Interview Blogs

We were able to sit down with the marketing peeps at PHSI a few weeks ago to discuss ideas for a unique blog.  After a few minutes we came up with the theme of the Fourth of July.  Once we had the theme, we decided on using some key words that are associated with the Fourth of July for an upcoming interview with Brian Pason, VP of PWT Sales. 

Q: How can copier dealers see fireworks  when it comes to their bottom line?

A: Dealers should consider diversifying their product offering to increase their recurring revenue by offering water! For the best chance at success, you should have a dedicated sales force that is an entirely separate division from copier sales. A couple of reasons for this include: water coolers have a shorter sales cycle, and deliver faster returns.

Q: Why is uniting coolers & copiers a good idea?

A: Copier businesses have multiple similarities to the water business. First of all, both pieces of equipment are leased, require services, and on-going maintenance. Second, copier dealers know how to manage small businesses, and are targeting the same type of businesses (companies with 10+ employees). Lastly, the decision-makers for both businesses are typically the same; usually Facilities Managers. It is an added convenience for a decision-maker to work with one vendor for BOTH their copier and water needs. So basically, you are selling to the same customers and, using the same sales and service model!

Q: If dealers want more freedom in their strategic partnerships, how can Pure Water Technology help?

A: You are able to run your dealership your way. We only ask that you pledge allegiance to exclusively sell Pure Water Technology water coolers. Only authorized dealers can sell our products. We take pride in the quality and durability of our products, so we have instituted a 5-year loyalty guarantee. Additionally, our MVP dealer program rewards dealers by providing discounts on marketing materials, parts, co-op dollars, and more!

Q: Who are PHSI’s founding fathers?

A: Last year, PHSI Pure Water Technology celebrated its 20th anniversary! In 1996, two entrepreneurs utilized cutting-edge technology to create a revolutionary water dispenser that purifies the water at point-of-use. Based in Vernon Hills, IL, PWT operates nationally. We are the leading manufacturer and distributor of beverage equipment and supplies in the workplace.

Q: Why should water quality flag national concern?

A: Water quality has become a common topic over the last few years, and people are taking notice. A USA Today article "identified almost 2,000 additional water systems spanning all 50 states where testing has shown excessive levels of lead contamination over the past four years." Our customers are well-educated and demanding better quality drinking water. The timing has never been better to sell water.

Q: What are you most proud of?

A: We are proud of our state-of-the-art products and technology. Pure Water Technology utilizes a 5-stage purification process, including reverse osmosis, and activated oxygen injection. Activated oxygen injection gets rid of the bacteria, viruses and parasites in the holding tank. Our units are built to last 10+ years.

Q: Is there anything revolutionary about PHSI’s product family?

A: We recently launched our latest cooler, the 2i. The 2i provides a cost-effective and eco-friendly alternative to bottled and filtered water coolers. This system is designed for the workplace with a brand new look featuring a sleek body design. In addition to our brand-standard advanced purification system, it’s equipped with a new touchpad with intuitive hot and cold dispense buttons, while also providing system indicator lights, and a clean contact surface on the front interface. Best of all, the 2i uses activated oxygen sanitation technology!

Just a quick note for everyone.  There are no two copier dealerships that are alike, just because your competition is offering Managed IT does that mean you need to follow suit?  Similar to what my Mom told me when I was disruptive, "if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" The revenue and profit from having a PHSI dealership is incredible.  I personally know of two dealers that are killing it. I wish I would have known about PHSI when I sold my dealership back in the nineties. Check out their Dealer Site here

-=Good Selling=-

I sat down with James Foxall to find out how Tigerpaw is leaping into the office equipment space with a fully vetted product

It’s unusual to find a 30-year-old company that still has the passion and entrepreneurial spirit of a startup, but that’s exactly what I found when I interviewed James Foxall, CEO of Tigerpaw.

Last week, I posted up Part One, below is the second part of our interview. 

Art

I apologize for being such a novice in your space, but is Continuum a competitor? Could you explain your relationship?

James

Continuum is not a competitor of ours; they are one of our partners. Continuum produces a great RMM software (Remote Management and Monitoring). Their software allows you to monitor your clients’ network, get detailed performance stats on their systems, and install any necessary patch or software updates.

Through our partnership, Continuum has created a great platform that will monitor alerts and even automatically fix many of them. When there’s an alert that can’t be immediately addressed by Continuum, it will create a ticket inside of Tigerpaw One through its workflow integration. The Continuum integration makes a fluid link between your monitoring software and your service software. It works in the background and, as you work a problem, our software will push that information back over to Continuum for detailed documentation down to the individual device level.

And, I should mention, our software can also do automated billing for all of those devices that you manage with Continuum.

Continuum is a great partner. That kind of seamless integration between an RMM product like Continuum and a professional service automation (PSA) suite like Tigerpaw One creates a great one-two punch combo for our customers.

Art

Is your platform built on SAP?

James

No. We’ve built our entire application from the ground up. This allows us to pass incredible value on to our customers, since our company doesn’t have to live by the additional fees a SAP platform has. We also find things like that a bit limiting because you have to build on their engine.

It’s hard to think outside of the box when you’re confined to someone else’s box. So we have built our own platform and we work every day to expand and improve our tools, our software, and our core product.

Tigerpaw One is 100 percent our code.

Art

Could you talk a bit about your entrance into the office equipment space? That’s a big move for any company with 30 years of experience.

James

Even though we are new to the office equipment space, we are not new in general. We’ve been doing this for 32 years. We have a long track record of success. We’ve got 40,000 users on our product. That’s a lot of company owners, CEOs, and industry leaders who trust Tigerpaw to improve their businesses every day.

We have a fully vetted and proven process: our customers are given a clear path and plan to implement Tigerpaw One to have a dramatic and measurable impact on their business. We’re not some fly-by-night software startup. And we do not enter a new market vertical without in-depth research and competitive analysis. We know we can help companies automate their businesses in the office equipment space, and we’re excited for these businesses to see the full range of services and features Tigerpaw One has to offer.

In the IT space there are a whole bunch of want-to-be-PSAs, but there are only three truly successful companies. And we’re happy to be one of the top three. We’ve spent years and years in a very competitive space against very sharp competition. Because of this we have constant improvement, iteration and innovation baked into the core of who we are as a company and what our software does.

The feature set, the automation, and the full range of business tools Tigerpaw One has — it’s kind of revolutionary because it hasn’t been seen in the office equipment space.

There’s a tremendous advantage and peace of mind that comes when you are trusting your business growth to a product that was honed in the forges of competition.

Art

What makes Tigerpaw One unique and different?

James

Especially for the office equipment space, it’s incredibly valuable that we have a product that can do everything a current product does on the market and so much more. We can help businesses move into a converged space for managed services.

In the office equipment space some of the products are pretty weak with managing the service side. We are exceptional at that. Tigerpaw is absolutely tops for ticketing.

In the IT space we have an inventory package that can’t be touched. Our inventory package is the best you’re going to find short of a million dollar ERP system.

At the end of the day, it’s the completeness of our solution. Our software is a cohesive suite of tools that work together flawlessly across your entire business. Whether it’s marketing, sales, lead generation, ticketing, quoting, inventory, or servicing after the sale — Tigerpaw does all of this.

You can do marketing out of Tigerpaw One and we will track your open-rate, click-rate, and analytics. You can turn those click-throughs into opportunities and track sales funnels inside the product. You can grow your pipeline and create beautiful proposals to send your client.

Our mobile solution allows you to manage service orders, track time, work with inventory on a vehicle, capture signatures, take photos of the job– all in real-time.

And recently we’ve built an incredible integration with Print Audit that gives you the ability to generate and email invoices and process the payment on them 100 percent touch-free, with no human interaction at all. We’re also working with FM Audit and Print Fleet to add even more tools and functionality.

It’s the totality of all of that combined that makes us unique. No one offers this level of comprehensive tools that work cohesively across all layers of your business, backed by our experience, workflow engine, unified security model, and comprehensive training and education resources. 

That’s what makes us special.

Art

How long have you been doing this?

James

I’m second generation at Tigerpaw. I’ve been running the company since 2010. My father started it in 1984 and I’ve been around pretty much since the beginning. I have been in every role in the company: from sales to development, to organizing trade shows and conferences, to creating graphics and marketing material, all the way down to stuffing packages and working in our mailroom.

Art

Where is Tigerpaw located?

James

Bellevue, Nebraska, just outside of Omaha.

Art

How many people does Tigerpaw employ?

James

We have about fifty people on staff and we’re growing. We have several new open positions right now.

Art

At your last Tigerpaw Conference I read that you and West McDonald got together to collaborate about SBB. What was that about?

James

We were excited to have West at our event. He is a great leader in the community and a great partner.

Last October (2016) we hosted our annual Tigerpaw Conference, which was a four-day event full of networking, training, learning, and a great collection of speakers for attendees.

West is the VP of Business Development for Print Audit, and he was good enough to come all the way down from Canada to present.

West has been at the forefront of the Seat Based Billing (SBB) concept in managed print services. Essentially SBB moves businesses to an unlimited, flat billing model for print instead of print counts and other metered billing measures. Of course we support metered billing, but we also support SBB right out of the box – we’ve been supporting that for years in the MSP/IT space. It’s another aspect of how we can help companies be more efficient with their processes today, but also take them forward with functionality that don’t currently have.

Art

This has been great, James. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Anything Tigerpaw has in development you can talk about?

James

We may be a 32-year-old company, but we’re just getting started. I’m fortunate to have a passionate, talented, and dedicated team that is focused on providing the best experience and business solutions for our customers. I can say with all honestly that we truly care about helping our customers grow their businesses.

I’m extremely proud of the fact that we’ve been doing this since 1984. That kind of longevity doesn’t happen by accident. You know, I think it’s because we listen to our customers and because of the relationships we’ve built with our customers. We’ve got individual business owners all the way to our largest client that runs over 600 concurrent users every day on Tigerpaw. We’ve got clients that have been brought on board today to literally 25-year-old clients that have stayed with us. And to me that’s really cool.

And we’re doubling down on our commitment to our customers. Just last month we launched our Tigerpaw Satisfaction Guarantee. We know the challenges that come from selecting a software as comprehensive as Tigerpaw One, so we’re working to make that decision easier.

Now, new customers get a 90-Day Guarantee that Tigerpaw One will improve their business. Customers will be given all the tools they need to be successful, and we will be with them every step of the way. We’re confident they will come out the other side with a stronger, more efficient, and better-running company. But if they’re not satisfied after all that, we will refund their money.

I’m also very excited about some new projects we have in the works. I encourage your readers to check back and visit our website. We’ve been working behind-the-scenes on some exciting new projects, and we’re planning on making some big announcements soon.

Art

James, thank you for the time today.

Note from Art:

If you happen to see Tigerpaw at an event, please find the time to pay them a visit.  If you happen to see James at an event, make sure to introduce your self as I found him to be very engaged and very exciting about what they do.

About Tigerpaw

Tigerpaw Software, Inc. is a leading developer of end-to-end business automation and service management software. Its flagship product, the award-winning Tigerpaw One, empowers thousands of businesses to manage and automate marketing, sales, service and inventory functions. The company was founded in 1984 and quickly established itself as a premier solutions specialist for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Tigerpaw remains firmly on the cutting edge of business software development with an ever-expanding base of more than 40,000 users in 29 countries worldwide. Despite its growth, Tigerpaw remains a family-owned business that specializes in helping a wide range of clients better run their business with a complete, 360 degree view of their operations.

Tigerpaw One is sold by subscription for one low monthly fee per user.

For more information, visit the Tigerpaw website at tigerpawsoftware.com, email sales@tigerpawsoftware.com, or call their toll-free number at 800.704.9009.

You can connect with Tigerpaw on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.