This week, Canon Solutions America hosted their second annual analyst and press event in Del Ray Beach Florida. Not a bad time of the year to get away from the Imaging Capital of the World, Rochester NY. Canon Solutions America is the former Océ USA and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A. In case you don’t remember, Canon acquired the Dutch printing company Océ in 2010.
Day one started with a half day of presentations discussing what they’ve been up to since their last event held a year ago. Canon Solutions America’s (CSA) goal is continued growth moving forward. In 2013, CSA divided themselves into three groups; Enterprise Services & Solutions (ESS), Production Print Solutions (PPS) and Large Format Solutions (LFS).
In 2014 CSA became stronger as one (their words). They developed better and stronger relationships with their customers through a customer advisory council and their customer event in Poing Germany and Venlo Netherlands. I’ve been to customer and analyst events at both facilities for Océ in the past and while I didn’t attend that one, I can tell you these events make quite an impression (pun intended) on attendees.
So what’s coming in 2015? The ESS group is putting together new Major Account initiatives, the PPS group is on the verge of launching the long awaited Niagara product that will likely revolutionize the production print inkjet market and the LFS group has it’s own big secret you’ll be reading about here before you know it. None of these initiatives are really groundbreaking in my opinion (except for the forthcoming hardware). They just seem to be tightening up their groups and programs by tweaking what they have.
The streamlining that CSA has been working on should make them more efficient and according to Toyo Kuwamura, president and CEO of CSA, ESS is ready to “expand major account business as Nationwide Best Value Service Provider.” How will they do this? They have a new major account organization working with NAD sub contractors, Enterprise Managed Services and CSA Major Accounts in collaboration with LFF and PPS.
How will they really do it? By leveraging their sheer size and flexing their muscle a bit. CSA has 2,000 front line Canon technicians. They have more production inkjet customers than anyone else (in the US) supported by 136 offices, 74 branches, hundreds of support staff and trainers, and so on. They’re not lacking for coverage that’s for sure.
EVP Mal Baboyian told listeners that PPS overachieved their revenue target (106%) in 2014. “We were nicely profitable.” But here’s what really struck me. Last year CSA customers printed 71.5 BILLION pages (PPS). Astounding. How did they do this? Simple. They have well-established niches where they’re dominant and they’re having a lot of success against certain competitors. They are the leader in CF inkjet, finally catching Ricoh in 2014 (both with 32% market share) and they’re number one in several markets. From listening to them, you’d think they were the only game in town and apparently, in some areas, they are.
Mal’s pretty confident they’ll overtake Ricoh this year in CF inkjet and my friends at IDC and infoTrends lead me to believe he’s right. They’re distancing themselves from #2 KIP in toner-based large format printing, up 14% in 2014 and they now command nearly 50% market share. The US is the best performing Canon LFS region in the world.
A good deal of CSA’s success has been coming from direct mail printers and corporate printers (transactional, manuals, transpromo and marketing collateral). Océ VarioStream and the JetStream families have been key to Canon’s success and the Niagara product should take things up a notch. According to Mal, they already have 3x the number of orders for Niagara than they can fill this year and the product isn’t even out yet. Customers are literally getting in line.
Another announcement made during the show was the creation (or new name) of Canon’s Enterprise Managed Services Division. “We are always trying to improve the services we offer our customers so that they fully understand our commitment to enhancing their businesses,” said Toyo Kuwamura.
The next day we were treated to a walk through of CSA’s Boca facility where I saw it all. I mean ALL of it. Canon imagePRESSes and imageRUNNERs, 30” roll-fed presses in action, a Niagara video built into a mock up of the device, an Arizona product pumping out a massive map as well as a “2.5D” print and more. What’s a 2.5D print? It’s a process Canon has that captures then lays down ink in a manner that recreates brush strokes from a painting, making the finished print look (and feel) nearly identical to the original. It was very cool.
We also got a reminder that CSA markets office solutions to Enterprise accounts with a short overview on NT-ware’s UniFlow solutions, which they not only sell, but also use themselves. Canon’s goal is to help customers print less and UniFlow is a solution that allows Canon to find revenue even with lower print volumes. The fact that UniFlow has opened up to work with other brands makes it a much easier sell.
Last, we got a tour of their paper-testing lab, which works with over 30 paper mills, approving over 900 different papers on Canon production equipment for US customers. It’s quite a process with all sorts of paper rubbing machines and gadgets designed to simulate, measure and document aspects of the. And what lab would be complete without beakers? Well they had those too.
The time over the two days was well spent. Canon’s people are very bright and the specialists demonstrating the products really knew their stuff. I can’t wait until some of the future technology arrives over the next few months. Some of it is seriously game changing.
