Canon strategies for the future will likely extend beyond print-oriented offerings.
Above: Building in Canon headquarters complex that houses the Customer Experience Center
As experience often reminds us, things don’t always go as planned. A case in point would be our visit with Canon, Inc. Candidly, we were expecting to spend a little more time with company executives than we did, especially considering our past visit to Canon on our previous Japan tour. Instead, Canon hosted a brief 20-minute meeting, and we did not have an opportunity to ask any questions about the company and its strategies for the future.
We fully understand that unexpected issues can arise and derail the best laid plans. Whether it was a miscommunication about our intentions now that our previous contact, Canon, Inc. President Haruo Murase, has retired, or a last-minute meeting that prevented Yoshinori Ikeda, advisory director, deputy chief executive, office imaging products operations, from spending any more than 10 minutes with us, we aren’t sure. We were, however, fortunate to connect with Murase for dinner that evening.
The primary topic of our brief conversation with Ikeda and Isamu Sato, senior general manager, Office Imaging Products Planning Center, office imaging products operations, particularly revolved around Canon U.S.A.’s recent dealer meeting””a meeting primarily focused on the company’s global and U.S. financial performance.
“We need to be open with dealers and trust them, and then, they will trust us,” observed Ikeda. “We need to disclose what we are thinking.”
Despite that commitment, Ikeda explained how he refrained from talking about new product developments or future product strategies at the dealer meeting (and with us during our visit), emphasizing that it’s too early to make announcements and simply talking about a concept is meaningless.
“We want to deliver something withthe concept,” he said. “That’s the major reason I didn’t bring a concept.”
Ikeda’s comments are consistent with what we saw and heard at the Orlando dealer meeting in mid-May just days before we left for Japan, as there was very little mention of products other than some brief references to the company’s highend Oce machines, both the VarioPrint and Colorado series.
Ikeda emphasized this is a difficult business to survive in, pointing out that Canon currently has 356 dealers in the U.S., about 100 less than a few years ago.
This discussion led to comments about current trends sweeping the imaging industry, with Ikeda predicting paper will never totally disappear, even as unnecessary printing continues to decline. With that conviction in mind, Canon is closely monitoring the shift in paper. Ikeda isn’t sure how many vendors or dealers will survive this change.
“No one can tell,” he honestly said.
We did sense a spirited sense of optimism for the future. With a roughly 23% market share, Ikeda emphasized Canon has an opportunity to increase its business by taking share from Ricoh and Xerox.
“Our business will be okay,” he said, while adding, “There’s lots of room to improve.”
Over the next five to 10 years, Ikeda acknowledged there’s still room to grow and find new technology, including expanding in other areas beyond print, even though he didn’t offer any specifics other than identifying mobile and the need to share information as trends that are impacting Canon’s product development.
“We need to find another new business opportunity,” Ikeda said.
We also heard about the value of Canon’s solutions road shows as an important strategy for Canon to deliver knowledge to attendees at these events. And as we’ve been hearing for a few years now at Canon events in the U.S., Ikeda referenced the One Canon strategy that Toyo Kuwamura has been touting in the U.S. He noted that this is now a global Canon strategy and will be part of Canon’s strategic direction for the future.
We would have liked to have learned more about Canon’s security initiatives, which we believe will be an important element of the company’s product development going forward. We heard about this development at a Canon event earlier this year, as well as at the 2018 Engineering and Solutions Summit in Atlantic City in June. We also would have liked to have learned more about how Canon, Inc. is helping Canon U.S.A. enhance its service offerings as it moves closer to provide dealers and end-users with a more proactive service experience. That’s something not common to Canon, but it is something that all the OEMs are looking to accomplish, whether they’re doing this internally or with a third party.
Overall, based on our visit and what we have heard at other Canon events, we believe Canon is seeking to diversify its business beyond its imaging offerings. We have seen the company take the sensor technology it employs in cameras and use it in satellites, and it is likely that same technology will be used in robotics, an area that may still be more in the “conceptual” stage””a stage that Ikeda prefers not to discuss at present.
Our brief conversation with Ikeda and Sato was followed by a tour of Canon’s Customer Experience Center. Here, we learned about the company’s history, corporate activities, and environmental initiatives via various displays and samples of the company’s technologies over the years.
The most relevant portion of the Customer Experience Center for our readers was an area dedicated to production print. This space had numerous Canon and Océ devices where customers and prospects can come in and run their print jobs on these devices. We didn’t see any devices in action and were not allowed to take pictures of this space or the equipment during our visit, but we did see samples of customer output.
Even though we did not have the opportunity to ask questions about Canon, Inc.’s future global initiatives and strategies, we still maintain a positive impression of Canon, Inc. as a technology provider. In retrospect, what was shared with us in the limited time we met with Ikeda and Sato may not have been what we were expecting, but on reflection, the company provided us with just enough to keep us tuned in and eager to see what’s next.
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