Company Founder Talks about Personal and Professional Experience, Premier Program
John MacInnes is the President and CEO of Print Audit, a leading ISV based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The company was co-founded by MacInnes in 1999 and has since become one of the most successful developers of print tracking and copy auditing tools in the industry, with major clients including the likes of Nike, Visa, Pfizer and the U.S. Army. The Premier program was introduced in 2012, and last month the company hosted its Top 100 Summit, a conference for select office equipment dealers that took place in Park City, Utah. We spoke with him recently in hopes of understanding the philosophy behind running such a successful business.
What drives John MacInnes?
I’m driven to create jobs where they did not exist before. I work with several companies to help them grow by giving advice and investment.
Your website says Print Audit took off in just five years and has been growing ever since. What would you attribute its rapid success to?
A clear mission, and then it is all about the people. We have very specific values at Print Audit to ensure we hire the right people to move the mission forward.
What is your biggest regret or missed opportunity and what did you learn from that experience?
I don’t really have any regrets. I have had some hard lessons. My favorite is that I have learned the hard way not to “have all your eggs in one basket.” Several years ago Print Audit had 75 percent of its revenue coming from Ricoh. We knew this was an issue but never really worked hard to do anything about it. Ricoh bought IKON, and everything changed for us almost overnight. Ricoh’s sales with us dropped 80 percent in a few months, and we were in trouble. On top of that, Print Audit was my only source of income, and I had just bought a new house with a nice big mortgage. We were very lucky to have been able to recover with the launch of the Premier program for dealers. Now, Print Audit has more than 500 Premier members and no single large customers. I am personally diversified so that I have income from several sources, including new businesses that I have started.
You are an extremely busy guy, both personally and professionally. How do you manage the work/life balance while having such lofty professional goals?
I have a credo of family first that is not just for me but all of the people who work at my companies. I go out of my way to make it to important events for my wife and son. No matter where I am, I try to be present and not think of other things [when in a meeting, for instance]. And I make sure that everyone at my companies understands that work comes second to family and that we will always support them when they need it.
What advice would you give to a new salesperson who has just joined your team?
Don’t show up and throw up. Ask questions and then tailor what we have to what they need.
What is that secret ingredient that Print Audit has that makes it the best choice for business?
Print Audit Premier is simply a good investment. No matter how big the dealer, they will see several times the value of what they are paying us—and the value is measurable.
Print Audit Premier is a unique product. What was the thought process behind it and how has it paid off?
Before Premier, Print Audit was really two companies: one that sold user management software and one that sold remote device management software. We had different competitors and different customers. It really was a bit of a hodgepodge, and the mission had become blurred.
When things went downhill with Ricoh, we knew we had to come up with something different. So, we had several tough meetings to decide what we actually liked doing and what we didn’t like doing. It became apparent that we really liked the office equipment dealers. More specifically, we liked selling to the dealers, not through them. We were already selling the dealers Facilities Manager so we needed to figure out how to sell Print Audit 6 directly to the dealers instead of through them. The model that we came up with is Premier.
“Don’t show up and throw up. Ask questions and then tailor what we have to what they need. –John MacInnes
Premier is a subscription for dealers that gives them virtually unlimited access to all our tools. As a Premier member, the dealer gets remote device management and user management that they can resell at any profit they like. It is a model that dealers love. We have over 500 Premier members worldwide and add new ones every month. The ROI for the dealer is always several times what they pay us.
What is the biggest challenge your team must overcome to succeed?
We need to constantly add value to the Premier program so that our Premier members can grow their businesses.
What do you see yourself doing five years from now? What does Print Audit have in store for the year ahead and beyond?
I plan to continue to help companies grow for as long as I can.
Print Audit will continue to enhance the Premier program by releasing a lot of cool new stuff. In the next year, we will release two or three new embedded Print Audit 6 software products for HP, Xerox and hopefully Konica Minolta. We will also be releasing a completely new version of our user based platform, and Print Audit 6 will be replaced by Print Audit Infinite (you are the first industry person to hear the name).
Past that, at Print Audit we see very clearly that page creation is slowly but surely going down. We plan to spend the next few years investing in very different technologies and companies that will be able to help our Premier members grow past their reliance on paper and add other revenue streams. Stay tuned next year for announcements on those.
Print Audit has won several awards, including the MPSA Leadership award for best MPS innovation, Recharger Readers Choice Award for Best MPS Software, and a perfect 5 Star rating from Buyers Lab.
For more information, be sure to check out our coverage of Print Audit’s products and services.