After years of utilizing CompTIA’s educational services and participating in its conferences, OKI Data Americans, a company specializing managed print services, decided to look deeper into what other services CompTIA offered. Even with a well-established base in distribution and dealer relations, OKI noted that there was room for evaluation and further expansion in its print services offering.
OKI places a high priority on making sure it finds dealers that prove to be reliable additions to its business. Hoping to create a more extensive vendor network, Jacki Paralis, senior marketing manager, and Ed Juliff, assistant operations manager at OKI said they knew CompTIA could provide the “gateway for introductions” that OKI was looking for. Toward that end, in January of this year, OKI officially received its Managed Print Trustmark, denoting the successful completion of the managed print services certification process, as well as its first step towards solidifying the strong connections it was looking for.
When the company, which works with its channel partners to evaluate and reduce the costs of its end-users’ daily printing operations, realized that both its partners and competitors were becoming MPS certified, it began researching the Trustmark process. Juliff said “it was a no brainer that it was something we needed to pursue” once the Trustmark was on its radar.
As OKI began the self-assessment process for its Managed Print Trustmark, it found that it already had most of the requirements in place. In fact, after only one submission, OKI received its certification. Both Paralis and Juliff wanted to see the good with the bad, so the substantiation they received for OKI’s previous business decisions was much needed. Receiving affirmation that through the years, their company “took the right path,” Paralis said, was a satisfying feeling. Beyond this affirmation though, the self-assessment process helped them “close some loop holes in the documents [OKI] was already using,” said Juliff. From there, it was able to build upon the framework of their existing contracts and documents with the details addressed in the Trustmark’s self-assessment.
“You always compare how you do things versus how other manufactures are doing things,” Paralis said. “You are never comparing how they should be done.” Juliff and Paralis believed that CompTIA was the only organization with the benchmark set to push them beyond emulation of their competition and into implementation of industry best practices. Since OKI had gone through extensive modification over the years, Juliff was interested in seeing how these standards, once applied, would impact the overall results of their everyday processes. In the end, OKI was surprised at how essential its new practices seemed to its operations.
“We have gotten a number of opportunities brought to us that we may not have in the past because we validated our program,” Paralis said. In the broadest reaches of its business, OKI wanted its current and future clients to be able to recognize its credibility as it was established through objective third party validation. As OKI prepares for its official press release announcing its Trustmark, it is training its sales staff on the certification process so that they can share their new references to their clients. Already, with their frequent interactions with other companies in the industry, Paralis and Juliff both noticed that when other professionals “hear the CompTIA name, it instantly bring validation to the conversation when you talk about Trustmarks.”
Jordyn Goffo is marketing and communications intern at CompTIA.
