Making it Personnel

Talk about multitasking! Human resources professionals spend their days boosting employee morale, increasing productivity, limiting job turnover, providing training and development opportunities, improving business results and controlling costs. This, of course, is in between recruiting, hiring and orienting new staff while strictly adhering to ever-changing labor laws and efficiently maintaining records.

But, who’s there to pump up stressed out HR pros and ease their workloads? Perhaps the most qualified candidates are distributors with solutions to the unique challenges human resources departments handle on a daily basis. And, as luck would have it, a product from Houston-based Apex Business Systems provides solid, on-the-job training for distributors to learn just what some of those challenges are.

Equal Opportunity

The company added the products to its line three years ago, prompted in part by occasional inquiries from distributors serving HR customers. There was also the obvious correlation between HR solutions and tax forms—one of Apex Business Systems’ top-selling products. “We would get calls for things like [labor law] posters and payroll-related products,” recalled Neville Johnson, vice president of sales and marketing. “No one else was offering these products to the trade. In the meantime, businesses were making millions of dollars selling [the items] via the Internet or mailing catalogs. Many [end-users] were also going directly to Office Depot and [other retail locations]. So, we thought it would be a good mix; it would satisfy 100 percent of our base.”

The beauty of HR products is—like tax forms—they’re an easy sell and are required by every business. “Anytime you are in front of a customer, just ask the question: ‘So, what about your needs for HR products?’ It’s a natural [transition]. Just as with tax forms, this one simple question can bring nice orders,” Johnson noted. “Although it has been a little slower than anticipated, the [HR] product line is growing. We do have some distributors who buy a lot, but others are still not aware of the opportunity.”