Part of being successful involves knowing what is to come.
Michael Nash, president and co-owner of North Central Digital Systems, Inc., used his experience with Toshiba and traveling to different companies to predict the future of copiers.
"I had a good picture of where it was going," Nash said.
The company originally began as North Central Digital X-Rays, by the father of Nash's other co-owner, Mike Kuhn. Kuhn's father started selling X-rays in 1982.
He later started a division to sell copiers.
Mike Kuhn took over the business. Nash and Kuhn restarted the business Dec. 1, 1998.
"Copies at that time were just copiers," Nash said. "I knew what we needed to focus on to be ahead of the curve."
Copiers really began to transition around 2000 and 2001 when customers wanted copiers and printers.
Scanners did not become popular until 2006, even though the technology was available in 2001.
"The market wasn't ready," Nash said. "It wasn't the equipment. Customers care about price. It used to be expensive to add scanning, but now it's standard. Now everyone wants it to do that. Five years ago, no one wanted it."
Nash predicts that in the future, people will use scanning more efficiently by scanning important documents and saving them on computers.
"Instead of filing, it's easily available," Nash said. "I can see products of ten years ago. Before I'd have to stop and call you back. I'd have to look for it. Hopefully I'd find it if it was in alphabetical order. It's efficient if I can do it in three seconds and not 30 minutes."
North Central Digital Systems sells and repairs Kyocera, Toshiba, Oki and Muratec copiers, laser printers, fax machines and scanners.
The company supports more than 3,000 systems and has 2,500 customers from State College through Wilkes-Barre.
Offices are located throughout the region in State College, Danville and Wilkes-Barre.
Most of the work is done on-location, so that the technicians can make sure the equipment works and can show employees how to use it.
Quick service is important to the company's success.
The company has seven technicians that work in different areas throughout the area.
Each technician has a car packed with necessary service parts.
"We try to answer a service call within four hours," Nash said. "We can walk in, identify the problem, go to the car, get the part, fix it and leave. All of the guys are situated throughout the area. ... If you don't give the customer service, people will take their business elsewhere."
Most of the sales and service calls are to other businesses and not for home use.
Someone occasionally printing something out at home does not go through toner as often as businesses do.
One of the ways businesses can save money is by buying toner from North Central Digital Systems.
When a machine runs out of toner, employees can use the extra toner they receive and just call the company for more.
North Central sends toner out daily through UPS and companies can receive it in two to three days.
If a business prints out 300,000 pages and buys toner from North Central as opposed to an office supply store, the business can save three cents per page. Nash said that adds up to $9,000 saved.
