By Andy Slawetsky – Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Kyocera Document America (KDA) President and CEO Yukio Ikeda to find out What’s Happenin’ at Kyocera.Yukio took over the role on April 1 after his predecessor, Nori Ina returned to take another role in the organization.
Yukio is on the younger side for a person in this position and he has great enthusiasm for his not-so-new role. He worked in our market for several years in the KDA marketing department before moving to Kyocera Europe where he eventually ran the Italian division.
When asked about the Italian market, he told me there are many similarities between our markets but there are differences as well. One of the biggest difference is the typical dealer size, which he told me was much smaller over there.
Yukio is a big believer in face-time, which is one of the reasons I found myself in his office. He gets the value of sitting with someone and like his predecessor, he too wants to personally visit as many of his dealers as he can. In only 7 months he’s already been to more than 15. An upcoming road show is an example of Kyocera’s strategy to keep themselves in front some of their dealers.
We then talked about how competitive the industry is and discussed how Kyocera again showed growth (6th straight quarter) during a period where nearly every competitor lost ground. He attributes this to running a smaller but more responsive organization and working closely resellers.
I asked Yukio about his plans for the future and he talked about bringing more products to his dealers. Kyocera is a technology company and he’s looking internally to see what kinds of products he might be able to bring to the table from other Kyocera groups (not steak knives). He’s also got his eye outside the company, looking for other ways he can empower dealers.
A recent example of this was their partnership with ECM mega company DataBank. At some point in the not so distant future, KDA dealers will be able to offer an almost turnkey solution from Hyland’s biggest reseller with their full support. Or, they can keep it all in house with Kyocera partners like DocuWare and Square 9. Pretty powerful.
Yukio understands his dealers need products outside of traditional print to continue to be successful. Does that mean digital signage, managed services and other hot areas? He smiled and told me they’re considering all of their options.
A nice short meeting with the KDA boss. I appreciate the opportunity to meet with him and find out What’s Happenin’ at KDA.
~Andy Slawetsky
