Interior design printing. We wanted to add additional revenue streams in non-core, print-related areas. One of those is Roominate, partnering in the early stages with HP with beta version software, to explore interior design. We had to add a raft of new skills and fit these around our core work, which pays the bills. While we’re in build mode, we had to find the resources to juggle both. The biggest lesson is you can’t just have a new revenue stream and slot it in. You must have dedicated resources, but it has to come second to the core activities of the business.
Tom Eckersley, managing director, Print Approach
We moved into security destruction services because we’ve always been a major supplier of shredders to government and commercial buyers. We landed a contract for designing an automated security destruction system for a major government department, which replaces a couple of thousand shredders. The first one is a very long sales process, and this is the first of its kind in Australia. It required a great deal of perseverance and then a lot of ingenuity to develop a system with this level of sophistication in the automated destruction of highly sensitive documents. If you plan properly and get the right specialists and knowledge alongside you, you can manage the risk.
Rod Fowler, managing director, Renz Australia
Cross-media greeting card services. We found it challenging to sell this product in the market. Our customers are more interested in lead generation strategies than retention-based strategies. The market has a view that the first step in growing your business is to get new customers, when in fact it’s the third step. What we also learnt is the poor level of CRM focus and knowledge that is still out there. At first we started to present to some of our franchise groups as we thought they would have a large database and the resources to ensure it was kept up to date.
Kerim El Gaibili, managing director, Prografica
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter