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quote:
So will the IKON name remain intact or will it change? How will Ricoh decide who to keep in the overlapped areas of the technical departments?



Word from inside is it's just a matter of time til the IKON name is gone..may be a few months, may be a few yrs..but it WILL happen
The IKON name will be gone, but their executives and managers will hold key spots in the organization, their Service Techs will begin to assist with Dealer accounts, their IT folks are running the Servers, their HR group just slammed some real talented Dealer Division employees, and their Sales Reps will be retained.
What did they mention at Convergence about this...

Ricoh to cut 10,000 jobs out of 109,000 global workforce

Ricoh aims to triple op profit to 210 bln yen in 2013/14

Latest restructuring by Japanese firm after March 11 quake (Recasts with company confirmation)

TOKYO, May 26 (Reuters) - Japanese copier and printer maker Ricoh Co said it would cut nearly 10 percent of its workforce as it looks to boost its sagging profits and fend off competition from the likes of Xerox and Canon Inc .

Ricoh said in a statement on Thursday it plans to reduce about 10,000 staff from a global workforce of 109,000, a move it expects will give a 140 billion yen ($1.7 billion) boost to its operating profit over the next three years.

Shares of Ricoh jumped 7.2 percent on the restructuring news, which was first reported by the Nikkei newspaper.

"We have become a big company and need to re-engineer our corporate structure throughout to become more muscular," Ricoh President and CEO Shiro Kondo told a news conference.

"We have done very little pruning of unprofitable businesses, and we need to pull out of some."

(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi and James Topham in Tokyo and Maneesha Tiwari in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das and Nathan Layne)
quote:
Originally posted by GIntel:
Any thoughts on why Canon released the engineers?

Is demand for this role down or are the sourcing this duty to CBS?


At our dealership at least, demand for this role has never been higher, and we've always been a big software/solution seller.

I could *guess* that they are combining roles with duplication across Canon/CBS/Océ, but I don't have any data to back that up.
As far as Canon releasing Solutions Engineers...
Too often top management doesn't understand exactly what an SE does, because its hard to quantify their impact. A good pre-sales SE is to a Sales Organization like yeast is to bread, you only notice when its not there.

Several years ago I was hired by RBS-Boston to reconstitute the solutions team that they had disbanded two years earlier. Of course the branches sale tanked, and they finally figured out they needed Pre-Sales SEs. They brought me on as The Solutions Manager for the Branch and while it took a good year to build the right chemistry between my team and the sales team, by the end of our second year we had hit our triple crown numbers at RBS-Boston. No other direct Ricoh branch did it that year, and that branch (RBS-Boston) had never before accomplished it.

At the end of that year Ricoh merged with Lanier and we had a joint end of the year meeting where they informed me that they were moving my team of Pre-Sales SEs under the Service Department???? It was clear that top management at Ricoh did not understand what we do or the value of quality Pre-Sales SE. So I moved on to my current position. I did however get a phone call from a RBS Sales Manager six months later telling me that my name came up in a manager's meeting and they calculated that they lost one million dollars in sales since I left that (he said) they would have won if I was still there. His words not mine. I of course asked if I could get that in writing, on Ricoh letterhead... I am still waiting for that letter.:-)

So if we have to quantify the impact of a good Pre-Sales SE it can be as much as 2 million dollars of sales a year. It has shown me that the people who make the decisions at the top often don't understand the impact or contribution of their SEs. They long for the "good old days" when they simply moved boxes.So from time to time they get rid of their SEs and then they notice that their sales organization looks a lot like bread without yeast = flat!

That's my $0.02
Vince McHugh
Great story!

Our dealership has done the exact same thing with similar results. Put SE's in place, experience growth. Cut SE's (hey look! here's a non-revenue producing position!), experience slump. Come to the realization you need them again and hire people who can't quite do what the experienced people you cut were doing.
GIS sure is expanding fast, so I can see where these rumors come from, but I dont see GIS becoming Xerox's only MFP sales arm. GIS is too independent and does not have the international coverage to support Xerox's international clients.

Xerox will continue to sell MFPs directly to the largest companies, but it will be a "solutions-led" sales strategy. They will continue to sell production directly too.

I could see Xerox relinquish mid-market accounts to the channel and/or agents. The margin on mid-market accounts is about 12% lower when vendors sell directly vs. through partners. This is the reason HP gave most of its smaller MPS accounts to channel partners in Europe a few years back. Global and its largest agents and dealers will handle the bulk of Xerox's mid-market business. XPPS will allow channel partners to better address the mid-market.

Xerox will exclusively sell to SMBs through Global, resellers, and agents.

I agree with GMAN that Global is positioned to make the bulk of Xerox SMB sales.. Consider this, three or four of the highest volume Sharp dealers are GIS companies. These guys can sell!

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