About the PROs Elite 100
The economic and competitive factors driving businesses today provide more motivation than ever for consumers to make intelligent choices in the marketplace. As such, independent dealerships in the Office Imaging industry must find ways to deliver the highest quality services to differentiate themselves among competitors.
The ultimate differentiator and national symbol of recognition and distinction in the Office Imaging industry, PROs Elite 100 certification, is awarded to a very limited number of select organizations displaying world-class service delivery. Only 100 Office Imaging dealers in the United States and selected international markets will earn PROs Elite 100 status. Only 1 dealer in any market will be awarded this distinction.
For the past 20 years the Office Imaging Industry has gone through enormous changes in its structure that, for the most part, have adversely affected the customer. Once filled with options, the independent dealer network was significantly depleted by the acquisition efforts of consolidator companies like Danka, Ikon and Global Imaging Systems. Initially these organizations pledged to offer the same or better local support and flexibility to the acquired dealers’ customers with enhanced cost structuring from volume purchasing capability.
In our opinion, the volume purchasing capability rarely if ever came to be in these consolidator organizations and in a very short time, the earnings pressure faced by all these publicly held companies forced most of them to centralize some or all of their customer sensitive organizations such as dispatch, billing, warehousing and supply fulfillment to meet earnings demands. As these acquirers / consolidators continued to feel earnings pressure they continued to exert pressure on their Japanese suppliers, with threats of change of product if their demands were not met. When all else failed to deliver desired results, all three of these organizations were purchased by even larger manufacture organizations and the degradation of services accelerated.
The Japanese suppliers entered the market with direct sales and marketing organizations to protect their market share from the never-ending threats of supplier change from the consolidators. In our opinion, this action on the part of the Japanese manufacturers spurned a new level of cuts in services to offset increased price competition. The Tsunami of instability struck in May of 2007 when the Xerox Corporation purchased Global Imaging Systems. Some of the Japanese suppliers to Global Imaging Systems immediately cut off all supply of new product and began the process of eliminating the source of genuine spare parts and supplies to Global company’s customers beginning at the end of 2010. This very same activity took place when Ikon Office Solutions was purchased by one of the Japanese manufacturers. In our opinion, all of this activity led to further increased customer dissatisfaction with larger organizations and a shift of the market back to the independent dealer.
A number of fiercely independent dealers resisted the urge to take the money and run during the acquisition era. They held firm to their core beliefs and made investments in core localized services to enhance their value to their customers in anticipation of the inevitable customer revolt. A very elite group of dealers invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in training their organizations to provide services that benchmarked well beyond that of manufacturers and mega dealers. These dealers invited third party experts to audit their results and train their leadership in the customer and technology skills of the new millennium.
In 2008, the Office Imaging’s industry’s benchmarking coauthors and execution experts, PROs Elite, began the process of identifying the top independent Office Imaging Dealers in the 100 major market segments in the United States, and select international markets, based on their PROs Elite benchmarking model. As an Independent third-party expert, Pros is biased only to ensure that Office Imaging Customers can use our expertise to select the finest Office Imaging Solutions provider almost anywhere in the United States and select international markets.
The Independent Dealer, who in the opinion of these industry experts, benchmarked best in any market was extended the offer to be selected for certification to the PROs Elite 100. The PROs Elite 100 certification process demanded that the selected dealer, participate in rigorous training, execute specific action plans, achieve the PROs benchmarks, and allow themselves to be audited on an ongoing basis for performance against over 100 critical benchmarks. Certification will have to be earned every year. Dealers who achieved this certification, in the opinion of PROs, are the best servicing dealers in the United States.
It is the expert opinion of the PROs Elite executive team that the Office Imaging Dealers whose names are listed on this web site are the Elite of all Office Imaging suppliers. We feel so strongly about our opinion that we make the following statement. Any client of any PROs Elite 100 dealer who cannot resolve any issue with their PROs Elite 100 dealer can contact the PROs Elite executive team and we will act as an Independent third party to resolve the issue for that customer.