Canon ROCKS channel

Gurgaon: Canon posted a healthy turnover of Rs 665 crore in FY'07-08, a 31 percent growth over the previous year. For the vendor, being in the consumer business, which was relatively unaffected by the slowdown, came as a blessing in disguise. Canon phenomenally grew its marketshare for printers, and finally, its steadfast focus on the government vertical proved to be wise decision.

Looking back on last FY, Alok Bharadwaj, Sr VP, Canon India said, “For Canon, it will be a year to be remembered. We have looked at it as a time when we reflected on some areas that required tweaking and many that required reconfiguring.”

Having realized that the first mile, which basically involves communicating through mass medium, is the easy part, Canon is all set to focus its efforts on the last mile this year. “The last mile is the biggest challenge in shaping the marketshare, and this year has shown most companies the importance of last mile activation. In the past few months, we have test launched a program which we will build as an important last mile program for our B2B division,” said Bharadwaj.

The program has been christened ROCKS (Reaching Out to the Channels for Knowledge and Sharing).

The idea to introduce such a project germinated from the need for a mechanism through which Canon could share complete technology knowledge of all its products at the last point in sales.

“We first needed to find out how many people were selling our products. At the beginning of this year we did not have the answer. We only knew that 118 of our partners were selling Canon products. Below them how many people are selling? What are they selling? And how much do they know about us? Finding answers to these questions became important for us,” he added.

The vendor was witnessing growth in three dimensions-verticals, geographies and product portfolio.

“Whether it is telecom, government, education, healthcare or insurance, we are noticing many verticals showing positive momentum. New verticals are also becoming important. ITeS and BPOs, that were new verticals some years ago are now standard verticals. Now education is becoming a big opportunity. The second dimension is geographical expansion. Some time back, about 50 percent of our business came from the metros. Today, in our BIS division, only one-third of our business comes from metros. Our products are available in 300 towns. Finally, the third dimension we were expanding in was in terms of products range,” highlighted Bharadwaj.

The aim of ROCKS is essentially to enhance the involvement and engagement of the channel. “The four pillars of this program consist of activities that not only make partners and their sales people as knowledgeable about the products, but also boost their involvement by as much if not more than our own staff,” he stressed.

As the first pillar, Canon is extending the concept of Know Your Customer (KYC) to their channel in a program called Connect. “Not many in the industry have adopted KYC concept but very soon will have to. So far, we have only known our primary dealers. We are taking the KYC concept to get to know our secondary channel partners as well. We are doing this through our Partner Excellence Portal (PEP), where our 118 primary partners log in orders and interact with us. We have now extended this to our secondary partners. The primary partners register whatever they sell to the secondary partners on the site,” Bharadwaj stated.

Through this portal, Canon can gauge trends, know about the channel and business health.

Under the Channel Connect Program, the vendor is registering Canon Empowered Partners (CEPs). So far, 250 primary partners and 1,215 secondary partners have been registered. “Under this program, we conducted meets in 18 cities this year, where partners and their sales people were invited. We ensured that in terms of knowledge sharing, both the partner and their sales people are fully tuned to Canon's technology, products and approach to business.

The second pillar of ROCKS is 'Gurukul', a program that was started last year, and is continuing this year with a few modifications and reconfigurations. “This program is for the first layer of 118 partners and their sales people. The chain involves the Canon sales people, partners, partner sales people and secondary partners and their sales people,” said Bharadwaj. The program is a bid to engage, involve and share knowledge with this chain.

Going beyond knowledge sharing, events are also undertaken to incentivize the channel and last year partners were recognized with a trip to Cairo.

One feedback Canon has got from its channel is that being in the business of technology, there is a lot of complexity involved. Hence, they needed help in explaining the technicalities to their customers and understanding the benefits they can draw from the technology. Under the third pillar-Impressions, Canon undertook nine technology roadshows, through which they provided partners a platform where they called their customers for an explanation about the product.

The fourth and final pillar of ROCKS is Bizshot, Canon's print communication. “Bizshot is an attempt to build knowledge by communicating with channel partners regularly. We will be looking at taking this as a two-way feedback mechanism. We will also be extending this to start a business blog on the portal,” stated Bharadwaj.

These four pillars together make up Canon's channel plans. With a strong base of channel partners in place and having identified last mile activation as a focus area, the vendor is all set to reach its Rs 800 crore target for the next FY.

Targets for next year :

Channel Connect

2008-09: 50 cities; 1,200 CEPs

2009-10: 55 cities; 2,000 CEPs

Gurukul

2008-09: 250 registered sales people

2009-10: 300 registered sales people

Impressions

2008-09: 15 seminars covering more that 800 customers

2009-10: 50 seminars

Bizshot

2008-09: A one-way communication

2009-10: Two-way feedback mechanism. Will also extend to business blog on portal