SMEs are the major focus area in India: Canon India

Canon, the leader in imaging solutions has witnessed many enhancements and achievements in the last few years. It’s BIS division has also grown massively over the years. In an interaction with Dataquest, K Bhaskhar, Vice-President, Business Imaging Solutions (BIS), Canon India shares about the journey of Canon BIS division, growth in the enterprise printer business and the future plan of BIS division in India. Excerpts:

Q. How has been the journey of Canon BIS division so far?

Canon’s Business Imaging Solutions (BIS) division over the years has made a strong foothold in the industry by venturing into new domains, expanding its product portfolio and catering to a wide base of customers. The Business Imaging Solutions division with 24% contribution is the second highest contributor to the overall Canon business figure.

We have always emphasized on offering unparalleled technology through our wide product portfolio to all business entities like large enterprises, SMEs, Government sector across verticals. Our aim has been to aggressively penetrate the Indian market especially the commercial segment and to increase our share of voice as well as visibility through expansion of our services. We work cohesively towards providing value offerings to our customers which helps them in increasing their business productivity.

With various launches in 2015, the BIS division is growing at CAGR 10% and we hope to keep up the momentum. One of our major focus areas is the ever growing SME segment in India which is a sizeable contributor to the overall growth of the BIS division in 2016.

Q. What are the strategies deployed by the company to create an effective balance among the BIS product portfolio?

Canon has evolved as a value provider for complete imaging requirements from input to output management, security through network video surveillance cameras & print security with solutions. Our product portfolio ranges from A3/A4 Multi-Function Devices, document & cheque canners, projectors, Network video surveillance cameras, Solutions and Managed document services (MDS) solutions. Our products are technologically superior and designed to enhance business productivity.

With our expansive product portfolio, we offer an umbrella of services like Output Management, Workflow and Hardware to organizations in setting up a complete business infrastructure. Our strategies are aligned with our offerings thus enhancing the overall business productivity of any organization. With the help of our channel partners and direct sales team, we have successfully bridged the gap with our end customers in understanding their business needs.

Q. What are Canon BIS division's service and channel strength?

Apart from our innovation led products and services, we contribute a sizeable portion of our growth to our channel partners, who play a crucial role in making Canon one of the leading brands in India. We enjoy a very strong channel ecosystem & BIS division currently has 150+ channel partners covering length & breadth of India. We, at Canon foster a strong relationship with our partners and their growth over the years has aided in continuous growth for our division. We are closely working with our partners for expansion of our business in tier II and tier III cities.

We provide partners, sales and service team with the best product knowledge, service infrastructure, adequate training to ensure the quality of after sales support & to meet Canon standards. We ensure that our partners and engineers are equipped and ready to serve the customers and prospective clients with appropriate value proposition and offerings.

We have developed a strong ‘service strategy’ as a part of our business model & created substantial contribution from service and solutions. In last 18 years, we have built strong CRM as a DNA of business approach for deeper relationship with same customers.

Q. What has been the growth in the enterprise printer business?

In the past few years, the Indian MFP market has witnessed a lot of evolution both in terms of technology and customer requirements. With our expansive suite of A3 & A4 MFDs, we are committed to offering SMEs, government sectors and corporates with solutions that assures high quality printing at reasonable cost.

In order to expand our offering in the space of colour printing market in India further, Canon India, in 2015, had launched the imageRUNNER-ADV C3300 colour A3 series. It addresses the needs of commercial and copy-shop vertical and imageRUNNER -ADV C350i colour A4 series Multi- function devices (MFDs) to focus on SME’s & offices.

We recognize the distinctiveness of each business environment and offer value-added solutions that focus on individual workflow needs. We offer robust software and hardware solutions to address the unique requirements of each business across verticals. Canon Solutions help in document management, print management & cost recovery, security & device management, workflow & productivity.

The Managed Print Services (MPS) has also seen a wide acceptance from organizations across verticals. Canon BIS division has managed to achieve a double digit growth due to increased adoption of MPS solutions by organizations. For most of the other players in the industry, 60% of their revenue comes from government sector and rest from commercial sector. For us, it is the other way around, because playing a dominant role in several verticals such as healthcare, automobiles and logistics, we have got a lot of demand coming for vertical based managed print solutions. We want to help businesses in getting exposure to these advanced services and explore wider and newer territory of work.

Q. What are the future plans for the BIS division in India?

We are looking at etching out an aggressive growth plan in the Indian market, where we foresee to grow the Print Room Services business along with our other services. Our journey to market leadership, growth & strong customer relationships in India will stay on course and hopefully gain momentum. Canon BIS division is aggressively catering to large organizations that are eyeing expansions in Tier II/III cities.

With the emergence of the large number of SMEs, corporate sectors and also, with the Government coming up with lots of projects, we see a high demand coming up for making printing solutions easier and user-friendly. Canon has always been committed to introduce innovative and cutting edge technology to its consumers and we will continue to do so in the coming years as well.

With the increased relevance of Smart-Cities initiative in India, we aim to become the partner of choice for government and enterprises across verticals to cater to their surveillance requirements. With our range of intelligent network cameras which includes enormously vivid series; S series, H series, M series & R series, Canon is poised to gain a strong foothold in the intelligent network solution based cameras’ space.