Ajay Raorane, assistant vice president of sales for digital printing, Domino Printech India

I believe in learning from customers, as they are the best teachers to teach you on the job

One Covid-19 lesson
Be patient and Have a positive outlook.

The WOW factor
One-crore variable designs printed by Pragati Pack for ITC.

Knowledge is power. Keep learning all the time
I believe in learning from customers, as they are the best teachers to teach you on the job. I learned the nuances of printing and packaging from the many printing and packaging converters I have met over the years of my selling digital printing solutions. You can learn from their challenges they share with you and expect you to offer some solution, this drives the continuous learning process.     

Clients need you, too
I always suggest to my customers (printers/converters) to offer solutions to their customers (brand owners) which will help them to sell more products to end consumers. Helping brand owners to sell more through innovative packaging is the aim. 

How have you become or becoming more of an advisor to your client and not just a supplier?
Point is, how do you concept sell your technology assets to your customers. The idea is to provide one tip for your customers to share with their customers.

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Haruto Iwata, managing director, Fujifilm India

Cost saving is tactical, temporary and eventual compromise. On the other hand, resource saving is strategic, long term and no compromise with high tangibles

One Covid-19 lesson
We need to learn from the lessons already ascending from the disease and shutdowns whilst adapting to the changes that will take us to a better world. I believe that everyone should take this as a chance to evolve, a chance to upgrade and be resilient to change. The one important aspect we all need to remember is that we are not the only ones facing the problem and thereby we should never stop hoping for a better tomorrow.

We have already stridden well with time now going forward also we should keep pacing with determination and precautions. Also, apart from abiding the government regulations, we all should stay strong and positive together.

The WOW factor
Our customers keep on surprising us with new samples each time but one that caught my eye recently was a pair of round tables and chairs for retail showroom merchandise. Printed with Fujifilm’s Acuity Flatbed on corrugated board, the furniture sample made a perfect utility value and ideal brand communication medium for the branded showroom.

Knowledge is power. Keep learning all the time
We continuously learn from our customers. Some of the creative yet simple solutions adopted by them for their complex processes, seen in some of our customers are worth to emulate them across our offices and plants.

Process should be like Rajinikanth: Omnipresent + Omnipotent
We have always been associated with some of the best of Indian printers, who are committed to pioneer process driven manufacturing to world standards. Some of the names that come to my mind are Parksons Packaging, Pragati, ITC and Temple Packaging among many others.

Clients need you, too
We at Fujifilm always feel our customer will value us more if we don’t just sell our products, rather we offer the solutions to them in mitigating the problems faced in their everyday business. One of the key measure we discussed in length with our customers in recent times is how to differentiate between cost saving and resource saving. Cost saving is tactical, temporary and eventual compromise. On the other hand, resource saving is strategic, long term and no compromise with high tangibles.

Post-Covid-19, is it time for a rethink by our industry?
The public health crisis is not only a global health emergency but also an extraordinary global financial crisis. The spread of the disease has forced the countries to adopt lockdown which has impacted businesses across categories.

Though it is early to fully measure the impact on the businesses, we believe that industries such as the printing industries and the pharmaceutical industries will continue to grow with a diverse mix of processes, products, and ancillary services for their customers. During these unprecedented times, leadership and stakeholders have a major role to play most unselfishly for the industry to keep growing.

Fujifilm salutes the people who are fighting the battle on the frontline and we hope this pandemic ends soon ensuring minimal impact to business commitments.

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Puneet Datta, senior director, professional printing products, Canon India

If social distancing is the new normal then remote collaboration and communication will continue to be the norm and technology will usher in a new work culture

One Covid-19 lesson
The Covid-19 crisis has changed our lives in so many ways, from the economic impact, to the myriad adjustments we’ve all made to manage work and morale of team from home. However, under these circumstances, technology and digital infrastructure have played a critical role in keeping the world connected and ensure business continuity.

If social distancing is the new normal then remote collaboration and communication will continue to be the norm and technology will usher in a new work culture for one and all including the print industry. Also after speaking with a lot of our customers, it is clear that they all have realised the importance of managing cash reserves of their organisations and that cash flow will reign as top agenda in days to come.

Post-Covid-19, is it time for a rethink by our industry?
Every industry across the globe has been hit due to external uncertainties such as the Covid-19 outbreak and is expected to see the impact in whole of 2020 as well. We are hopeful that our industry will pick pace in the coming months. The consumption pattern especially in the FMCG segment will be strong driving force as we emerge out of this era. There will be a need to have faster turnarounds, less inventories, reduction in wastage of media and time, all of which could possibly lead to faster adoption and high PV of digital printing.

Our industry in India is also very manpower intensive for every step of the process. While on one hand it is seen as a very manpower friendly industry as it generates a lot of employment but on the other hand faces a lot of unforeseen challenges due to this.

Unless and until we consider transformation from ground zero which is a very painful exercise to do we will have to learn to live with these pain points.
Every good transformation has many rewards in terms of business continuity, planning, less human intervention and thus offers far greater reliability to end customer. Maybe this lockdown is a good time to revisit a lot of such processes and ensure the right balance between automation and manpower so that we emerge stronger out of it than we went in.

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Tai Nizawa, managing director, Konica Minolta Business Solutions India

Learning is a never-ending process and we definitely believe in this approach

One Covid-19 lesson
It had been a very tough time for the mankind as a whole, economies are at their lowest, healthcare is trying its level best to find a vaccine, and there is so much of planning and strategising happening across the globe to accept the new times which we could term it as ‘post-Corona’.

One big lesson is not to take things for granted as anything can change with a blink of an eye, people should empathise with others and keep ‘the family first approach’ and not to put all the eggs in one basket. As a business, we should always have systems and processes to manage the urgencies and unacceptable scenarios.

The WOW factor
I am excited about my new role as managing director of Konica Minolta India operations. India had always been the focus country for the Konica Minolta Japan headquarters. The excitement level for the Indian market and Indian customers have always been on the top priority. I know many of our customers have been in the printing domain for very long time and have been delivering great jobs to their end customers.

Recently, one of our customers from south India have been felicitated on the global platform for the admirable job he delivered with print embellishments on a wedding album and the box using the solutions provided by Konica Minolta.

Knowledge is power. Keep learning all the time
Learning is a never-ending process and we definitely believe in this approach with learning we only do better and same as is the case with Konica Minolta. The continuous learning and keeping the ‘customer first’ approach has been one of the key factor for the strengthening and acceptance of Konica Minolta worldwide. We take the feedbacks very seriously and work on the same to deliver the best value to the investments made by our customers and it has shown in our results of being the industry leader consecutively for many quarters.

Process should be like Rajinikanth - Omnipresent + Omnipotent
Digital printing has its own advantages and it complements the offset printing process. With the changing requirements from the customers digital printing provides various benefits to the print CEOs. Digital printing helps the printing organisations to be more efficient and productive. The short runs can be done more efficiently with digital and long runs can continue to be done on offset. We have various customers adopting digital for the same. One of the customers has also integrated our solutions with their manufacturing process for just-in-time manual printing.

Clients need you, too
As I have already mentioned, our ‘customer first’ approach is imitated in our sales proposition. Our sales champions not just pitch the product as a box, but a diligent business case is made for every customer keeping his requirements in mind, also fulfilling the gap which the customer is facing with the suitable solution, which is scalable and also future ready in order to reap the best return on investments. We share various case studies with our customers to take inspiration from others experience to the benefit of their organisation.