Corporate Vision August 2017

36 CORPORATE VISION / August 2017 , Thermocopy is recognized as one of the premier quality companies in East Tennessee, with awards and recognition for its products, services, environmental initiatives, and community involvement. J. Mark DeNicola discusses the firm’s mission and what it does that makes it so successful. Leading Businesses in the US Thermocopy’s focus is providing its clients with the infrastructure, whether hardware or software, to manage all the information flow in their business. Included in this focus is assessing the customer’s operational requirements, providing the infrastructure they need based on the assessment, assisting with the implementation and training required to fully utilize the solutions provided, and then providing outstanding service for the solutions. This focus has evolved over the years due to evolving technology and has required strategy changes to continue to be a successful, profitable business. The company is in its sixth decade of life. The clients range anywhere in size and type from commercial businesses - to large health care operations concerned with HIPAA/PHI compliance - to ultra-secure government labs and nuclear weapons facilities. Mr DeNicola discusses how the firm approaches a new project and what steps the firm takes in ensuring its clients receive the best possible outcome, before detailing what steps the company plans to take to achieve its overall mission. “A clear, concise statement of work (SOW) and its understanding by the client and our project team is the foundation for the best possible outcome for the client. Constant communication of the project’s progress, problems, and solutions during implementation is also very important. “The company’s overall mission is to provide innovative, creative, and proven business solutions to our clients and to maintain mutually beneficial long-term business partnerships. “We constantly measure our mission statement achievement by the use of many performance metrics and have the processes in place to help improve the metrics if needed. For instance, one measurement of whether or not we are maintaining mutually beneficial long-term business partnerships would be the use of the client satisfaction metric, Net Promoter Score. We review overall and individual client Net Promoter Scores in departmental and company meetings on a weekly and monthly basis, and we publish the overall Net Promoter Score on our website. Discussions continually occur on how we can make sure clients actively endorse us to their peers.” In the technology industry, it is important for companies to mark themselves out as the best possible option for clients. Management do not strive to be the biggest technology company in East Tennessee, however, they want to be the best, fulfilling the dream of the founder, as Mr DeNicola notes below. “Even before the term “Raving Fans” was coined and became part of the popular lexicon, we were creating raving fans. Randall Sumner, the founder of the company, did not set out to be the largest technology company in East Tennessee, but he always wanted to be the best. Our management team strives to carry on that legacy. We are committed to being the best company possible to serve our clients, employees, and community. Today there are more tools available to measure that “Raving Fans” component, including the Net Promoter Score, which for us is hovering at 96+ year-to-date. I am proud of that and the efforts the Thermocopy team have put into making that score what it is. It is this legacy that makes us the best possible option for our clients.” Mr DeNicola gives us a brief overview of the industry in the region currently, listing the specific challenges and outside influences that may affect the industry and the company. The firm have already identified the additional services that are required to adapt to upcoming developments, highlighting the forward-thinking nature of the firm. 1707CV16 “A significant percentage of our revenue is from the sales and service of office equipment. The multi-functional device will continue to be a requirement in the office setting for the foreseeable future. However, the prints/copies made on that device will dwindle as the “Baby Boomer” generation leaves the workforce. The Millennials, and to some extent the GenXer’s are accustomed to almost no paper use. Almost all their collaboration tools are digital, and the mere fact that they collaborate in the cloud precludes paper usage, as it is not up-to-the-second information. A large part of revenue and profits in our industry depend on the annuities provided by charging a cost per print/copy for documents produced on the multi-functional devices. Thus, lower or no prints/copies translate into lower revenues/ profits from this segment of our business. While Thermocopy is not currently experiencing this downward trend, it is not a matter of if, but when, we will see a reduction in billable copies/ prints. We have already identified the additional products/services required to replace these revenue streams and profits, developed the business plans to take these products/services to market and are in the process of implementing the business plans.”