Distributors Move Beyond Paper

Are these services a main part of your business, or do you offer them to retain clientele?

Schachtel: Actually, both. We offer these services as a regular part of our business because it is essential in the current marketplace. On the same note, we need to offer them in order to retain clientele with increasing demands.

Emis: I am not so sure that we would have lost customers by not offering extra services. It was just necessary for us to provide them in order to grow and be a viable company.

Peterson: These services allow us to maintain our current business as well as gain new clients. While a service such as forms management has been offered for the past 10 years, an electronic document management system is a service more clients—old and new—are beginning to ask for more often.

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of offering value-added services?

Peterson: An advantage is that distributors gain business. The disadvantage is that there are added investment costs in order to offer these services. Certain services require distributors to add staff members with IT backgrounds and then train them in the forms business. For us, adding special services has also meant creating a separate business from traditional forms.

Schachtel: I agree that the advantage for distributors is that value-added services offer more business, but it is with a larger margin. On the other hand, it takes a lot more effort to support the value-added services we offer the customer. More expertise is required to sell the services and more resources are needed to maintain the business.

Watson: One advantage is that there are many services we offer that other folks do not, which helps us acquire new business. The disadvantage to providing value-added services, however, is that they create more overhead. It's expensive to have warehouses and print and mail centers, in addition to a complete IT staff that develops programs and provides data services.