Market Segmentation to Meet Customer Needs
Whether you are a user of technology or a supplier of technology, a focused approach to the market is important. According to Sheri Jammallo, Corporate Enterprise Segment Manager at Canon Solutions America, “To successfully reach their precise target customers, companies must perform market segmentation by dividing the market into similar and identifiable segments. By focusing on specific segments of the market, you can develop a better understanding of the customers you serve and ensure that your products, services, and solutions meet and exceed their unique needs.”
Canon Solutions America has been an industry leader in transactional print and direct mail for quite some time. Jammallo elaborates, “We partner with our customers so we can fully understand their business and help them be successful. We see the market growing and evolving with the introduction of inkjet technologies. We help our customers transition to white-paper-in workflows that will enable them to easily migrate to transaction documents with marketing messages or TransPromo.” According to InfoTrends’ U.S. Digital Production Printing Application Forecast, TransPromo digital print will demonstrate a compound annual growth rate of 19.7% between 2012 and 2017. This equates to an increase of almost 15 billion pages!
According to InfoTrends’ U.S. Digital Production Printing Application Forecast, TransPromo digital print will demonstrate a compound annual growth rate of 19.7% between 2012 and 2017. This equates to an increase of almost 15 billion pages!
Meanwhile, Canon Solutions America’s cutsheet product offerings and workflow solutions are specially designed to meet the needs of the in-plant market. Jammallo notes, “Both our color and monochrome digital presses offer high reliability, offset-like print quality, the durability to handle heavy workloads, a full range of finishing options, and workflow automation tools to streamline production from job submission through finishing. We partner with in-plants to help make their overall operations more efficient and valuable to their parent companies.”
Canon Solutions America has long placed a focus on the transaction and direct mail segments, and this is important to the company’s growth strategy for a number of reasons. By focusing on corporate enterprises, Canon Solutions America enjoys the following benefits:
- The ability to know more and care more. Jammallo states, “For Canon Solutions America, the corporate enterprise space consists of transactional printers (both service provider and in-plant data center), direct mailers, and in-plant CRD. We strive to bring value to each and every customer to ensure that we meet their specific needs as well as deliver unique solutions and services that have been tailored to address their pain points.”
- The ability to share the right insight and information to drive business. Jammallo explains, “By segmenting the market, we can help our customers develop new applications and market opportunities to meet their specific business strategies. By understanding our customers’ key vertical markets and application requirements, we are able to provide customized end-to-end solutions that will maximize application and workflow efficiencies. These solutions ultimately enable our customers to meet their SLAs and mailing optimizations.”
- The ability to combine technologies with the creativity and knowledge of professional teams to deliver solutions that increase customers’ efficiency and competitive advantage. Jammallo says, “Sophisticated production printing environments enable users to generate new revenue streams while also saving a significant amount of cost and time. Building a system that optimizes efficiency and profitability requires an in-depth understanding of the customer’s company by professionals with real production printing expertise. With the variety of software tools, systems, repositories, and technologies that often exist within print businesses, print service providers are seeking partners that offer professional services to support in the development of integrated solutions. A segmented market approach provides us with the industry knowledge required to deliver integrated end-to-end workflow solutions that increase our customers’ efficiencies and bring them a competitive advantage.”
- The ability to provide the right business development tools to a focused group of customers. Jammallo notes, “We provide our customers with access to PressGo!, a business development portal that offers relevant industry data, vertical market briefs, white papers, case studies, campaign templates, marketing how-to guides, and educational webinar series. PressGo! provides our customers with a roadmap to help them develop and go-to-market with new and enhanced ideas to grow their businesses.”
- The ability to listen. According to Jammallo, “Listening to the voice of the customer is critical for success in any business. When our customers succeed, this contributes to our success. We partner with our customers for the long-term, and we value their voice. Our Customer Advisory Councils enable our customers to tell us what they are thinking, what their short-term and long-term needs are, what’s on their wish list, and what their pain points are. We share this information with our development teams to ensure that our technologies, workflows, professional services, and end-to-end solutions meet the needs of our specific segments.”
From a program perspective, Canon Solutions America has truly streamlined its business so it can focus on each individual segment, which enables the company to strategically focus on each individual customer. This level of depth and understanding is possible thanks to the number of tools for customers; the best technology, solutions, and services in the industry; as well as an open-door policy that enables feedback to flow directly to the R&D function. This creates what Jammallo describes as a win-win situation. She concludes, “In addition to being good for business at Canon Solutions America, a segmented approach benefits our customers because we can deliver the exact tools that they need to compete and grow a profitable business.”