Dealer members were among the 337 people who flocked to the Santa Ana Pueblo settlement for the 2025 Business Technology Association’s National Conference last week in the American Southwest. The national event took place June 16-18 at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa in the foothills of New Mexico’s Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque.
The event’s main attraction was Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Emmitt Smith (pictured above, left), the National Football League’s all-time rushing leader with 18,355 yards. Smith also leads all professional running backs with 164 career rushing touchdowns. Now 56, the former Dallas Cowboys player still appears to be in great shape. Smith might even be able to dance to a few songs like he did 18 years ago, when he and his partner won Season 3 of TV’s smash hit “Dancing with the Stars.” He stressed the importance of preparation and the ability to break down processes on the gridiron and especially on the dance floor.
Smith took the stage after an introduction from Mike Marusic (above, right), president and CEO of Sharp Business USA, which sponsored the fireside chat. The Sharp USA leader recalled being a heartbroken football fan in the early 1990s, when his beloved New York Giants lost to the Dallas Cowboys in the playoffs. In the conference’s signature “fireside chat” discussion format, Marusic spoke with Smith about the superstar athlete’s successes and how honed his skills and passions to be one of the best running backs in NFL history.
Today, Smith is chairman of E Smith Advisors, a full-service real estate services and solutions company. The entrepreneur explained how on-the-field assets, such as building trust and maintaining a strong work ethic, can translate to the business world. To grow and expand, skill sets need to be nurtured, he added.
The Pensacola, Florida native noted that traits like mental toughness crossover, too, reciting the full-contact, tackle football mantra: “If you can’t play with pain, you can’t play the game.” He also gave a thank-you nod to trailblazers who came before him and shared information: People such as coaching legend Jimmy Johnson, team owner Jerry Jones, and HOF quarterback turned commercial real estate broker Roger Staubach. “I was humble . . . but also not afraid to ask them questions about how they each overcame their challenges,” Smith said. “Life and business are all about adjustments.”
1 Hour with Xerox Ops Chief
In a 60-minute presentation, Xerox President & COO John Bruno touched on the hot topic of artificial intelligence (AI), which relies on good data that needs to be structured, he told dealer owners and managers in attendance. The brunt of his “30,000-foot overview” focused on Xerox’s direction over the past three years: Bruno described the journey as reinventive rather than transformative. The company is rethinking the way it does R&D and is investing in itself, he continued. It also is exiting non-core assets. Rather than play the victim, “we’ve chosen to embrace the change and direct it,” he said.
Xerox Presidemt & COO John Bruno spoke for a full hour at the BTA Annual Conference.
Bruno went on to explain how Xerox has navigated the adverse effects of the COVID pandemic, the hybrid office trend and activist investors to reshape itself. He cited two lofty goals:
- Xerox is striving to regain a leadership position in the A3 MFP space. (The Lexmark acquisition is expected to be finalized in Q3.)
- Xerox aims to double its A4 share! Earlier this year at Xerox’s Partner Summit, Bruno was quoted as saying, “We are going to take market share in a declining market.”
Bruno is somewhat of a turnaround strategist who has done this before for other organizations, including at Cisco, NCR, and Aon, where he led data and analytics. He described his leadership team’s 12-quarter visionary program as “evolving to meet the moment.” A large part of their challenge has been deconstructing parts of Xerox, a company he acknowledged in the past could be difficult to do business with. Going forward, Bruno vowed to be a better partner and concluded that Xerox will build for the dealer channel. “We want to provide greater value for the channel,” he stressed.
The concept of “mix shifts” was another hyper-contraction market takeaway from Xerox for dealers gathered in New Mexico. Xerox sees the value of IT solutions as well as the emerging digital services side of its business, endeavoring to put even more energy into bolstering its partner ecosystem versus the direct business model that presently dominates. The company assesses cloud hosting and network services as having a total addressable market (TAM) worth nearly $700 billion. Within enterprise organizations, “making AI-enabled workflows represents a huge business opportunity,” Bruno believes. “It’s all about creating order from chaos in the document landscape.”
But Big X promises not to turn its back on print, which traditionally has buttered its proverbial bread. There was a time when “94% of our profit and 90% of revenue came from print,” according to Bruno, and Xerox “owned” the A3 space. However, the long-term Fuji Xerox joint venture was terminated (by Fujifilm) five years ago, he noted.
Bruno concluded the discussion with a focus on the production printing space, citing “end of iron” (machine life) as a concern. By following a service-led, platform-enabled strategy, Xerox hopes to make print operations better. At the BTA conference’s exhibition of products, Xerox highlighted its PrimeLink C9200 Series MFP, which integrates with Fiery’s FreeForm Create application for variable-data printing. Device seeds range from 65 pages per minute (ppm) up to 75 ppm and top out at 81 ppm with a monthly duty cycle of 60,000 pages.
Dealer Perspectives on the Business Technology Biz
To close out Day 1, before heading out to the rodeo (where some brave souls hopped on and rode a mechanical bull!), three office technology leaders participated in an “Industry Shifts” panel moderated by BTA General Counsel Greg Goldberg:
- Chip Miceli, CEO of Chicago-area dealership Pulse Technology
- Tim Seeley, Jr., president of client relations at Seeley Office Systems in Upstate New York
- Ken Staubitz of Modern Office Methods (MOM) in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area
Greg Goldberg (from left), Tim Seeley, Jr., Ken Staubitz, and Chip Miceli.
The trio had an in-depth conversation about tariffs, adding revenue streams, talent recruitment, and, of course, AI. Regarding the tariffs situation, Staubitz advised fellow dealers to “be transparent about it.” Miceli’s stance is competitive. Leverage tariffs to your advantage and tell customers to buy now, he emphasized, adding that Pulse has “had a great month of June” in terms of revenues.
Pulse Technology’s print-plus recurring revenue strategy includes selling interactive boards and LED walls, Miceli shared. “We had to go out and hire specialists to service and fix” these electronics, he said, but the ROI is there.
Regarding human resource best practices, Staubitz preached about the importance of “providing careers, not jobs.” To retain younger workers, MOM is big on employee involvement in local communities. The company has established a Culture Committee that is not part of HR, said Staubitz. Hearing that concept gave Seeley an idea for the new title of a recently promoted person at his NY dealership. “I’m going to make her our chief culture correspondent,” he announced.
Back on the Ohio/Kentucky border, MOM now holds more frequent (quarterly) team meetings to keep its people informed. Staubitz added that he has learned—the hard way—to validate service anniversaries beyond monetary awards. “People like the money, but they like recognition, too,” he explained. Feeling appreciated is important. All three panelists encouraged dealer peers not to let their egos get in the way of improvements. Whether it’s adding managed IT services that don’t make money or ill-timed EV charging stations, learn from your failures.
More Education: Day 2
The BTA educational lineup concluded on the second day of the conference with two outstanding sessions. The first, presented by Anne Valatis of Keypoint Intelligence, was about “Expanding into Vertical Markets: Unlocking Growth with Tailored Solutions.” The second session, by Jocelyn Gorman, president of Albuquerque dealer DSI – Document Solutions, Inc., covered succession planning. The Cannata Report was honored to be included in Gorman’s insightful presentation, entitled “Building a Stronger Team Today & for the Future by Trusting Data, Not Just Gut Instinct.”
DSI President Jocelyn Gorman and our CEO CJ Cannato enjoyed the BTA’s rodeo festivities, courtesy of Xerox, in sunny New Mexico!
“Frank Cannata and I have learned a lot about ourselves, how to be better collaborators, and how to work together to achieve greater success in the future,” commented Frank’s son and President and CEO CJ Cannata.
In addition to Sharp and Xerox, Toshiba was another main sponsor of this year’s BTA conference. (They bought breakfast, thank you very much!) HP’s sponsorship presentation featured Adam Minnick, partner business manager, who discussed the future of work and adding to dealer profitability. In terms of security, Minnick explained how HP “grabs” R&D from its PC division because “print devices basically are computers that spit out paper.”
Other notable exhibitors included: ACDI, Brother, ConnectWise, DXone, ecoprintQ, ELATEC, Epson, GreatAmerica, Hytec, Intermedia Cloud Communications, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Leaf Commercial Capital, Nexera, Ricoh, RISO, SalesChain, Square 9, TD SYNNEX, and Wells Fargo. The IBPI Connect annual event co-located this year with BTA’s conference. Members who registered for the BTA event via the buying group’s portal received 50% off the registration fee.
Established in 1987, IBPI is the largest buying group in the office equipment industry, consisting of more than 500 independent commercial copier and print dealers as well as managed service providers (MSPs) throughout North America.
