In this interview with ITPulse’s Cyril Ilayah, Ben Gossage, Sales & Marketing Director, Canon Central and North Africa speaks on how Canon is leveraging technologies such as automation, augmented reality and robotics to transforming the printing industry and position it for new talent.
What do you envisage as the future of the global printing industry considering the fact that the world is going digital?
The print industry is unique and has developed over many years, transitioning from analogue to digital technologies, but there is still so much more to come. For it to keep the momentum, we need fresh ideas and out-of-the-box thinking and one way that we can support this growth is by attracting the next generation. Technologies such as automation augmented reality and robotics will keep transforming the industry and present opportunities for new talent. We need to explore more engaging ways to relate print to younger generations’ hobbies and interests and how they could be part of this evolving industry and contribute to its future.
What role is Canon playing to alter the traditional ways of printing and adopt digital technologies?
We continuously innovate exceptional technologies, products and services in printing. One of our goals is to be a global leader in print and we constantly look for opportunities to improve our organization, business, culture and brand and to proactively pursue our ambitions. We design an ecosystem of technology, Digital Transformation Services (DTS) which bring together our leading hardware and software into an integrated technology ecosystem. We understand that our customer needs are changing rapidly. As we move towards hybrid ways of working it will be increasingly important to have hardware in place which can step up to challenge, offering the connectivity, security and workflow technology to help ensure efficiency.
Canon recently organized an event on the “Future of digital Print”. What are the takes home from the event?
The past 12 months have created unexpected challenges for almost every print business. Now that the world is gradually reopening, it is time to regroup and rebuild. We organized the Make it Event to encourage innovation with new technology to create added value, and ultimately help transform the industry for 2021 and beyond. It is a testbed for future sales, customer engagement and experiences.
Reports say the digital printing market size is expected to grow from USD 24.8 billion in 2021 to USD 34.3 billion by 2026. How big is Canon playing in this market?
We are working to expand our commercial Printing business and establish an Industrial Printing business. We are working to reinforce our product lineup by leveraging our strengths in electrophotography and inkjet technologies, as well as our digital transformation capability in the Office Printing business.
In what ways can the printing industry reinvigorate brands, businesses and ultimately, contribute to the global economy?
Printing has been an integral part of people’s lives and economic development. It is essential to cultured living beyond the basic needs such as clothing, food and shelter; today, it would be difficult to achieve economic development without print.
How is Canon positioned to dominate the digital print market ahead of your competitors in the next five years?
By providing printing services based on a “cyber-physical” approach that integrates hardware and software components, we help customers to realize advanced, efficient operations and save labor in an age of digital transformation (DX). Our competitive advantages include ownership of electrophotography and inkjet technologies for digital printing; breadth of product range, from consumer products to equipment for office and commercial printing; globally developed sales and customer support networks and mass production capabilities for standard and high-performance printers that constitute many parts, based on organized intra-Group collaboration and ability to make production machinery in-house.