Wide Format Imaging

Climbing the corporate ladder" is a phrase that's long meant ascending from an entry-level position to top management of a major multinational company. But for some of the nation's more successful wide-format imaging firms, it has another connotation. These shops have captured business from big-name corporations, and are now in the process of upselling those corporate giants on the idea of still more work.

In this issue, Wide-Format Imaging talks to four shops about their experiences serving corporations, including the challenges of capturing corporate business, the demands made by clients, the ability to win additional business once serving corporate needs, and the keys to retaining the lucrative business of "household name" clients while pursuing additional accounts.

Academy Reprographics

Winning the business of a world-renowned corporation wasn't a big problem for Academy Reprographics, an Albuquerque, NM firm. At the time it won the Intel business, it had clients that dealt with Intel. Those clients made connections that enabled the shop to get in the door at the chipmaker, says president and owner Kevin O'Hea. That in turn led to Academy producing wide-format clean room prints for the corporate giant.

That was just the start. "We realized this was a big fish to land, and we approached Intel and were able to identify the buyers, or Intel purchasing groups, that handled the commodities we sold," O'Hea reports. "There was one group ordering the engineering printing. There was another group ordering plotter supplies. We could ask them what it was they bought that we sell, and who their end users were. That just elevated us as a source for the end users."

In winning business from Intel, Academy Reprographics benefited from the fact different departments within the corporation didn't always communicate effectively with one another, O'Hea adds. "We became the thread that helped Intel coordinate their projects, and saved them gobs of time and money," he says.

"The key to everything is collecting as much information from as wide a variety of people as possible," he reports. "That lets you understand the processes, and you may be able to provide them with a better solution, or at the very least understand their needs a little better."

In its experience with Intel, Academy Reprographics found the chipmaker could prove demanding when it came to turnaround time. O'Hea discovered end users within Intel often had little concern about a service's cost, as long as the project was turned around in the time required. But the corporation's own purchasing department took a different stance on the matter, arguing if projects took O'Hea's shop two days to complete, the projects should be given to the shop two days in advance. "And that's exactly how my contract with Intel now reads," O'Hea chuckles.