15 August 2022
Posted by: a
1. Tell us a little about your role?
We are very fortunate at IBS to have a strong management team who run the day to day operations. My role is to support them wherever they need, and to spend my time working on the business, rather than in it. This allows me to focus on where the company is heading next by providing a roadmap for how we can get there.
2. What was your background before coming to IBS
I am a qualified solicitor with over 25 years experience as a General Manager in businesses across Australia and internationally. I have worked in the hospitality, technology, tourism and sporting sectors while specialising in leading companies through transformational change and growth.
3. What do you believe is the secret to business success?
- For any business to be successful it needs to have a plan, the right people to execute the plan, and the right tools for them to do the job. You have to get all three right because even if you ace two areas out of these three, but miss the third, it will still lead to failure.
4. What do you consider makes IBS different to its competitors?
We are very proud of our core pillars (price, quality, range, service and turnaround). But I think what makes us unique is having the largest range of products in the entire industry, making sure that our jobs make it out the door when we say they will, and the fact that we are constantly focussed on how we can deliver practical support to our clients to help grow their business.
5. What do you consider to be the biggest challenges that the industry faces today?
I think the biggest challenges are globalisation of supply and the continued rise of AI. Whether we like it or not, technology makes it easier to trade across borders. We are all constantly competing with offshore suppliers and workforces and it is critical that we can offer points of difference and still compete financially in the global economy. I also think that AI is already starting to change the future in graphic design. Forget about Canva, tools like Dall-E and Midjourney are improving every single day and people are already finding ways of monetising this technology (eg accomplice.ai). The challenge our industry will have moving forward is ensuring value in human intervention with these technologies.
6. What do you think are the biggest opportunities?
Technology has opened up the ability to allow smaller businesses to compete on a more level playing field with the behemoths. Accessing ever improving W2P e-commerce tools, online ad space bidding and access to offshore virtual assistants will mean that our clients can compete on user experience and price with the likes of Vistaprint but stay more nimble, specialise in a niche area, and provide a better or more personalised service.
7. If you were running a business as a print reseller what would you do to grow your business?
We established our super saver range of products to allow our clients to offer tripwire offers to help grow their customer base. I would use these products with little or no markup to offer a bargain deal to capture and convert a lead into a client. Once you can convince someone to purchase from you once, it is easier to nurture the relationship to turn them into long term valuable clients. The other thing that we constantly hear from our clients is that they know what to do to grow their business but never have the time. A wise person once told me to divide my to do list into three categories…. delegate, automate and execute. There are so many tools out there to help with the day to day tasks that consume most of us and our VA services have been designed specifically in mind to help you delegate the more mundane tasks and free up your time to concentrate on growing your business. If I was a print reseller, I would offload my admin tasks to a virtual assistant to free up my time to focus on building long term relationships with my customers which would have immediate and long term return on investment.
8. Finally, what do you do when you are not working at IBS?
I enjoy travel, love my footy (I coach my kids team), and am partial to an occasional rum.