The initial setup of the integration between e-commerce and Quickbooks Online does not require any technical skills and should fall well within the capabilities of a competent bookkeeper.
In part one of our assessment of the Xerox / Fuji Xerox deal, we asked the question of whether or not the combination would be likely to make a difference. More specifically, we meant whether or not it would likely result in a single, stronger entity better equipped to compete in the global marketplace.
If there was one thing we all had a pretty good idea that something was imminent, it was the likelihood of a significant change at Xerox. The pressure from activist investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason (who, between them, hold more than 15% of the shares) and their dissatisfaction with the leadership and strategic direction being taken at Xerox all but guaranteed a shakeup.
We're tracking the financial performance of 26 of the major players in the imaging supplies and business equipment industry. Between them, they have global sales of $420 Billion, $30 billion of EBITDA, and $100 billion of debt capacity.
Over the last decade or so, only a handful of office products (and virtually no business equipment) resellers have developed successful e-commerce revenue streams. Despite the decline in North American reseller numbers during this time frame, thousands remain, and of the hundreds of those that have tried to develop an e-commerce business, most have failed to do so.
As the market for office products and business equipment starts to contract slowly, independent resellers have never had a more opportune time to understand the importance of customer lifetime value (LTV) and the cost of new customer acquisition (CAC).
In our previous article, while exploring the weak points of the office products and equipment industry, we focused on the independent resellers and the competitive forces currently squeezing the life out of them. We introduced the concept of the stronger Office Equipment (OE) resellers acquiring resellers in the Office Product (OP) channels, making this a key component of their survival strategy.
The current theme of our blog has focused intently on attempts to jolt the independent resellers of office equipment, products, and supplies into taking action to enter the digital world comprehensively. For them to do so, it's necessary to overhaul thousands of underperforming websites and social media accounts and then start the wide-scale implementation of sophisticated digital marketing to develop consistent and relevant inbound web traffic.
We've asked the question of office product resellers many times about how important e-commerce is for their future, and, most times, the answer comes back that it's "mission critical." However, success stories are few and far between for such a mission-critical objective; Resellers need to think hard about what they understand e-commerce to be and what some effective strategies may be for developing it.
To survive in the digital world, we are all part of, office product resellers must take steps to enter it, and the longer this is put off, the more urgent it becomes. Digital transformation is not an "opt-out" program for resellers. We know the ongoing switch from analog is not going away and that resellers, who elect to stay in the analog world, are (sooner or later) destined to fail.
