"Previously this was an untouchable area, but its something our customers and staff have been crying out for," said Paperlinx UK managing director Phil Carr.
"Effectively we’ve had the restructuring process where we’ve merged three sales teams into one, one of the critical components of that process was to have an identity for that single sales team. We have that now."
The rebrand of Howard Smith, Robert Horne and PaperCo to Paperlinx follows a number of restructuring measures, which resulted in around 190 job losses and culminated in the consolidation of the three merchanting arms sales teams in to one account management team late last year.
As of last Friday, Howard Smith, Robert Horne and PaperCo, sales offices began answering phones as Paperlinx.
"The exciting thing for our customers and, I have to say, our sales team, is that they now have the opportunity to have a single relationship, rather than multiple relationships and the opportunity to trade all of products," said Carr.
The three merchanting brands will continue to exist, on paper at least, as invoices will still be sent from the three individual trading legal companies, at least until the companies are merged into one single legal entity. However, Carr stressed that there were no short term plans to create a single legal structure.
By continuing to trade Howard Smith, Robert Horne and PaperCo as legal entities, Paperlinx will continue to be able offer three lines of credit.
"Most of our customers have been running with multiple accounts anyway, and that’s been the problem operationally, because in many instances we had three sales reps calling on the same customer – it just didn’t make sense," said Carr.
"What the customer wants is to be able say I want that product, that product and that product. The fact that they come from three different places [for invoicing purposes], they don’t mind, as long as we’re utilising the best lines of credit for them they’re getting the same service, the same terms, the same everything – as far as they’re concerned it’s a win-win," he added.
However, Carr stressed that the company would take a pragmatic view on the issuing of credit across the three lines.
"We’ve been making decisions on credit based on our exposure across the whole UK for a long time, irrespective of where a customers account is. When I became UK finance director I insisted that we set up a UK credit committee for precisely that reason, so instead of making three different credit decisions for a customer, we make one in the background and that’s something we’ve been doing for a number of years."
Carr dismissed some customers fears that the operational changes to Paperlinx’s sales operations and the withdrawal of the Howard Smith, Robert Horne and PaperCo names would result in customers credit lines being reduced.
"I’ve heard comments put around by rivals that the changes mean we’re going to one credit line and that means that customers’ credit will effectively be cut by two thirds. That’s absolute rubbish. We’ve effectively been running our credit lines as joint credit lines for at least four or five years, so the customers will see no difference in their credit."
According to Carr, the latest changes will also not directly result in any additional job cuts, following the 200 UK job losses that were announced last November.
"Of course we can’t afford to be complacent and we always need to review our cost base, but in terms of the sales team in commercial print we’re where we need to be."
The commercial print operations have already begun operating as Paperlinx, while the wide-format, consumables and packaging operations will move begin operating as Paperlinx "in pretty quick time".
"We really want one name, one badge. The back office is already operating under one banner – now the front office is following suit," said Carr.
