Toronto, ON, Canada, is one of the world’s most competitive information management markets, but IKON Office Solutions – A Ricoh Company (IKON), has turned that challenge into an opportunity. “We know who we’re up against, so we’re good at determining what’s good business to go after,” says Enterprise Solutions Manager Franz Gangl. “We can determine, ‘Do we have a chance to steer the account?’”

By “steer,” Gangl’s referring to the IKON method of engaging prospects in extensive discovery to determine just what business processes Laserfiche can help automate – and how to expand this automation within the organization to create a win-win situation for reseller and client alike. “When we engage them, we look at other areas of opportunity,” Gangl explains.

He offers a recent example of consulting with a distribution company working between multiple locations around the world. “We knew if we just looked at Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable, there wouldn’t be enough there to justify the cost [of a Laserfiche system]. But through our AP/AR discovery, we were able to see who else touched these documents. That took us to their Logistics department. We kept asking questions and that took us to their Marketing department,” Gangl says. “The customer didn’t expect us to look at it - and they didn’t want to look at it - but that’s what it took to show them the real value and viability of investing in a Laserfiche system.”

This approach has yielded significant success: IKON is responsible for two Rio installations at Canadian financial institutions already, and continues to do especially well servicing the government vertical. One large Canadian municipality for instance, has been an IKON customer for five years, and is currently in the process of a major upgrade to Laserfiche 8, both for its ability to integrate with an agenda management solution, and for its ability to track and service the hundreds of freedom of information requests that come in daily from lobbyists and citizens seeking information. Gangl credits the new annotation and redaction features of Laserfiche 8 as being especially helpful to the sale. “Laserfiche 8 makes the solution simple because the components that used to require extreme customization on our part are now embedded.”

He also credits his team of 13 systems analysts and six solutions consultants. “We have a thorough understanding of dealing with heavily regulated industries including government, as well as compliance issues related to paper and electronic media,” he says. IKON has also invested heavily in sponsoring user education programs. In the last few months, the company hosted regional trainings on-site at the City of Niagara Falls and the Town of Okotoks, as well as attended the AMCTO (Association of Municipal Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario) Conference last June.

“Regional workshops are a great opportunity for customers to see that there’s a community of users out there, they’re not operating on an island. They appreciate sharing ideas and it’s another way customers get to know what the product does,” says Gangl. “For us, it’s a good way for our systems analysts to brush up on their skills without having to take them out of the field for an extended period.”

He offers some advice for resellers: “VARs have to break out of that Laserfiche-as-an-electronic-file-cabinet mentality. These things alone are not going to get you Rio sales. The customer is looking for more than that, they want to talk about collaboration and business process management.”

Key to that discussion, he says, is the inclusion of Workflow in the Rio and Avante licensing model, at least as far as the IKON process-automation strategy is concerned. “With Rio and Avante, your uptake and adoption is going to be that much greater when that collaborative/BPM capability is there. [The cost of] Laserfiche and the server, that just becomes peripheral when Workflow gets embedded,” he says. “You can base your whole sales approach around what big processes you can automate.”

Author Info

Laserfiche
Staff

Hobey Echlin is a Writer/Researcher in the Laserfiche Marketing department and is active in the Laserfiche Luminaries program.

Tags: Canada

Posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 3:08 pm under VAR of the Month. You can comment on this post.