Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. Inc. has announced a new dealer program, Step Together. Built to inspire their professional development, Step Together will bring the women of the office technology industry together for support, collaboration and inspiration. Introduced at Konica Minolta's recent dealer summit, the program strives to build community, create a positive environment to share experiences and build intentional leaders.

The Step Together program will officially commence this summer with a series of virtual sessions featuring special guests, culminating in a live event at the LPGA Pelican Women's Championship in November in Belleair, Florida. As the title sponsor for the tournament last year, the company leveraged its participation by inviting a group of female leaders from its dealer community to attend the Raymond James Women's Leadership Summit, which was part of the event. Konica Minolta is also the official multifunction printer of the PGA Tour.

Konica Minolta has had much success with its similar internal program, Step Forward. Started in 2015, Step Forward was developed to inspire women in professional excellence. The program is open to all employees, and focuses on helping women develop leadership skills and men to understand how they can impact change. Since its inception, the company has seen a 118% increase in the number of women at the director level. This growth demonstrates Konica Minolta is focused on increasing representation with talented women in entry-level roles, as well as developing and advancing women in leadership roles.

Step Forward provides a forum to bring women together and support them in their career advancement. Monthly meetings, open to both men and women, feature an inspirational speaker. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, live meetings yielded more than 100 in-person attendees. The program went virtual in 2020 and was rolled out nationally last year, currently seeing upwards of 650 employees at each session. Recent topics have addressed health and wellness, being resilient and different leadership styles.

"There are going to be more and more women breaking glass ceilings and we want to be a driving force for that, which was our inspiration for the Step Forward internal program and now the Step Together dealer program," said Kay Fernandez, senior vice president of marketing, Konica Minolta. "We're eager to get Step Together underway and create a really dynamic network for communication among the women in our dealer channel."

Additionally, in partnership with Exec Online and Berkeley Executive Education, Konica Minolta provides online courses to empower women through its Accelerating Women in Leadership program. The company also recently launched its first LGBTQ employee resource group, called Vibrant, which drew nearly 200 employees at its first meeting. Together with its employees, customers and partners, Konica Minolta is building a future that is more diverse, equitable and inclusive.

In other news, Konica Minolta has announced its IT services division, All Covered, has again been ranked as the top managed service provider (MSP) in the United States by Cloudtango. Each year, Cloudtango honors the most successful MSPs across the United States. This is the fourth year All Covered has been named to Cloudtango's MSP100 U.S. annual list and its third time at number one.

An MSP is a vital ingredient when trying to operate a successful business. It also plays a key role in turning IT into a distinctive advantage without straining budgets. It is for this reason that every year Cloudtango honors the most successful MSPs across the United States in what has become an industry reference due to its independent, unbiased approach, as well as in-depth analysis. In this eighth edition, MSP Select US continues to highlight technical excellence, innovation and customer satisfaction provided by the MSP industry. For 2022, the technical analysis focused on cybersecurity, support, infrastructure and cloud services.

All Covered helps its clients leverage the power of cloud to get work done smarter – and from anywhere – securely. Its team of cloud experts partners with businesses to assess their current environments and collaboratively build a cloud strategy and solution that is scalable and optimized for current as well as future business needs.

"The adoption of cloud infrastructure and applications has become essential to running a remote hybrid workplace, and we are proud of the work we have done assist our clients with data security, scalability, availability and mobility within their businesses," said Todd Croteau, president of global information technology services, All Covered. "This incredible honor truly shows our team of cloud experts has been successful helping organizations become more agile and efficient and improve their security and resilience by moving to the cloud."

MSP Select does underline those MSPs who play key roles in helping customers drive innovation. By being selected, All Covered demonstrated a track record of successfully delivering innovative IT solutions while exceeding customer expectations.

"Through the selection process, we have reviewed 223 different types of certifications, case studies, endorsements and up to eight years of data," said Jordi Vilanova, managing director, Cloudtango. "With the world becoming more digital, a high standard of IT services is ever more critical for businesses to stay competitive. With this in mind, we selected All Covered due to its strong commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction."