Last week I traveled to Las Vegas for Kyocera’s annual dealer meeting. This meeting followed the company’s tried and true format of a General Session, a dealer roundtable discussion hosted by Frank Cannata, dealer award presentations, and a wealth of seminars. The theme of the meeting was “Focus on Success”. What follows are my Top 10 take homes from the meeting. These may not be in synch with my peers in the press and analyst community, or the dealer community, but this is what I heard and what resonated with me while I was there.
Impressive Growth – Kyocera’s compound annual growth rate in the Americas was 10.2 percent for fiscal year 2012 with a good portion of that growth taking place in the U.S. and Canada. Anyway you cut it those numbers are notable, especially when one looks at the performance of some of the other OEMs in the industry during the same time frame. According to Nori Ina, president and CEO of Kyocera Document Solutions America, Inc. the reasons for this growth can be traced back to the TASKalfa and Copystar A3 MFPs launched last year along with a dramatic sales increase of A4 MFPs and printers through the dealer channel. “This is a strong sign of a more balanced deployment of devices within your customer base,” said Mr. Ina. “And this is the best sales result in the history of our company.”
A Name Change – As of April 1, Kyocera Mita changed its name to Kyocera Document Solutions, Inc. It’s a name change that Kyocera Document Solutions, Inc. President Katsumi Komaguchi says is “to declare that we are going to become a company offering total document solutions.” He reports the company’s goal is to offer a variety of total document solutions, all related to document management and workflow from hardware that minimizes the impact on the environment and delivers a lower running cost, an optimized MDS strategy through a balanced line-up of printers and MFPs, and its solution platform, HyPAS, which represents one of the company’s biggest strengths. “We will strive to create further value in the document solutions industry through a focus on these three items which already are our true differentiators,” noted Komaguchi.
A Standardized Solutions Selling Process – As Kyocera continues down the path of reinventing itself as a solutions provider, the next step is standardizing internationally the process of selling solutions. Once that’s done those processes will be rolled out to Kyocera’s channel partners during the current fiscal year. The heart and soul of this new business model is a solutions sales process called “Kyocera Sales Excellence.” Mr. Komaguchi noted the company has already begun employing this strategy in all the sales divisions of all their sales companies worldwide. This will be followed by the release of globally developed HyPAS-based solutions and business application software. “We have more than one hundred HyPAS applications which have been locally developed and these are just the major ones,” stated Mr. Komaguchi. “Many of these can be useful in other areas, but some cannot be used globally due to differences in language and support systems. We will accelerate globalizing HyPAS applications this year by aggressively investing in new software technology resources and marketing resources so that we can more quickly globalize our capabilities.”
A Stronger Focus on Product Reliability – Mr. Ina told the dealers he believes product reliability is as important to the company’s success as is a strong product lineup. With that in mind he’s initiated new product reliability principles and service support, ranging from the company’s first class dealer warranty, to increased hotline capability and dedicated field support, to establishing a pre-launch process to ensure that Kyocera is offering the most reliable products in the industry.
An Emphasis on Service – I don’t recall many dealer meetings that had as much emphasis on service as this one did during the General Session. That theme carried through to some of the seminars as well. Because the company’s next generation line of products has a newly designed engine the focus was on training dealer service techs as quickly and cost effectively as possible. That’s going to be achieved via training classes in all of Kyocera’s regional offices as opposed to a central site in Dallas. Under this new service training model, the company has already trained more than 1,500 technicians throughout North and South America. In an effort to improve field results Kyocera has introduced a New Products Prelaunch Field Testing Program for upcoming product releases. The first field test starts this spring on the new TASKalfa 2550ci. According to Terry Knopsnyder, vice president, engineering, Kyocera will have multiple units available for customer installation and they will track the test results and take any necessary corrective actions, at the factory, prior to the products’ official release.
16 New Products for the Americas – Over the last three years, Kyocera has released 56 products in North and South America. Additionally, Peter Hendrick, vice president, marketing, reported that the company has committed a tremendous level of funding toward R&D for new product development. “Our intention was to make this substantial investment in creating a foundation for our aggressive plan of growth,” he said. An additional 16 products will be launched this year, including 10 devices for all regions of the Americas plus a series of A4 MFPs and printers developed specifically for the Latin American market. One of the more notable introductions was a 25-ppm color A3 MFP to compliment the TASKalfa and Copystar brands. Expect to see a new 50-ppm color printer in June along with a new generation of mid range B&W printers.
Enhancing the SMARTtech MFP Series – Arguably the biggest change this year is that these four new products will come with HyPAS capability and other improvements; they have also been globally rebranded as Ecosys FS-models and will be sold through the Kyocera and Copystar dealer channels in the Americas.
A Focus on Mobile & Cloud Printing – Any OEM whose heritage is output devices and doesn’t acknowledge the importance of mobile and cloud printing is in for a long haul as the business world is rapidly embracing this trend. With the introduction of the KYOCERA Mobile Print and KYOCERA Cloud Connect business applications, Kyocera is positioning their channels to leverage these trends and remain ahead of the mobile and cloud printing curves. The Kyocera Mobile Print app enables mobile users to print and send files, scans and images from their mobile devices to select Kyocera document imaging devices in their network while Kyocera Cloud Connect enables users to print and scan files in Evernote, a cloud service provider, directly from Kyocera’s HyPAS-enabled MFP Control Panels.
Meet the New BioMASS Toner – What’s a dealer meeting without the introduction of new toner? But seriously, Kyocera introduced this eco-friendly, plant-based toner that Hendrick is calling “the first color toner of its kind in the industry.” It will be available in May starting with the FS-C 2626 MFP, and will be available for other A3 and A4 devices in the future.
MDS is on the Rise – The concept of MDS (Managed Document Services) fits in nicely with Kyocera’s recent name change. With more than 275 Kyocera and Copystar-certified MDS dealers across the Americas, the concept of MDS seems to be resonating throughout the company’s dealer channel. Hendrick reports that more than 135 of those use Kyocera’s Shared Server program, powered by PrintFleet. That’s the good news about the program, the bad news is that existing capacity is beyond its current limits. According to Hendrick, the company is taking the necessary steps to resolve this situation. One might say that’s a nice problem to have for a manufacturer looking to encourage its channel to transition into becoming MDS providers.
Social Media Frenzy – As social media pervades our personal space, it’s become equally important in the business world as well. Two seminars underscored the importance for dealers of jumping on the social media bandwagon. The first, “Focus on Social Media: Practical Strategies for Increasing Sales with Social Media” presented by John Pulley of Dealer Marketing Systems, offered a B2B approach and tips for getting started and making the most of social media. The second session, which I attended, “Focus on Digital Marketing: The Power of E-mail Marketing and Social Media,” hosted by Ron Cates of Constant Contact. This session delved into the world of online marketing and effective use of e-mail newsletters. Considering Hendrick’s comments that “social media has become a force to be reckoned with in terms of brand strategy,” this is an area not to be ignored by dealers or OEMs.
