Providing an on-point, creative solution that increases a client’s return on technology investment and produces the Raving Results we constantly seek to deliver.

The Client: Philander Smith College

The Account Representative: Cody Simon

As Tom Petty famously reminds us in his 1981 classic song, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

For Cody Simon, that waiting time was more than two years. But by his diligence, patience, and staying in front of multiple key C level figures at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, it was well worth the wait.

The Business Challenge

Going out to the college for the first time and doing a walk through, I think the biggest thing was the need to begin right-sizing their equipment and getting them the right tools. We would notice six printers in one area, when we knew with one copier, we could get everything they needed.

A lot of times in organizations that size, the upper level management doesn’t know what everyone is doing. We talked a lot about a solution of being able to track and better understand what students were printing. They could be printing fraternity flyers, hundreds of pages from websites, anything really.

The biggest thing initially was being broad, to really understand their troubles and pains."

The Thought Process

"I was relatively new to the job the first time we went out there, so it was a lot for me to get my head wrapped around that size of a project. But I’m an analytical person, who loves to utilize spreadsheets and cost analysis, so that really came to play with this. I wanted to really figure out what the best thing we could do for them – not just be another vendor.

I’ve been at this for two years. I’ve worked hard to stay with it, to stay active in the account. The way we did that was continuously bring up new ideas. I’d take the CIO out to lunch, ask about things that were going on, and how we might be relevant to their needs at the time.

The biggest differentiator was our staff. Throughout the process, I received a lot of help from multiple managers, my sales team, and various other departments. We were able to stand out from the competition, because of our staff as a whole. Being a local company was very valuable to them. I also couldn’t do this without everything we stand for service-wise. It’s not just words on a piece of paper. We have documentation that shows we are tracking these metrics on a regular basis. We have proof of what we can do, and this is how we do it."

The Prevailing Results

"Most of my communication has been with the CIO. He is very confident that we can take care of him.

Not too long ago, we had six or seven of their executive team and staff come out to our office. We gave them a tour, and the marketing person kept saying over and over again, “Can I work here??” She was blown away by our culture and tools we have in place to help our customers. We’ve had conversations about in the future bringing some of their production in-house. It’s about helping them understand the technologies and everything that’s available to them.

I think it’s exciting for the team there to see what is possible for them (moving forward)."