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14
INTERVIEW
Effective from 1st January, Olivetti
S.p.A has established a direct
‘manufacturer-dealer’ relationship
with channel partners in the UK and
Ireland. Henceforth, Olivetti dealers
will sign contracts directly with the
parent company in Italy, which will
process all orders and invoicing.
In the UK, Olivetti S.p.A will work
in partnership with the Olivetti Agency.
Staffed by ex-Olivetti UK personnel, this
new entity will represent the Olivetti brand
and manage all channel-related sales,
technical and marketing support, including
the identification of new dealers and joint
management of the UK Distribution Centre
in Wellingborough.
Olivetti Agency managing director Dave
Goswell told
PITR
that the new set-up
would streamline operations and simplify
matters for partners with large multi-site,
multi-national contracts. He said: “The
ability to negotiate pricing and consistent
SLAs on a pan-European level directly with
the manufacturer will be a real value-add
to partners. A direct relationship will also
remove a lot of duplication in the ordering
and fulfilment processes.”
Before becoming managing director of
Olivetti Agency, Goswell held management
positions with Canon, Konica Minolta and
Gestetner and spent 14 years running
his own Olivetti dealership, Pro-Digital
Systems, which in its second year of trading
became Olivetti’s UK Dealer of the Year. It
remained in the Top 10 almost every year
until Goswell sold the business in 2010,
with the intention of retiring.
“I always had a goal to retire at 55, so
I sold the business and hit the golf course,”
he said. “But less than a year later, I knew I
needed a new challenge. At the beginning
of 2011, Dennis Woods, then Managing
Director of Olivetti UK, asked me if I’d join
them to work on a series of special projects
for a six-month period. Four years later I
was still there and loving every minute!”
This experience provided Goswell with
great insight into Olivetti’s operations and
relationships at board level.
“I saw first-hand how they worked
on a pan-European level,” he said. “The
first Agency was established in Austria
nine years ago and this model, where the
parent company forges the relationship
and the Agency plays a supporting role,
facilitating everything required to market
and grow the brand in that country,
worked so well that Olivetti subsequently
rolled it out across the Nordic regions and
then across the rest of Europe.
“When we were approached about
setting up a similar operation in the UK, I
was really keen to get involved,” he said.
Olivetti S.p.A has restructured its UK and
Ireland operation, closely aligning it with its
pan-European business model.
Print IT Reseller
spoke to Dave Goswell, Managing Director of
the newly established Olivetti Agency, to find
out more about the new approach.
Olivetti streamlines
UK supply chain
Co-operative
The Agency is a brand new business that,
unlike Olivetti UK, is not wholly-owned
by Olivetti S.p.A., but is instead a co-
operative, with a small business mentality.
“We’re working on behalf of the dealers,
supporting them and managing the Olivetti
brand in the UK, but we’ve got a small
business can-do culture,“ said Goswell. “We
can take an entrepreneurial approach, which
is actually what our dealers want; they are
owner-managed businesses themselves, so
we’re all on the same page.”
He added: “Our vision is accountability,
and in time the Agency will ultimately be
owned by the people who work in it. It’s
this central ownership and empowerment
that will ensure we deliver what is needed.”
For Olivetti dealers, the new
arrangement has an important element
of continuity and familiarity. “Back-office
functions, such as finance for example,
have all now been transferred to Italy, but
the customer-facing positions still exist and
many of the people our dealers know have
moved over with us,” explained Goswell.
Olivetti UK’s legacy warehousing has
also been retained so that adequate
stock can be held locally. “We’ve retained
our existing facilities and share the
employment of the local management
between the Agency and Olivetti S.p.A.,”
explained Goswell.
Olivetti Agency has moved to
new offices in Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire and both it and Olivetti
S.p.A. have invested in IT infrastructure to
support the new operation.
“We will shortly unveil a new website
that will provide online ordering for
the very first time,” explained Goswell.
“We’ve invested in CRM functionality, so
that we can provider dealers with a slick,
in-tune and responsive technical support
service, and we’ve made some changes to
internal systems, making our own business
processes and workflows more efficient.”
Olivetti’s Key Partner Programme will
continue to run through Olivetti S.p.A,
along with the ‘Best for Colour’ and ‘Best
for Solutions’ accreditation programmes.
The company will reveal further details of
its plans at its Dealer Conference taking
place on February 4 at the Belfry.
For Olivetti
dealers,
the new
arrangement
has an
important
element of
continuity
and
familiarity.
