycle by offering its customers a one-stop procurement company. Instead of having relationships with various distributors and manufacturers, ProcureIT represents all major distributors, manufacturers and cloud providers under one roof. Its highly trained procurement team helps sales reps efficiently represent a complete line of cloud subscriptions and IT products for their customers, with no internal staffing costs to your organization. Your customers receive a more professional cloud and IT product offering, typically at or lower than existing market pricing. Additional benefits of working with ProcureIT include access to technical support for pre-sales design, web-based quoting and sales reporting tools. Additionally, ProcureIT handles all of the product delivery mechanics, from quoting to ordering to RMAs.
Breakfast Sponsor
The one thing predictable about business is that it is fundamentally unpredictable. It is disordered and constantly changing — sometimes by accident, sometimes by design. One thing successful businesses do to navigate through this unpredictability is make sure the technology, software and work processes that form the backbone of their organizations are operating as effectively and efficiently as possible. No one understands this better than Xerox. The company is the world’s leading enterprise for business process and document management. Its technologies, expertise and services enable your business to operate more efficiently and effectively, whatever the situation. With Xerox at the heart of your company, you are ready to take on the world of real business.
Breaks Sponsor
Panasonic engineers reliable products and solutions for business and industry. Panasonic scanners and imaging software deliver better performance and higher reliability across the board. Whether you are scanning business cards one at a time or imaging records nonstop, Panasonic has the right high-performance scanning solution for your needs. The company works with the world’s leading data extraction and document management developers to ensure clients who invest in Panasonic scanning solutions have the most efficient workflows possible. You can count on Panasonic for unbiased software advice and ready-to-run, integrated document solutions built on the company’s proven scanning technologies.
Additional Exhibiting Sponsors
AgentDealer
AgentDealer is the sales force automation (SFA) tool of choice for many of the most successful dealers in the industry. Built on the number-one sales platform in the world, Salesforce.com, AgentDealer speeds up and streamlines all phases of sales, from lead management to analytics and forecasting. With AgentDealer, your team can manage people and processes more effectively, pursue more business in less time and close more deals. AgentDealer comes ready to go with more than 55,000 hours of customization specific to the industry and can be further finetuned to meet your specific business processes. AgentDealer is built on the Salesforce platform and can integrate with all your other systems, like e-automate. It is cloud based and fully mobile so your team can access critical data anywhere, from every device.
Exhibitor Guide
For more than 50 years, Buyers Laboratory (BLI) has been a leading source for unbiased and reliable intelligence for the global digital imaging industry. Its products include: comprehensive reports; insightful industry news and analysis and “Pick of the Year” awards; private testing services for OEMs; and advisory services for business consumers. All of BLI’s competitive information services can be accessed in its Web-based imaging intelligence product, bliQ. BLI is completely independent in all of its testing processes and subsequent reporting. All of its product evaluations are conducted by experienced employees in its on-site testing facility where BLI evaluates and reports on hundreds of new copier/MFPs, printers and fax machines each year. Carolina Wholesale Office Machine Company Inc. offers a product mix that is unsurpassed in the industry — fax machines, printers, MFPs, calculators, typewriters, dictation/transcribing equipment, telephones, presentation equipment, paper handling, shredders, cash registers, time clocks and supplies for each. For more than four decades, Carolina Wholesale has built its reputation and success by providing consistently excellent service and favorable pricing. The company serves all 50 states plus Canada and Puerto Rico, and carries more than 10,000 active items representing more than 100 manufacturers. It is one of the largest U.S. distributors of MFPs, fax machines and calculators, and is the largest typewriter distributor in the country. The company is also recognized as the primary wholesale distributor of Copystar Segment 1 MFPs in the country. Made for companies that sell, service and support technology, ConnectWise is a leading business management platform. Today, more than 90,000 users rely on ConnectWise to achieve greater accountability, operational efficiency and profitability. Leveraging the cloud, the platform fully integrates business-process automation, help desk and customer service, sales, marketing, project management and business analytics that dramatically streamline a company’s operations. ConnectWise also gives its users access to a powerful network of ideas, experts and solutions. A veteran in the technology services industry, ConnectWise has been a premier business management platform for technology companies for more than 15 years. Epson offers an extensive array of award-winning image capture and image output products (including printers, scanners and supplies) for the consumer, photographic, business and graphic arts markets. It is the company’s vision to drive digital image innovation by providing cuttingedge imaging solutions, focused on the fields of imaging on paper, imaging on screen and imaging on glass. Supporting this vision is continued innovation in core devices that provide valueadded solutions for linking imaging products. ESP/Ametek, headquartered in Knightdale, North Carolina, is a global leader in power management technology. Its products provide unparalleled industrial-grade protection, safeguard the reliability of digital equipment and enable service-based organizations to proactively manage power quality. Founded in 2004 as U.S. Express Leasing and later as Tygris Vendor Finance, EverBank Commercial Finance’s goal has been to help its business technology partners boost sales, grow profits and build strong customer relationships. Now, as EverBank Commercial Finance, the company embraces its legacy of “Real People. Fast Answers.” to bring you profit-enhancing products such as cost-per-copy, managed print services, document management, dependable execution and a commitment to individualized customer service. EverBank’s knowledgeable team is dedicated to the office products industry and your success
Exhibitor Guide
Innovolt’s patented power protection technology guards against damage from 99.5 percent of all power disturbances, including: voltage sags, brownouts, over-voltage conditions, power outages and voltage surges. LEAF has established itself as a leader in delivering results-driven vendor financing programs that are designed to get your customers’ attention. LEAF’s vendors are at the center of everything the company does. Every product, service and system is built to achieve one main goal — accelerating your sales. It is time to look beyond financing as simply a payment method and utilize the power of the LEAF financing solutions to evolve your existing leasing program from simply a deal taker to a deal maker. LMI Solutions (LMI) is the winner of the 2013 Channel’s Choice Award for “Remanufactured Cartridges.” The company’s advanced turnkey MPS infrastructure was ranked first in the industry by the MPSA and the dealer channel’s coveted Reader’s Choice Awards. Focused on dealer profitability with unparalleled cartridge quality, MPS execution strategies and dealer support, LMI offers dealers a manufacturer-direct relationship to streamline their fulfillment models with state-of-the-art packaging and distribution capabilities throughout the United States and Canada. With easy access to a huge selection of the most popular OEM and premium replacement toner cartridges, parts and print-related consumables, if you’re thinking MPS — think LMI. Muratec’s MFP solutions simplify office printing, copying, faxing and scanning. Muratec’s MFPs deliver touch-screen operation, secure document storage, high-resolution printing, simple, one-touch scanning and more to the desktop and workgroup. From plug-and-play desktop fax solutions to integrated electronic document capture, routing and storage solutions, Muratec MFPs deliver the performance, features, reliability and cost-savings that meet the needs of today’s office environments. OKI markets PC peripheral equipment and customized document management solutions, including digital color and monochrome printers, color and monochrome MFPs, serial impact dot matrix printers, thermal label printers and POS printers, as well as a full line of options, accessories and consumables. Pure Health Solutions Inc. (PHSI) is a leading manufacturer and supplier of water coolers and beverage products for businesses around the world. Since 1996, PHSI has led the B2B beverage evolution — developing state-of-the-art bottle-free water coolers, a national network for unparalleled equipment service, and a breakthrough online store for rapid beverage supplies replenishment.
SYNNEX distributes products and services from more than 200 technology, consumer electronic and software companies. The company ships from 11 warehouses located throughout the United States. Its focused product categories include: computer systems, peripherals, system components, software, networking equipment, consumer electronics and complementary services. A few of its key suppliers include HP, Intel, Seagate, Microsoft, Lenovo and many other world-class manufacturers. SYNNEX offers resellers multiple technology solution platforms to address the complex business problems of end users. Three of these solution platforms are PRINTSolv MPS, PRINTSolv Document Management and SERVICESolv.
Exhibitor Guide
Tigerpaw’s comprehensive software empowers more than 40,000 users to manage, automate and integrate business functions, including: service, accounting, CRM, inventory, field service management, sales, marketing, quoting, inventory, ticketing and customer communication all in one, easy-to-use system. The company’s award-winning software is designed for B2B service ® providers who sell, monitor and service software, computers and other equipment. Tigerpaw offers a comprehensive business automation solution for companies in industries as varied as A/V, IT, telephony, security, POS, medical equipment and ATM machines. For 30-plus years, Tigerpaw has designed service management/contact management software that helps companies make better business decisions every day. “Real talk, real results.” Stop by the Wells Fargo Equipment Finance table and start a conversation to determine the right programs, products and solutions for you.