The Chicagoland-Wisconsin Chapter of the Electronics Representatives Association (ERA) held an educational presentation and lunch on June 1, 2018, at Avnet Inc., in Hoffman Estates, Ill.

The event featured guest speaker Richard Greaves, senior partner at Empowering Systems. Greaves’ presentation, “Leverage the Latest Collaboration Tools,” discussed the latest collaboration tools and why Office 365 is a great platform for rep firms and all salespeople.

Chapter President Rick LaPiana of Cain-Forlaw Company said, “I am a strong believer that collaboration is key to efficiency and success in component sales, but I was not aware of all the tools, tips and tricks that Office 365 provides. Rich Greaves did a nice job illustrating the benefits at our June 1 chapter event. In fact, this meeting convinced me to move the entire company over to Microsoft 365. Everyone who attended, was pleased with the interaction and discussion at the event.”

Chapter Vice President, Fiscal & Legal, Kingsland Coombs, CPMR, CSP, of Control Sales Inc., who helped organize the event, added: “Rich was tasked with explaining and demonstrating for us the latest in collaboration software tools. He did a very fine job showing us the benefits of the Office 365 suite of products including the Microsoft Teams application. Since the presentation, our company has started to use Teams for file sharing, chatting and screen sharing. We are pleased with the results so far and thank Rich for the nudge we needed to get started!”

The chapter is planning more networking and educational events for the remainder of 2018. For more information, visit www.chiwisera.com.

About Chicagoland-Wisconsin ERA
Chicagoland – Wisconsin ERA is a local resource for continuing education programs, networking opportunities, peer discussion groups and an array of services designed to help improve professionalism and profitability. For more information, visit www.chiwisera.com.

About ERA
The 83-year-old Electronics Representatives Association (ERA) is the international trade organization for professional field sales companies in the global electronics industries, manufacturers who go to market through representative firms and global distributors. It is the mission of ERA to support the professional field sales function through programs and activities that educate, inform and advocate for manufacturers’ representatives, the principals they represent and the distributors who are reps’ partners in local territories. For more information about ERA, visit era.org.