Yamaha Motor outsources digital marketing efforts to Fuji Xerox

Fuji Xerox Australia Pty. Ltd., a sales company of Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., has launched a marketing outsourcing service for Yamaha Motor Australia Pty. Ltd., a sales company of Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

This outsourcing service supports marketing/sales of 120 Yamaha Motor Australia dealers located in Australia. By accessing the user-friendly dedicated portal site, the dealers can easily promote their sales activities—including digital marketing utilizing emails, ordering latest catalogues/store posters, as well as creation and delivery of direct mails.

Utilizing the service, Yamaha Motor Australia will promote sales by strengthening communications and relationships between dealers and customers. Thus far, requests from dealers were handled by Yamaha Motor Australia’s sales and marketing departments on a case-by-case basis. This service will streamline miscellaneous work, and allow the marketing people to focus on their core work such as formulating marketing strategies.

To undertake the comprehensive outsourcing service over a period of several years, Fuji Xerox Australia shall establish a dedicated portal site in its data center, as well as provide services such as the design/production of promotional items for various campaigns, data management, printing/delivery/inventory management of catalogues and direct mails, reports regarding status of system use, charging as well as responding to inquiries from dealers.

To further enhance support for its customers globally, Fuji Xerox is expanding a service called Communication & Business Process Outsourcing. This service provides added value to the customer’s business communications by undertaking all processes involved in the design, editing, printing, distribution and disposal of documents.

Simple workflow

Promotional items created along with Yamaha Motor Australia’s marketing strategies are stored in template format in the dedicated portal site. Dealers can utilize the template to create various messages (sales campaign, service guide, event invitation, letter of thanks, newsletter and anniversary cards). As the creation process using templates is formed into an easy-to-use workflow, even sales personnel who are not accustomed to IT can compose well-designed messages.

Digital marketing

Dealers can send messages to customers via email or email including Personal URL. They can also provide materials that can be used on the dealers’ social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.

When the dealers order paper-based promotional items through the dedicated portal site, catalogues, direct mails, dealer store posters and banners are printed and delivered on demand from Fuji Xerox Australia’s centralized printing/delivery center. This realizes the optimal stock of catalogues at the dealers, hence minimizing cost for processing waste, and also streamlines direct mail distribution process.

Personalization

Local area marketing that takes into account the regional or market characteristics can be promoted using both digital and paper mediums as the dealers can enter their personalized messages in the templates.

By providing promotional item templates along with marketing strategies, Yamaha Motor Australia can encourage the dealers to use brand logos and product images properly.

Marketing activities conducted by the dealers through the portal site can be measured quantitatively, which would be valuable for drafting strategies or subsequent campaigns.

Australia – Aldi 3D Printer – helpful or hindrance

Hmm, I wonder if the offering of a 3d Printer by a Supermarket chain will promote the growth of the 3d pint industry… Time I guess will tell.

I’d be interested in your thoughts.

 

Extending Value from Managed Print Service Initiatives

The notion and discipline of Managed Print Services (MPS) is evolving. Originally devised as a means of controlling the enterprise-wide expansion of printer and copier fleets and the related expense, a comprehensive MPS strategy today not only manages hardware and consumable costs, but also extends important value and improvements into additional business areas.

Things like collaboration, customer service and regulatory compliance all are dependent upon the document and information flow within an organization.

As a result, the MPS market continues to grow beyond the core services of device consolidation and cost savings toward driving improved business efficiency around all types of paper-dependent processes.

New Challenges

Today, companies of all sizes face new challenges when it comes to their printer and copier fleets, well beyond the basic issue of cost control. The most effective MPS engagements have moved beyond a hardware-centric approach to look more closely at how business processes and information workflow can be improved for enhanced organizational performance. Indeed, with the majority of enterprises looking to increase their digitization efforts, MPS is proving to be an effective approach to the integration of a digital workflow in previously paper-bound process.

Map The MPS Journey

How can organizations make the most of their MPS initiatives? One way is to map existing document workflow. Every business has some sort of document workflow process in use. Whether that process is limited to a single individual or multiple people, a series of steps is completed to formulate the workflow process. This can consist of an invoice, an order, a contract, or any other document that drives any particular process. Since this occurs every single day in every single business, it is easy to expand the value of the MPS initiative to improve and streamline important document workflow processes to maximize efficiency, service and cost savings.

Process Improvement Opportunity

Service providers can expand the value of their MPS initiatives by considering the possibilities of automated workflow using document management and how that automation can relieve and eliminate the inefficiencies and intrinsic costs of dealing with paper. Some points of contention when dealing with paper may include:

• Loss of documentation
• Inability to quickly locate information for customer service responses
• Increased risk of non-compliance for audit or security
• Rising costs of additional staff to process paper based workflows
• Efficiency in managing the paper for tracking and status purposes
• Cost and inefficiency moving paper between a remote locations and a corporate office

Where to Start

One stumbling block for extending an MPS practice is simply getting started. With so many documents and so many important business processes to choose from it can seem overwhelming. The question is the same for both providers and customers, “Where do I begin?” Start by selecting one document process to work with. The old adage “reaching the end of your journey starts with the first step” holds true.

Don’t try to improve every business processes at one time; start with the ones that are most important. After selecting the process to improve, begin by breaking the process down into steps from beginning to end. Spend time with each person involved along the way and find out what action items occur at each step, what the exceptions for each decision are and where the document goes once it leaves that step. The end result of this will be a clear understanding of what takes place today, as well as a clearer understanding of how to improve it.

Suppliers Must Step Up

For suppliers, understanding the shift between a cost-based mindset and a value-based approach is the key to understanding how to provide more value to customers. MPS is maturing, and the key is offering more strategically oriented MPS services and consultations that go beyond device consolidation and per-click savings. More than 50 percent of large enterprises are using some form of MPS already, and analysts estimate that a further 20 percent are planning to adopt MPS within the next year. In order to continue to compete, suppliers and vendors will need to provide more value-added service and expanded solutions that support broader process improvement.

 

Make a Business Impact

Businesses looking to extend the value of their MPS initiatives should look for an MPS provider that can have a truly transformative business impact. This requires the ability to look expertly at how machines, systems and software can be deployed and coordinated to improve organizational performance and not just cut costs. Employees are demanding access to the latest technologies that enable them to work more flexibly and productively.

Meanwhile, customer expectations are changing, meaning organizations must interact in more dynamic, agile ways to maintain a competitive advantage. This demands a new kind of MPS provider that can tame the scope-creep of device infrastructure and remove the IT complexity, while helping customers focus on innovation and process improvement that make a difference in new and more expansive ways.

Get Started

For many organizations, the networked printer, copier and multi-function device is the most logical starting point for digitizing content and automating workflows. As a result, process optimization will continue to be a point of emphasis for businesses and providers alike as MPS continues to evolve.

 

Xerox Pushes the Reset Button

Making a big transformative acquisition is kind of like going to war – it’s expensive and risky and doesn’t always work out like the planners envisioned. CEO Ursula Burns announced that Xerox is retreating from its strategy to transform into a single growth-oriented, business process outsourcing (BPO) and technology company. Xerox intends to create two separate public companies – one focused on BPO and the other focused on Document Technology and Outsourcing – effectively undoing its $6.4B acquisition in 2010 of Affiliated Computer Services (ACS).

Much of Xerox’s vaunted technology never really gave ACS a big cost or innovation advantage over other BPO companies, and ACS never seemed to get much lift from accessing the Xerox customer base, especially outside the US.

Meanwhile the Document Technology business always seemed to get the short end of the stick. R&D budgets were cut, the growing managed print services business was moved over to the Services side of the house (at least for financial reporting purposes), and much of its cash flow was used to fund share repurchases, debt payment, and add-on acquisitions for the Services business. In 2009 (pre-ACS) Xerox had $15.2B in revenue and $485M in income. Essentially all of this business was from document technology and related outsourcing. Six years after the ACS and many other small acquisitions related to BPO, Xerox reported 2015 revenue of $18.0B and $488M income.

Now Xerox says it will split into a document technology and outsourcing company with about 40,000 employees and $11B in revenue and a BPO company with about 100,000 employees and $7B in revenue.

Sell vs. Float

Why float the document technology and related outsourcing business into a new public company versus selling it to a strategic buyer? Xerox has many great assets – brand, technology, field operations, installed base, etc. As a public company, the business will have direct access to capital markets but also increased scrutiny on its operations. Depending on how the company is structured (business units, leadership team), how much debt it carries, commitment to growth vs. generating cash for dividends and stock repurchases, the new company could receive a favorable valuation.

While there hasn’t been much rumor about Xerox shopping its document technology business, Fujifilm would be a logical buyer. Fujifilm has a 75% stake in Fuji Xerox (the principal supplier of office engines to Xerox), a strong presence in the graphic arts market, and high-speed inkjet technology (Dimatix). Perhaps there is a difference of opinion between the Xerox and Fujifilm boards on valuation?

Demanding Year, Resilient Company

2016 will be a demanding year for Xerox as it further cuts expenses, manages through the split, and strives to deliver on its operating plan. The company will likely face a variety of organizational changes, management departures, and customer questions about the future.

Xerox is a resilient company having rebounded from the accounting irregularities of the late 1990’s and the 2001 recession that tarnished its brand and strained its cash position. Strong leadership, loyal employees, and some innovative products (iGen) and smart acquisitions (Global Imaging) enabled Xerox to re-assert itself as the industry leader.

However, after years of diminished R&D spending and increased attention on BPO, the Xerox technology product pipeline is weaker, the company is not a significant player in many of the growth segments of the production printing market (wide format graphics, labels, packaging, textiles, 3D), and its competitors have narrowed the gap in managed services and distribution.

The new document technology and outsourcing company (we hope they call it Xerox) clearly will have a steep hill to climb. Being liberated from the Services business and able to pursue more strategically relevant initiatives may create the kind of lift among employees and customers necessary to get back to its former position.

There are many questions for each company.

Who will be the CEO? How much debt does it carry? What is the business strategy? Growth vs. cash generation? The sooner Xerox answers these questions the sooner it can get back to real business.

 

Jeff Hayes
Managing Director

– See more at: http://blog.infotrends.com/?p=20794#sthash.ypW3O0vy.dpuf