Antonio M. Perez, Kodak President and CEO
Antonio M. Perez, Kodak President and CEO told a group of industry journalists from Europe, Africa and the Middle East that "The Graphic Communications Group is playing a key role in Kodak’s successful transformation to a digital company." “In a very short time we assembled our Graphic Communications Group and the integration is going very well – we have made great progress,” continues Perez.
“We’ve forged the most talented and powerful management team in the industry. We have a very unique and differentiated value proposition. This is a great opportunity for the company to meet the changing needs of our customer and prospect base globally. In short, we are superbly placed and very much on track to achieve the vision presented at Drupa 2004.”
In the third quarter trading period (July to September) Kodak’s digital revenue exceeded traditional revenue for the first time. Kodak’s GCG demonstrated strong growth following a very successful showing at September’s Print 05 exhibition in Chicago, which was also the first time the entire GCG business exhibited as a united entity under the Kodak banner.
“The success of the group at Print 05 exceeded any expectations I had. We continue to see widespread evidence of the success of our digital transformation, and the digital revenue results in our third quarter represent another milestone,” Perez adds.
Two years ago Kodak decided to enter the graphic arts market on a large scale, and a series of strategic acquisitions culminated just four months ago, on June 15, when the company completed its acquisition of Creo, Inc. Since then rapid progress has been made in integrating the business and assembling the new management team for GCG, which comprises two operating units: Graphic Solutions & Services and Transaction & Industrial Solutions.
GCG’s leadership and design is now complete and by the end of this year 90 per cent of the organisation will be in place. The key product roadmaps have been decided and the product line synthesized, enabling Kodak to provide clarity to its customers about GCG’s offerings.
Jim Langley, President Kodak Graphic Communications Group, explains, “The way we’ve positioned ourselves with these specific acquisitions is unique. We have all of the pieces in place to address the productivity and efficiency issues for which the industry has been seeking solutions in today’s blended conventional and digital production environment. We didn’t want to just be big in graphic communications. We wanted to have the right pieces to be able to really drive the industry going forward.”
Kodak GCG holds market-leading positions in a number of key business areas within graphic arts. Among other categories, the business is number one in workflow and digital prepress. Its digital printing products imaged over 64 billion pages last year – more than any other company.
While some vendors focus on traditional printing, and others on digital solutions, the Kodak GCG portfolio spans both. Says Langley, “What’s unique about what we’re doing is that we’re pulling both pieces together – conventional and digital – which is the environment that our customers live in. Most of their assets are typically tied up in traditional printing. They’re bringing in digital for expanded capabilities and margin enhancing opportunities. And for them, making both technologies work well is what they’re looking for, and they’re looking to Kodak to help them achieve. And we’ve positioned ourselves to provide that going forward.”
Kodak GCG also outlined ambitious plans to grow faster than the market. The total value of the segments that Kodak participates in is about US$23bn. Says Langley, “We expect the total market in this segment to grow by about five per cent per year through 2008. However we expect to grow in the six to nine per cent range. None of the companies separately were as strong as what we’ve built here today as Kodak. And we understand that through the successful execution of this integration we will create the clear market leadership position in this industry.”
There are five key trends facing Kodak’s GCG customers in the marketplace today:
• a migration from mass to targeted communications;
• a movement from monochrome to colour technologies;
• Kodak’s customers’ clients are under a lot of pressure to elicit much better responses through, for example, direct mail campaigns, versus specifically focusing on the cost of producing a printed piece;
• printers want to transform their production facilities, from silos to automated production environments; and
• the migration from traditional offset printing to a blended production environment.
Kodak says it is uniquely positioned to meet customers’ requirements given these new and changing market dynamics. Kodak is able to help its customers with blended production and unified workflows, delivering new solutions that will help customers expand their businesses and make them more profitable.
