The Rising Sun
Alok Bharadwaj, Vice-President, Canon India, and senior colleagues reflect upon the past and share the roadmap for the journey ahead.
By TNN |
70... 60... 10... In case you are wondering what these numbers are, these are the landmarks in Canon’s and India’s. 70 years ago Canon Inc was established and 60 years ago, India became an independent country. 10 years ago, Canon established its subsidiary in India and is now celebrating its 10th anniversary under a new leader, Mr Kensaku Konishi. It is now poised for growth on a scale never thought possible. Alok Bharadwaj, Vice-President, Canon India, and senior colleagues reflect upon the past and share the roadmap for the journey ahead:
Q: How has Canon India grown over the past 10 years?
Alok: Canon reached a level of Rs. 400 crore in the year 2006. The average compounded rate of growth has been 20% per annum. We are celebrating our 10th anniversary in India in 2007 and are very excited to share with everybody that our growth in the first six months has been 44%.
The other great news has been that Canon has emerged as the No.1 brand for digital cameras with 28% market share (as per GFK) and No 1 in digital copiers with 25% market share. The past 10 years have also established our product superiority and brand strength with 183 product awards and recognition from Readers Digest and Superbrands as a trusted brand.
Q: What approach was adopted to make Canon a leader in digital imaging?
Alok: We call the last 10 years as the Phase 1 of our growth. Most of our efforts were focused on the 4P’s – Product, People, Processes and Partnerships. We have a portfolio of 140 products in India. We are now a 440 people organization with 281 business partners and have used the EFQM system for building a quality system in the organization. We are considering the next 4 years till 2010 as our Phase II of growth. In this phase, we are forecasting our growth to be in the vicinity of 50% per year to become a Rs. 1500 crore company.
Q: What are the new business opportunities for Canon?
Alok: The focus of Canon will increasingly be more in building lifestyle brand along with our positioning of premiumness and technological superiority.
Q: What elements will fuel Canon’s growth?
Alok: Big enablers of our growth are major investment on brand building, increasing organization strength by 33%, high area focus where we are analyzing every region, state and city and entering into new market segments such as digital publishing, solutions, etc.
Q: What are Canon’s special HR initiatives in India?
Ritu Malhotra (HR): Focus is on three areas: a) Building Leaders through high investment on training, coaching and strong career development process; b) Employee Engagement with opportunities for cross functional working, transparent reward and recognition systems; c) Creating virtual working system for sales and service staff
Q: One of the most noticeable changes in Canon over the years has been the system orientation. How has it turned around the various monitoring points in the company?
Shikha Rai (IT): Five years ago, we began adopting electronic quality systems. Everything from customer complaints to managing frontline sales force to vendor management is now online and transparent. We have also established a Partner Excellence Portal (PEP) for our channel partners to manage and forecast their business with Canon and also get real time information on delivery status.
Alok: Canon reached a level of Rs. 400 crore in the year 2006. The average compounded rate of growth has been 20% per annum. We are celebrating our 10th anniversary in India in 2007 and are very excited to share with everybody that our growth in the first six months has been 44%.
The other great news has been that Canon has emerged as the No.1 brand for digital cameras with 28% market share (as per GFK) and No 1 in digital copiers with 25% market share. The past 10 years have also established our product superiority and brand strength with 183 product awards and recognition from Readers Digest and Superbrands as a trusted brand.
Q: What approach was adopted to make Canon a leader in digital imaging?
Alok: We call the last 10 years as the Phase 1 of our growth. Most of our efforts were focused on the 4P’s – Product, People, Processes and Partnerships. We have a portfolio of 140 products in India. We are now a 440 people organization with 281 business partners and have used the EFQM system for building a quality system in the organization. We are considering the next 4 years till 2010 as our Phase II of growth. In this phase, we are forecasting our growth to be in the vicinity of 50% per year to become a Rs. 1500 crore company.
Q: What are the new business opportunities for Canon?
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Alok: The focus of Canon will increasingly be more in building lifestyle brand along with our positioning of premiumness and technological superiority.
Q: What elements will fuel Canon’s growth?
Alok: Big enablers of our growth are major investment on brand building, increasing organization strength by 33%, high area focus where we are analyzing every region, state and city and entering into new market segments such as digital publishing, solutions, etc.
Q: What are Canon’s special HR initiatives in India?
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Ritu Malhotra (HR): Focus is on three areas: a) Building Leaders through high investment on training, coaching and strong career development process; b) Employee Engagement with opportunities for cross functional working, transparent reward and recognition systems; c) Creating virtual working system for sales and service staff
Q: One of the most noticeable changes in Canon over the years has been the system orientation. How has it turned around the various monitoring points in the company?
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Shikha Rai (IT): Five years ago, we began adopting electronic quality systems. Everything from customer complaints to managing frontline sales force to vendor management is now online and transparent. We have also established a Partner Excellence Portal (PEP) for our channel partners to manage and forecast their business with Canon and also get real time information on delivery status.
Q: How has the service capability helped the company in delivering results?
Shamim Qadri (Service): We adopted a three-pronged strategy: Firstly, for our direct 10,000 corporate customer buying copiers, we created an organization of over 150 engineers who are able to maintain a turn around time of less than 3 hours.
Secondly, for our printer products we have 33 Canon Care Centres and over 100 Authorized Service Franchisee’s to cover interiors of India. Thirdly, we created Level IV Master Service capability in India for camera repair. We have since launched two such service centres in Delhi and Mumbai.
Q: How has Canon’s logistics mechanism changed in the past decade?
Ashutosh Varshney (Logistics): We work with third party agencies with very strict Service Level Agreements which track delivery from the time of invoice. We are maintaining 11 warehouses and do direct imports in 4 ports.
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Q: How is recent re-structuring helping Canon?Som Gangopadhyay (Director – BIS): As a part of this reorganization, there is one common sales and marketing group. This group will have four divisions – Business Imaging Solutions – Direct sales division, Business Imaging Solutions – Channel sales division, Consumer Systems Products Division and Imaging Communication Products Division.
Each of these new divisions is responsible for sales and marketing efforts - including advertising and public relations, inventory planning and sales administration. All divisional heads have profit and loss responsibility. With divisions focusing on their core areas of operation, we operate efficiently and effectively in a manner that best leads to the creation of value for consumers – both enterprise and end users.
Q: How has the new CEO changed the vision for Canon India?
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Alok: Mr. Konishi joined us as President in January 2007. When we were celebrating 30% growth in 2006, he made us look at 50% growth in 2007. When we looked at 400 staff and planned for 10% increase, he made us grow our strength by 33%. He is very externally focussed person and believes strongly on energising people. Under his leadership, we are renting new offices, setting up 20 company franchisee showrooms, setting level 4 service centres in top 6 towns, etc. First he, then I, and now whole team is determined to take the size of Canon from Rs. 400 crores in 2006 to Rs.1500 crores in 2010. We call it 2010 vision.
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