Canon reorganizes sales and marketing structure

Canon reorganizes sales and marketing structure

Canon India Pvt. Limited, India’s No 1. complete digital imaging company announced the reorganization of the company’s sales and marketing structure into four new divisions as a part of the company’s strategy to double revenues in India over the next two years. The reorganization has been undertaken as company increases its efforts to become more market and consumer focused.

As a part of this reorganization, there will be one common sales and marketing group which will be headed by Alok Bharadwaj, Vice President, Canon India. 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 will be responsible for sales and marketing efforts – including advertising and public relations, inventory planning and sales administration. All divisional heads will have profit and loss responsibility.

Referring to the reorganization of the company, Vice President, Canon India, Alok Bharadwaj said, “Under the leadership of our new president, Kensaku Konishi, we chalked out a complete blueprint to double the revenues of Canon India from Rs.400 crores in 2006 to Rs.800 crores by 2008. This re-organization is a critical part of overall strategy and will help Canon streamline its business operations. With divisions focusing on their core areas of operation, we expect them to operate efficiently and effectively in a manner that best leads to the creation of value for consumers – both enterprise and end users. As we aim at capturing a larger market share in the year of our 10th Anniversary in India, we believe this will be a big step in this direction.”

As a part of the reorganization, Canon India sales and marketing division will see a 18 percent increase in headcount, with the creation of 37 new job positions, taking the sales and marketing headcount to a total of 237.

The Business Imaging Solutions – Direct sales division will be headed by K Bhaskar, Director, BIS-Direct sales. This division will have a headcount of 93 people including 9 new job positions. The BIS – Direct division has a target of building 283 key major accounts and achieving 300 percent growth in colour high-end machines. It will have operations split into 4 regions – North & East, West and two in South. A separate pre-sales department has been created under BIS DC to cater to the unique needs of the enterprise market segment. The pre-sales teams will help existing sales teams to build the solution business in the metros of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. In addition, to provide enterprise customers customized approaches and provide relevant applications for document management processes, a separate solution marketing department has also been created. Canon expects its solution business to be a major driver for selling in all the major and key accounts.

The Business Imaging Solutions – Channel sales division will be headed by Som Gangopadhyay, Director, BIS- Channel sales. This division has a headcount of 43 people and has seen the creation of 5 new job positions. The BIS – Channel sales division has a target of staying as No.1 in digital copier category which Canon acquired in Q4 2006. To increase the focus on the government and e-governance sector, a new Government business department with a dedicated five member team has been created. BIS –Channel Sales has currently been seeing 25 percent of its business come from the government. As a part of Canon’s increased focus on colour – a Colour Specialist has been appointed – for office colour and commercial colour. This Colour specialist will provide expert advice and guidance to customers on the use of colour. This division will also oversee the marketing on entire BIS – Channel Sales and BIS – Direct sales divisions.

The Consumer System Products division will be headed by V.P. Sajeevan, Assistant Director, Consumer Systems Products. This division has a headcount of 44 people and has seen the creation of three new job positions. The CSP division will see a growth target of 52 percent in 2007. As a part of the strategy for CSP, a System Integrator business head has been appointed to grow the SI business for Canon. A new product training cell has been created which will be responsible for training of all dealers and sales people on the new products. In addition, a new consumable business group has been created which will focus on educating and promoting the use of genuine consumables.

The Imaging Communication Products division will be headed by Praveen Sahni, Assistant Director, Imaging Communication Products. This division has a headcount of 58 people and has seen the creation of 19 new job positions. The ICP division will have a task of making Canon No.1 in 2007, in this segment with 25 percent market share. For this part of the business, new positions such as Retail Chain head, special manger for consumer promotions have been created. There will now be separate team for managing retail, online and e-business under the ICP division. In addition, to increase its emphasis on the professional segment, the business has created a separate Professional Business Department.

As part of the overall strategy, over this year Canon will be opening company owned showrooms both in Delhi and in Mumbai, where the entire range of Canon products will be showcased. The company has recently launched two Level IV Master Service Centres in Delhi and Mumbai for its camera products. These are the first Canon owned camera repair and service centres designed on international standards. These centres will soon be expanded to Bangalore and Kolkata.