PEiR Group Takes It “On The Road,” Holds Its Own “Town Hall” Meetings

By Shaun Meany
President, The PEiR Group


Last week I traveled to Atlanta and Dallas to host a couple of best practices workshops and to learn first-hand about the challenges – and opportunities – that the reprographics community is facing in the South and Southeastern parts of the United States.

We’ve built these workshops around the “Town Hall Meeting” format we’re seeing so much of during this election year, and bring in competing reprographers to discuss business issues and concerns about the future of their reprographics marketplace and their part in it.

It was surprising to learn how seldom (if ever) competing reprographers come together to exchange ideas. While I understand that organizing meetings of die-hard competitors may appear counterintuitive to some – I believe many attendees who met in Atlanta and Dallas saw the light.

Feedback from the 20 or so reprographers who attended our two workshop sessions indicated that the Economic Slowdown is beginning to take its toll in both design and construction sectors of the AEC marketplace.

Subsequent open-forum discussions pinpointed a common theme among reprographers today: the realization that they need to be charging for digital services and that everyone needs to be prepared to explain the value of these services to customers wary of the offering.

Can this be done? You bet it can… and it is being done, by shops who understand the power behind the offering and the needs of potential clients who stand to benefit from its use.

Our “Town Hall” discussions also determined that many reprographers are still not offering FM services. I’ll confess to being both amazed and a little perplexed by this. It is imperative that on-site services become an integral part of our offering. Why? Because if we don’t someone else will, to their benefit and to the ultimate regret of the reprographer.

And for a uniformly smart and I think tough group of business people, I was a little taken back when one of our attendees commented that he really does not like to look at the economic indicators getting so much press today because there is little that he can do to influence their impact on his business.

Sorry, but this struck me as a sort of “head in the sand” approach to the world around us, which is unforgiving at present, to be sure, but which needs to be analyzed and understood in order for us to survive.

Rather than ignore current market conditions, we need to understand why they are happening and look for the opportunities that – while few and far between – do exist out there.

This point was driven home to me recently by one of our colleagues, a man whose business has been drastically impacted by the current downturn in the AEC market. This individual realized that he needed to make up that lost revenue and set out to find markets that were underserved – finding a need in the Legal Documents sector in his area and marketing directly to local law firms.

After awhile his persistence was rewarded by a contract with a firm busy with litigation overseas, and he was engaged to support those efforts.

That’s the approach we all need to take to carry us through difficult times.

If The PEiR Group can help you with this, please let us know.


Best regards,

Shaun

Spiral Provides Southeast With Faster Service

News From: The PEiR Group

As of October 1, 2008 Spiral has a new Atlanta Distribution Center to better serve its customers in the Southeast United States.

The Atlanta Distribution Center was developed to better meet the needs of Spiral customers in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama. Now, in-stock items placed by 4 pm EST will be shipped out from the Atlanta location instead of the New Jersey headquarters. This will save customers in these states one to two days in shipping turnaround time.

More information is available at www.spiralbinding.com. For additional information, contact Jodi Lozauskas at jlozauskas@spiralbinding.com or 800-631-35721, x 1278.

PlanWell Goes Global

By The PEiR Group

As global markets change and The PEiR Group expands its offerings to meet new demand, we can't help but notice the mission of late has been to “spread the Word of PlanWell™.” New numbers indicate a global acceptance of our chief offering.

“With sales of US$11 million, 180 PlanWell systems (both PDS and Enterprise), and 74 MetaPrint licenses since Q4 2002, PlanWell has become the industry standard for independent reprographic companies,” Shaun notes.

Widely embraced by independent reprographers in Australia, the U.K., and Canada as well as in the U.S., PlanWell has been on a roll, but in March of this year, global demand ramped up even more as several new international channels opened to expand our reach.

KIP Channel, Lewan Enterprises (a subsidiary of Xerox), and Catalyst Business Partners are re-selling the technology in India, the Gulf region, and France. KIP UK is offering PlanWell in Great Britain, and Australian reprographics giant Tecnoprint is re-selling it Down Under.

Despite widespread attention to a down-trending market in the U.S., new sales continue to come in.

If you've heard about PlanWell but are not sure of what it can do for your shop, you may want to check out the demo on the upper right portion of Point of View. Click the link and it will take you to an excellent flash demonstration of the offering.

Thanks for all your feedback!


Shaun

Océ Makes Its Own Waves...

No Risk, All Reward with the Océ ColorWave 600...

The Océ ColorWave 600 will help you make $30,000 or more per month in revenue - with a mere $99-per-month investment*.

The Océ ColorWave 600 is currently shipping and being installed around the country in reprographic shops like yours - shop interested in increasing their color production and diversifying their business.

This machine will revolutionize your color production. And through the month of November, there is no risk to you.

*$99 per month for the first six months with an OFSI lease

2,000 FREE SmartClicks per month for six months with an Océ OPTIMIZE.IT or Océ EasyPACII contract. (This represents just under $10,000 in free operating costs! You can grow your color production volume with absolutely no risk! The PEiR Group)

This PEiR Group offer is only available for orders signed between now and November 30, 2008. Océ ColorWave 600's must be installed prior to January 30, 2009.

If you have any additional questions please contact Barry Foust at (412)475-1792 or got to the PEiR Group Website under "Partner Pricing".

For more info, click HERE.

The New Breed – Waiting In The Wings?

We’ve been on the phone with dozens of general contractors over the last few months, getting their take on PlanWell® and our other product offerings, but also putting our ear to the ground, so to speak, in order to better gauge the future.

We can’t help but notice a growing sense of technological urgency, a feeling that change is afoot and that it will come within the next decade.

“It’s interesting how it works,” says Brendan Keating, who inherited responsibility for developing and maintaining the computer systems at Artco Contracting and Development in Newark, NJ. “Technical things that come more easily to people of my generation seem to confuse the older guys. I guess it’s because computers have always been a part of my life. It’s easier. The older guys have to learn it.”

It’s no secret that a number of top construction executives are ready to retire, turning their decision-making responsibilities over to younger executives who, it seems, believe technology is the key to our respective future – as The PEiR Group does.

“Take Sub-Hub,” Brendan says. “The younger guys are relatively excited about it, think its neat they can go online and view the plans… that sort of stuff. It works for them. The older guys just refuse to go online. Period.”

Industry watchers say that with the previous decade’s wide profit margins and increased stock values, retiring executives do not want to invest their millions into solutions that they are uncomfortable with or deem too expensive. But as younger executives assume control of the larger companies, they will bring dramatic new perspectives in technology application with them.

“I’m not saying it’s the same across the board,” Keating says. “Technology doesn’t work the same for everyone. Some people, it doesn’t matter what age they are, can use a computer and can make PlanWell and Sub-Hub work for them. But others just don’t want to bother.”

The reprographics industry stands to benefit greatly from this shift, a move to technology we've been been predicting for some time. Our goal has always been to be viewed as a partner to our members, but the ability to bring solutions to the table our members can use will set us apart from those companies who don’t adopt.


Editor: Have you noticed a “technology divide” among clients in your region? Have you encountered any classic examples of this syndrome? How did you overcome it?

Puerto Vallarta Hosts WRA, Industry Leaders Brainstorm

By The PEiR Group

As we’ve mentioned here the past few days, I had the pleasure of attending the Western Reprographics Associations’ (WRA) Regional Conference in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico last week.

Great time, great location, and nice to see everyone. The Westin was the perfect venue, with beautiful pools, super food, and nice, big rooms. Beyond that, I thought I’d share some of my observations and experiences at this year’s WRA with you.

The conference was rather light on attendance this year, no doubt due to the international location and the state of the economy. Historically, the WRA is a largely social function where members and their spouses get together to share stories and common interests. Unfortunately this year, my wife was unable to attend so I ended up going alone.

There were several entertaining, informative and inspirational speakers this year and I ended up taking their lessons home with me. I was struck by Brian Shul’s presentation on Overcoming Adversity. Brian shared his story of perseverance and triumph over his own personal tragedy – being severely burned when his U.S. Air force jet crashed in Cambodia. Brian fought through his pain and months of rehabilitation to regain his place as a top Air Force pilot flying spy planes during the cold war period.

And then there was Suri Suriyakumar, Chairman, President and CEO of ARC, who shared his thoughts on The State of the Reprographics Industry and Where It’s Heading and how he positions ARC and the reprographics industry to investors and stock analysts he meets with around the country.

Suri’s presentation suggested that the future would be a rosy one for those reprographers who focus on technology and the transfer of technology to the design and construction community and non-AEC markets.

Suri emphasized the importance of staying close to your customers and learning their document processes. The key, he says, is to work closely with your customers to find ways you can offer improved efficiencies in their document management and document distribution processes.

Suri emphasized ways to leverage your existing technologies in Non-AEC markets. Identify markets that can benefit from the same services that you offer your architects, engineers and contractors. For example: Large Format Color Printing can be offered to retailers and fast food chains, scanning and document management services to governments and fortune 1000 companies, copying and printing services to hospitals, schools, lawyers, realtors and others.

It was a great way to spend a few days with friends and industry professionals who spend most of their time thinking about our industry’s future. I was pleased to have the opportunity to attend and, yes, I did manage to squeeze in a round of golf with colleagues and friends.

No, I won’t tell you who won the round!

Have a question about the WRA or the industry in general? Drop your comment in the “comments” section below and we’ll talk about it!


Shaun

PEiR Group Member Learns That, Sometimes, It Really DOES Take A Village

By The PEiR Group

About a year ago, longtime PEiR Group member Al Rank, CEO of Precision Blue in Chicago, chafed at the data processing delays and labor costs his firm was experiencing when loading jobs into PlanWell®.

“Renaming and indexing files with sheet number and description for entry into PlanWell was taking far too long,” Al says. “It wasn’t about the application, it’s great. But we’re always under a time constraint, it seems, and we needed a way to expedite the data entry process.”

Al’s search for a solution would take him nine thousand miles away – to the Philippine Islands. At the time, he had no way of knowing that his approach to the problem would ultimately streamline his job intake, benefit several impoverished Filipinos, and improve the future outlook of an entire town.

Renaming files is probably not the best use of anybody’s talents, as you know. It’s a menial task but an extremely important one. Ultimately, Al connected with Cliff Parrish, a neighbor and CEO of RemoteLink – a Naperville, IL-based company specializing in enhanced telecommunications and Web services.

“I’ve known Cliff for a couple of years now,” Al says. “He told me about their wholly owned subsidiary in the Philippines that provides data entry jobs and education to the impoverished people there. We make our files available to them before we leave at night, they rename everything, enter it into PlanWell® and our team walks in the next morning and it’s done. It was perfect.”

In place for more than a year now, the partnership gives Al’s team at Precision Blue a head-start on their PlanWell jobs for the day and provides jobs and education for residents of San Pablo City – a tin roof “barangay,” or neighborhood, about 65 miles southeast of Manila.

“We train people to do software programming and data entry work providing them the opportunity to rise above what could be viewed as a hopeless, certainly impoverished existence,” Cliff says. “When we first started we held a workshop for people to learn new tech skills and when it was over we ended up hiring four of them. Now we have eight full-time employees with high expectations of future growth.”

A relationship with a local college provides a steady stream of applicants; however their goal is to provide educational opportunities to those who cannot afford higher education. To establish this goal, RemoteLink Philippines, Inc. also provides for a K-12 school to operate within their facility. Although the school is run by another Filipino organization; RemoteLink Philippines employs some of their teachers to teach computer skills in the specially designed computer lab.

“Education was an important aspect of this idea,” Cliff says. “We asked: ‘How do we educate and elevate the next generation of leaders?’ The entire program is ‘ground up,’ with no government assistance.”

As for Al, making the connection with RemoteLink and the Philippines was a definite “win-win.”

"This has worked out absolutely great for us, giving us more time to bid on more jobs, and benefitting others in the process," he says. "What used to be an annoying part of our intake process is now being accomplished, literally, overnight."

Note: Al always tells it like it is, has a taste for innovation and gives something back when he can. This idea may work for others. If so, you might contact Cliff Parrish at RemoteLink. You can reach Cliff at: 800 362-9446 x127.