Managing the Modern Office

2. The Paper "frail - Threat or Opportunity?In the second in their new Office Management series, Warren Wright, Carl Evans and Mark Richardson (from the Business School, University of Worcester) present a case history of Fellowes, an organisation that has prioritised its product development strategy.The first, introductory article in this series, 'The Importance of Office Management: an introductory discussion', can be found in the March 2010 edition of e.manager.Most of us will have seen an American movie or TV show where someone is fired and told to clear their desk. The scene that follows typically depicts a dejected soul filling a large 'bankers box' full of personal items before trudging slowly into the street to hail a cab, Those bankers boxes, which originated in the US in 1917, were manufactured and distributed by US-based family business, Fellowes.Moving forward sixty years or so to the early 1980s, Fellowes began to manufacture and sell office paper shredders, a branded product still familiar to many office workers. The demand for paper shredders was created as a result of organisations enthusiastically embracing information technology (I'D in office management and the resulting dramatic increase in the use of personal computers (PCs), plus the proliferation of inexpensive printers on every desk All offices now had the capability to quickly and cheaply create documents, and therefore needed a convenient and secure way of destroying them.Market opportunityIt is interesting to note how a specific technological advancement in office management can lead to a significant market opportunity. The extension of the Data Protection Act to include paper files, as well those held on digital media, has also had a significant impact on the demand to shred paper. More recently, the fear of identity theft has extended the shredder market to include personal use to such an extent that the biggest consumer supplier of paper shredders in the UK is now Argos.In the early 1990s, Fellowes began to manufacture products to support document binding and laminating, Again the market was created by changes in technology. By 1990, IT was dominating office management, and more importantly, advances in hardware and software meant that more sophisticated documents were being created. The advent of desktop publishing software and inexpensive colour printers meant that documents with numerous fonts, graphics and photographs could be created without the need for a publishing house. Binding by stapling was no longer an appropriate option for these highly professional, bespoke documents.However, by 2006, Fellowes' sales of binding and laminating products were in decline, and the number of product failures increasing, with resultant increases in maintenance costs and growing dissatisfaction amongst clients. Faced with this worsening situation, senior executives at Fellowes had little option but to support a radical marketing strategy, focused on product development, as proposed by the Binding and Laminating Division based in the UK. At the time, binding and laminating products were competing for business through better technical features and specifications. However, initial market research soon highlighted that most customers were simply not interested in additional features; at best they ignored them and at worst viewed them as an impractical hindrance. Perhaps not surprisingly, customers wanted machines that were both simple to use and reliable.Therefore, it was decided to completely redesign the binding and laminating machines. First, they needed to be functionally simplistic and easy to use, This was achieved by removing any superfluous functions from the existing products and incorporating modern interface features (buttons, menus, keys, etc.) from familiar consumer products, such as mobile phones, MP3 players and printers. The restyling of the new products was also completely overhauled, borrowing style concepts and colours from the luxury motor industry. …