eCopy Paper Connection Forum, Boston, Mass., October 7, 2008 – eCopy, Inc., a provider of document imaging solutions that integrate paper documents into business software applications, today announced the winners of the eCopy Office Equipment Channel Partners Best Practices Awards. The awards recognize channel partners for utilizing solutions sales strategies to develop successful track records in winning customer business.
The winners of the 2008 Office Equipment Channel Partners Best Practices Awards are:
ComDoc – Award Winner for Best Programmatic Sales Approach – U.S. ComDoc, a 100 percent employee-owned company, is a document management solutions provider headquartered in Akron, Ohio. Operating more than 50 years, they are the largest Ricoh dealer in the United States. Their award acknowledges ComDoc’s combination of selling, partnering and solutions programs as a way to train their sales teams in recognizing the customer’s needs. Results of their efforts include a 50 percent increase of eCopy sales year-over-year, overall margin increase in sales of solutions including new document management software sales, an increase of add-on software and hardware sales to existing customers, and further strengthening their partner relationship with customers.
Konica Minolta Business Solutions, Southeast U.S.A. – Award Winner of Best Executive Sponsored Initiative – U.S. Konica Minolta provides imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, bringing together advances in security, print quality and network integration via its bizhub™ multifunction products (MFPs). Their award recognizes the Southeast Region’s senior executive team’s all-in sponsorship of a jointly developed telemarketing and e-mail solutions-based campaign. In addition to helping move their sales team from a hardware focus to solution selling, the program results included increasing the quarterly rate of solutions sales by four-fold and the quarterly rate of associated equipment revenue by nearly three-fold.
Canon Business Solutions UK – Award Winner of Best Programmatic Sales Approach – Europe. The company provides integrated document hardware, software and services, comprising one of the strongest solutions portfolios in the document imaging industry, and underpinned by a broad business hardware portfolio, including desktop through to production environment network printing devices, scanners and large format printers. Their award recognizes the results of the organization having executed over a nine month period a programmatic approach to developing the solutions selling skills of all of their sales personnel, sales managers and business development managers. Results include the adoption of a solution selling methodology, increased penetration rates of solutions sales and increased average deal size.
Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) – Award Winner of Best Executive Sponsored Initiative – Europe. Their award recognizes the very active participation by senior management of both professional services and sales in supporting and sponsoring a Discovery Certification Program. The thoroughness of the accreditation process and initiatives implemented by Konica Minolta to support the use of the program ensured healthy pipeline business generation and afforded them a means to reestablishing business with previously closed accounts.
The award winners leveraged eCopy as a standard document imaging software platform to deliver solutions that enable organizations to easily and securely transform paper documents into business value. The dealers will be recognized at the eCopy Paper Connection Forum, an industry conference for office equipment dealers, MFP manufacturers, independent software vendors, system integrators and industry experts to collaborate on advancing document scanning strategies for integrating paper-based information with business applications.
At eCopy Paper Connection Forum, executives from all four companies will participate in a roundtable discussion on how office equipment dealers can navigate a successful transition from hardware to solution selling. The panel session will be moderated by Michael O’Leary, director at InfoTrends and an expert with more than 20 years in the document solutions industry.
“eCopy has cracked the code in helping channel partners adopt solution selling as a strategic practice as evidenced by the experiences of this year’s best practices award winners,” said Vickie Malis, vice president of Marketing at eCopy. “These companies have demonstrated two of the keys to success – having strong executive sponsorship of your solution selling initiative and a programmatic approach to solution selling. We congratulate our valued partners and thank them for their contributions to helping to grow our business.”
About eCopy, Inc.
eCopy™, Inc. is an innovative provider of open and flexible solutions that transform paperwork into paper that works. With more than 75,000 units sold, eCopy is the market leader in MFP document imaging software. eCopy customers include GE, Time Warner Inc., Yahoo!, Nissan, Verizon Wireless, BP, Sprint, General Motors, Siemens, Cisco Systems, SAAB, and Sony Corporation. eCopy, Inc. is a global company headquartered in the United States, with subsidiaries in Japan and the UK, offices in Germany, France, Scandinavia, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia. For more information, visit http://eCopy.com or join the conversation at eCopy’s Document Imaging Blog at http://documentimaging.typepad.com.