Letter on the Third — May 2023

Dear Datamax Family,

As most of you know, I’m a people person. If I had my way, I’d rather speak to each of you face-to-face every day. If not that, I’d prefer to at least hear your voice over the phone. However, the speed at which business moves often prohibits that scenario. Our communication methods (in business and in life) are changing every day. Business people today need a communications platform that accommodates the realities of how they work. We do, and so do our customers. Which is why we’re Elevating Our Game.

I’m a big fan of staying relevant to customer needs.

Last year, we made the decision to migrate our email to the cloud and adopt the Elevate Unified Communications Platform (the product we sell to customers every day) for internal use. As you’ll read in this month’s Rave Review, these two massive projects, once completed, will positively impact the way we interact with customers and one another. We’ll be able to utilize business chat, jump into a video conference, or transfer our desk phone to our mobile phone seamlessly, all from one single platform. We’ll be able to utilize a variety of cloud collaboration tools, so salespeople, for example, can quickly access the documents they need, wherever they are out in the field.

I’m a big fan of “eating your own cooking,” as they say.

Imagine if you bought a Honda from a salesperson who drove a Cadillac, or you worked for Nike, but used Taylormade golf clubs on the course.  One of the best ways to show customers that you back up the products or services you bring to market is to actually use them. Using these cloud-based tools inside our own four walls, more than anything else, shows that we’re committed and we’re confident in the solutions we present to our clients. We’ll also have a better feel for what our customers experience when they use these too. We can relate firsthand.

I want to commend the work of all Internal IT and Technology Service Group personnel who’ve worked tirelessly thus far to keep these projects moving. The reality? We couldn’t have done this without them.

We’ve got a lot “cooking” at Datamax this month.

In just over a week, we’ll be inviting clients and community friends inside our Little Rock Office for our 40th Anniversary Open House event. During the event, Justin Acri and Wess Moore at the local sports radio station The Zone will do a live broadcast. Guests will get to meet Miss Arkansas Ebony Mitchell. We’ll have food trucks, prizes, representatives from major partners including Canon, Konica Minolta, and Lexmark, and a security presentation from our own Justin Huffaker. Several industry-renowned representatives, including Industry Analysts Publisher Andy Slawetsky, will even be there. It’s going to be a BIG event. More importantly, it will reflect the depth of relationships and the strength of partnerships we’ve earned in Arkansas over the past 40 years.

In the coming weeks, employees in Arkansas will be receiving an email survey as we pursue earning Best Places to Work in Arkansas for the seventh straight year (the same process will follow suit in Texas in the coming months). I encourage all of you to give this some serious thought and offer your feedback on your experience working here. After all, just as we work to stay relevant with the tools we use in-house, we’re big fans of staying relevant to your professional needs, too. Without your input, we’ll never fully elevate our game at Datamax.

The Best is Yet to Be.