Keypoint Intelligence Weighs In at ITEX

COVID has forever changed the landscape of almost every market and was a huge wake-up call for the office equipment industry. Almost everyone experienced hardware sales and print volume declines as offices closed last year. In conversations with dealers, at the height of the pandemic, some had lost as much as 60% of their revenues from the loss of additional hardware and services. And even as we see offices begin to re-open this year, the office environment has already seen a significant transformation, and we expect to see a different future to where it was pre-pandemic.

Luckily, for some dealers, they were able to pivot and even expand into areas that helped to stave off an inevitable and disastrous outcome, while others weren’t so lucky and struggled to keep their doors open. The industry is at a crossroads today, where several will need to make some tough decisions to transform, diversify, and collaborate.

Keypoint Intelligence & ITEX have teamed together to help paint a path forward for our industry. We may not be able to predict the entire future, but we can help with our learnings from the past, newest research findings, and bringing industry leaders that can all help you to see a clearer future to start putting the pieces together for the office and dealer of the future. Experience the future NOW at ITEX.

The theme for this year’s ITEX is “Putting the Pieces Together for the Office of the Future,” which is the focus of both the pre-conference sessions as well as the breakout sessions of the main conference. The pre-conference sessions will start with answering the “Why” dealers need to pivot and diversify, which is presented exclusively by Keypoint Intelligence. These sessions will help other dealers understand the statistics of what happened during the pandemic and, more importantly, discover why they need to look at other areas to expand their business and their opportunities.

The pre-conference sessions will be held at the Flamingo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on November 9th starting at 3:00 pm, which will give dealers enough time to travel that day and attend the sessions before painting the town that evening in Vegas. The six main agenda topics are:

  • The COVID Situation – What happened & Where do we go?
    • Hardware & Print Volume – Yesterday, Today & The Future
  • The Office of the Future, The Future of Work & Workplace Transformation
    • Transformation of the Buyer
    • The Future Buyer/Commerce Experience
  • The Future of Print
    • What will happen to A3/A4? New print offerings – Production, Industrial-Packaging (Direct to Shape), Additive Manufacturing, Wide Format
  • Future Technologies & The Smart Workplace
    • IT, IoT, Smart Lighting/Temperature, Managed IT
  • Solutions & Services of the Future
    • The New Hybrid Workplace – Convergence of Collaboration & Communications
    • VoIP, Teams, Zoom & Cloud Collaboration
  • The Future Dealer & The Channel Convergence Phenomenon
    • IT, Office, PSP & A/V Channel Convergence

The main conference sessions will be presented by other industry veterans and dealers to uncover the “How” dealers need to transform their businesses to become viable dealers of the future on November 10th. There will be four tracks that dealers can attend during the conference hours. These tracks consist of:

  • The Future of Print Track – This track will focus on different print technologies that dealers should consider as part of their diversification strategy around “print”.
  • Future Technologies Track – This track will look at other technologies outside of the traditional print space such as VoIP, security cameras, IoT and Managed IT Services that dealers could offer to help grow their businesses.
  • Future Solutions & Services Track – The Solutions and Services track will look at software solutions that can help customers with digital transformation as well as additional services, such as security services, to help their profit margins.
  • The Future Dealership Track – The Future Dealership track will look at the operations and business side of the dealership to help them understand new business models.

Between the pre-conference sessions and the conference session tracks, we feel dealers should have a good understanding of why they need to diversify and how they can get into these new areas based on vendors’ and dealers’ experiences in these new industries.

Additionally, Keypoint Intelligence will be awarding dealers that have been able to demonstrate their diversification strategies as part of our new Keypoint Intelligence Future Dealer Awards. Lastly, we also know that it probably has been more than a year that most dealer principals and their folks have been able to travel and go to an event. We know the value these events provide to dealers beyond the expo and the conference sessions, just by talking to and collaborating with their fellow peers, industry analysts and vendors.

Again, we are very excited to be providing dealers this year’s “Must-Attend Event.” We know that many are looking forward to going somewhere, meeting with their colleagues, and participating in a great conference and expo. We know many dealers are trying to navigate the future of their business, and we believe this event will help answer your tough questions and give you a path forward.

We look forward to having your experience the future NOW. For more information about ITEX and to register for the event, go to www.itexshow.com.