Where Are They Now? North Country Business Products (Aug. 2010)

By The Business Solutions Network

If you attended RSPA (Retail Solutions Providers Association) INSPIRE or RetailNOW in the past, you've no doubt met Dean Crotty, president of North Country Business Products (NCBP), one of the larger POS dealerships in the United States. Conversations with Dean are always guaranteed to give you some new ideas about your business. Back in Aug. 2010, I was lucky enough to get a couple hours of time with Crotty to learn what's driving the growth of his (at that time) 210-employee company. In the article, Crotty talked about the challenges in adding complementary technologies to his line card, which verticals were hot and which were not, and how payment processing was a relatively easy add-on sale. With so much going on -- and being in between INSPIRE earlier this year and RetailNOW coming up at the end of July -- I was happy to catch up with Crotty via email to learn how his company is doing today.

How has your business fared since we last spoke with you?
Crotty: Being 100% employee owned, our company has to be evaluated by an independent (third party) company to set the share price each year. We have been very fortunate that our share price has increased a combined 40%over the last three years. This can only be achieved by taking care of our customers and taking care of our company.

What has contributed most to your success since we last spoke?
Crotty: Probably the biggest contribution to our success has been in our call center (help desk) area. We are able to take care of customers in an efficient and timely manner by remote access, to diagnose and resolve issues within the customers’ software. This, along with proactively monitoring and resolving issues (many times prior to the customer even knowing that there is an issue) has helped tremendously. The result is less downtime for the customer.

Are there any new technologies/solutions you're offering which are impacting your business?
Crotty: We have been successful at outsourcing our help desk to other resellers across the country. Our help desk takes care of their customers without them having to invest in one themselves; providing us with more revenue. We have made a substantial investment in providing a help desk to our customers. Creating a helpdesk has been great for both our fellow resellers and NCBP.

Speak to any failings you've experienced since we last spoke.
Crotty: Our biggest challenge has been finding good sales people. As we have grown, we continually have had trouble finding high quality sales people to interview for openings.

Are there any other tips/tactics that you think are worth mentioning that are contributing to your success?
Crotty: In today’s environment, we believe that we have to continually produce more revenue without adding a lot of cost. We refer to it as revenue per associate. We cannot accomplish this at the customers’ expense. We have to take better care of our customers while doing this. We feel that we have been successful in many areas but we continue to look for ways to do even a better job at this.

How have payment processing and/or video surveillance contributed to your company's bottom line?
Crotty: Our residuals from payment processing have grown very substantially over the last few years and will continue to be a focus for our company. Video surveillance, integrated to the point of sale, continues to be a great add on sale to new and existing customers.