- Describe your company – a high level description of what your business does.
Kelley Create is a strategic office technology and solutions partner on a mission to create strategic advantages that help our partners grow. We design, implement, and support integrated solutions across IT services, cloud and security, automation, mailing and print. combining strong local expertise with expanding regional and national scale to simplify complexity, improve performance, and support long term growth.
- How does your organization generally execute within the managed print services (MPS) landscape, and what has been your relationship or involvement with the MPSA local and or global community?
• Our MPS team here at Kelley Create prides itself on our proactive consultation approach to every opportunity. We have a very high conversation rate of opportunities as a result of our on-site assessment process coupled with our solution recommendations that are supported by the data derived from these assessments. Rather than providing support “as needed” for our clients, we make it a appoint to monitor their fleet performance to communicate in advance any potential future adjustments due to performance history across all categories. This allows us to help our clients forecast any future needs to properly make plans to accommodate.
• For the past four years Kelley Create has participated in almost every MPSA meeting discussing and bringing best practices, ideas, challenges and partnerships to the meeting.
- From your perspective, what is the most significant way your dealership is making (or can make) a positive impact in the MPS market through the customers you serve?
• How does your go-to-market approach, service delivery, technology strategy, and overall customer experience create meaningful value for your clients?
• As stated above, we aren’t simply “responding” to needs as they arise, we track individual performance analytics of each device within the fleet and discuss the information during our regular business reviews with each client. We believe in building long term partnerships with accounts that grow and adapt to the changing demands placed on companies today.
• What are you doing differently that helps customers succeed and keeps them loyal in today’s environment?
• We strive to ensure that we are partnering with our clients rather than just supporting their needs. In the end the biggest differentiator is the fact that we make it a point to listen to the ideas and concerns of our clients in order to learn, grow and ultimately provide a customized level of support for each client.
• In your response, please share lessons learned, obstacles you’ve faced, and best practices you’ve developed in building a strong, customer-focused MPS business. Where relevant, you can also touch on how partners and suppliers enable that success — but with the primary focus on how you support and deliver outcomes for end customers.
• Our team isn’t satisfied with the traditional limitations of an MPS program. When obstacles arise we make it a point to work with our subject matter experts as well as our manufacturers to provide solutions and incorporate new innovations. All of the manufacturers we work with are eager to hear our ideas for process and product improvements. Several of the manufacturers have even created new solutions and model based performance improvements as a result of the individual needs brought forth in customized solution for individual clients. We’re not only partnering with our clients for growth and innovation, we’re also partnering very closely with our manufacturers for the same goals.
- Can you describe a time when your organization had to adapt to a major shift in the MPS industry? What did you learn, and how did that experience shape the way you support your customers today?
• This could relate to changes such as the move from analog to digital, hardware to services, mono to color, seat-based licensing to recurring revenue models, or broader disruptions like COVID. How did you lead your team and customers through the transition? What obstacles did you face, what worked well, and what best practices or lessons learned might be valuable for others in the industry?
• Realizing that the traditional model of providing supplies and service “as needed” for A4 devices was quickly shifting, especially as a result of the changes in the workplace through COVID, we recognized a need to provide a larger solution to our clients that included services such as document management, cloud services, IT services, mailing and sending, etc. Rather than staying focused on one aspect of the workflow process we began creating solutions that incorporated other needs within the process. Never-ending price increases, remote working, cyber security threats and AI have greatly changed this industry over the years. Being able to customize contracts terminology, adapt to the short-term commitments companies are wanting, and being brand agnostic, allowed us to stay ahead in the market while using the tools and resources to assist our partners with the very same obstacles.
- “Reflecting on our conversation, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for innovation and collaboration within the managed print community?”
• Integration with IT services portion of our company is the future growth of our industry. Having a team of trained and certified specialist with an in-depth knowledge of topics such as aligning network security, automating service desk support, and bridging digital/paper workflows can allow for the creation of a unified IT ecosystem. The collaboration of the two teams within our organization also provides seamless network connectivity, security patches for devices, automated toner replenishment, and data analytics to optimize device placement and reduce IT burden.
- How have you benefited from the MPSA community? What are the biggest attributes? What improvements are needed?
• Being able to bounce ideas off colleagues in this industry that are in other parts of the country helps to find your strengths and weaknesses. Hearing how other companies are adapting and facing the same challenges, seeing the tools and resources available, and hearing what allows them to continue to differentiate themselves, is something unique to the MPSA community. I’d like to hear more from manufacturers of products and partners we can utilize to build additional value in the cost per page.
- What is the one or key two messages (take-aways, insights) that you would leave the audience today – so they resonate in the minds of our audience (locally and globally).
• Managed Print Services at Kelley Create is the most innovative and proactive approach to managing a fleet of document processing devices. At the end of the day our goal is to take as much of the “management” of the fleet off of the plate of our clients to keep their staff focused and available for the primary goals of each individual organization.
