Press release from the issuing company:
Stramaglio Consulting has announced that The Ascension Group LLC has joined The Consortium, a think tank of imaging industry leaders dedicated to accelerating innovation and sustainable channel growth.
Ascension exists because the BTA dealer channel needs a new recurring-revenue category, packaged, priced, and installed the way the channel already sells. For well over 40 years the BTA dealers installed the copier, configured the VoIP, supported the workflow software, and trained the staff in nearly every mid-market office in North America. That channel is the most trusted, most installed footprint in the small and mid-market economy.
And that channel is being squeezed. U.S. copier/office-equipment wholesaling revenue has fallen roughly 4.8% CAGR from 2020–2025, with a ~9.8% drop in 2025 alone. Middle management is retiring. Paper volume falls every quarter. Meanwhile, AI vendors are chasing direct sales, leaving the channel that already owns the customer relationship out of the biggest software category of the decade.
We built The Ascension Group to fix that with three important areas, including sales enablement training targeting executives and C-Levels, AI for workflows (inbound and outbound) as well as being the intelligence and brain of the robots, plus robots. As shared by Co-Founders Gary Russ, president and CEO, and Mark Emmerson, senior vice president of sales and marketing, they built TAG as“We See The Challenges!” The TAG direction and vision fits extremely well into the positioning and progress that The Consortium offers.
TAG CEO & President Gary Russ
The Consortium is assembled by Mike Stramaglio, president and CEO of Stramaglio Consulting, in order to establish an open collaborative platform that enables the imaging channel to embrace and lead digital transformation (DX). “By combining AI-driven workflow automation, robotics and executive sales enablement, The Ascension Group is creating practical new recurring-revenue opportunities for the imaging channel,” said Stramaglio. “Their vision strongly aligns with The Consortium’s mission to help dealers expand beyond print and lead the transformation toward smarter, more connected workplace services.”
About Stramaglio Consulting LLC
Stramaglio Consulting is committed to taking imaging channel businesses to the next level with a focus on new technologies, innovation and consulting services. Its founder, Mike Stramaglio, is a well-known and respected industry leader with more than 40 years’ experience in the office imaging technology channel. Most recently, he was president of MWA FORZA with Konica Minolta after its acquisition of MWA Intelligence, the company he founded in 2006.
