In 1995, Kodak looked to Edify to design a sophisticated speech solution in which customers could use natural language to participate in a friendly call dialogue that would direct them to the right CSR for optimal efficiency gains. "Kodak recognized the importance of moving beyond touch tone and traditional call center support systems to meet consumers' diverse needs," said Mitch Mandich, president and CEO at Edify (CRMToday, 2004). By Edify, customers can now speak to an automated system using natural language to get the information they need quickly while Kodak gains cost savings and operational efficiencies."
Edify helped Kodak to evaluate customers’ needs and designed an advanced speech solution that applied to specialty areas. Edify ensured that Kodak's customers are welcomed with an automated speech system that is easy to use, customer friendly, and puts customers in touch with their requested information quickly and efficiently. Edify also developed sophisticated statistical language models to recognize why callers were calling and what products they were calling about while making a memorable customer impression in line with the established Kodak brand.
Most people show their satisfaction with the Edify system, claim by Cathy Brill, director of Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty of Kodak. That means most customers are satisfied with the service, which will lead to potential consume of Kodak’s products and service.
3 Achieving customer focus
3.1 Customer focus
In the modern world it is important for organisations to be customer focused. This is best achieved through a strong emphasis on marketing to identify customer needs and requirements. Piercy has given some main aspects on achieving customer focus.
- Look at current relationships with the customer and see how it needs to change
- Work out what creates value for customers and focus attention there
- Find ways to listen to customers and learn from what they say and apply the lessons in the company
- Move away from obsession with data collection and reporting formats, inappropriate attitudes to customer satisfaction measurement
- Measure customer satisfaction and use the results positively
How to package these things together and finding the key drivers to make customer focus real is been trying in many organisatins.
Customer focus definitely is not doing everything customers asked to do. It's looking at things from the customer's perspective. It's appreciating and understanding that everything that anyone or anything does matters, and affects the customers' experience of and satisfaction with the organisation and its products and services. To organisations the essence of customer focus is clearly explaining to the customer the benefits your product or service offers them, then making sure you deliver against that promise effectively. It’s about ensuring that the customer's expectations and your delivery keep consistent.
3.2 Kodak’s practices
On 18 January 2005, Eastman Kodak Company announced an agreement to acquire OREX Computed Radiography Ltd., a leading provider of compact-, high-quality computed radiography (CR) systems, that enable non-destructive testing facilities to acquire images digitally in a compact, portable unit.
Kodak has been systematically investing in people, products, technology, marketing and sales to help customers in the NDT (Non-destructive Testing) market; through this acquisition, Kodak acquires OREX’s established customer, technology and revenue base. Kodak can grow beyond this base by leveraging its R&D, marketing, financial and other resources. The purchase also helps Kodak round out its current CR product line that has achieved a leadership position in premium CR (Computed Radiography) systems. Digital industrial imaging systems, such as CR, provide immediate capture and rapid access to images. Kodak’s CR platform has been well received by customers because of its ease of use, efficient workflow and world-class service and support. Additionally, the purchase would enhance the marketability of OREX systems, since Kodak’s considerable resources including technology would support them and global sales reach (Kodak, 2005).
“The addition of a compact CR unit to Kodak’s NDT product portfolio is proof of our commitment to create new and better ways for customers to use images and information,” said William Quinn, Worldwide General Manager of Aerial & Industrial Markets for Kodak’s Digital and Film Imaging Systems business. “Customers are very satisfied with OREX’s products for mobile NDT applications that require testing devices to move to the structure—as is the case for monitoring installed pipelines for cracks or checking for corrosion in nuclear power reactor valves.”
Headquartered in Yokneam, Israel, OREX Computed Radiography, Inc., was founded in 1996 as Digident (focusing on dental CR) and expanded its product line in 2001 to leverage its expertise into the broader category of specialty markets. With 84 employees worldwide, OREX will remain in its principal location in Israel and will become a wholly owned subsidiary (Kodak, 2005).
Kodak has the customer focus, the breadth of digital image capture, PACS (picture archiving and communications systems) and print solutions, an excellent track record in CR systems and the global resources to further enhance and better serve OREX existing and new customers in specialty markets like no one else can. All the customers can see the big advantages and value of the products and services provide by the join of Kodak and OREX.
4 Strategic pathways when going to market
4.1 The strategic pathway
Few companies today could deny that what they see happening in their markets includes (Piercy, 2002):
- New customer demands and expectations;
- New competitors, often unconventional ones;
- New types of organisation being established; and
- Whole new ways of doing business being developed.
Therefore, it is important for the organisations to understand the process of going to market- the strategic pathway. The essential components of market strategy can be reduced to four basic issues:
- Customer focus & Market sensing
- Market choices
- Value proposition
- Key relationships
This provides a simple template for testing whether a company has a market strategy, whether it is value-based and robust, and whether it is understood. The pathway is about evaluating a company’s learning capabilities as a basis for making strategic choices, and strategising to create new ways of going to market that provide real competitive advantage.
Market choices
The reality we face is that market boundaries are fluid and changing and that those who cling to the comfortable market definitions of the past are simply waiting to lose their customers to new competitors with new business models. Beyond issues of tracking how the shape and content of markets is changing, is the need for creative and innovative approaches to segmentation to identify groups of customers where there are new opportunities for value creation: the new issues are creating market space, finding opportunities for proactive cannibalization of our own products and services, and reinventing the way markets operate.
Value proposition
If we can leverage superior understanding of the market to identify new opportunities, new targets, new areas for value creation into which we can tap, then the issue becomes whether we can define and deliver value to different customers in ways which are better than our competitors. Perhaps the biggest trap is that we fall back on the old assumptions about what drives value. A company’s assumptions about the value it offers to a group of customers demands the most rigorous questioning and testing.
Key relationships
Assuming we have used our understanding of the customer to develop new market targets where we have a real value advantage over the competition, the issue remains whether we can actually deliver that value proposition to those targets. One critical determinant is how well we understand and manage our relationships with customers, collaborators, competitors and contingent forces in the marketplace, and with co-workers. Any of these factors can undermine our strategy – if it relies on a relationship with the customer that we cannot achieve; if collaborators and partners do not co-operate in the ways needed; if “fight to the death” competitors will block our strategy whatever the cost; or, if co-workers do not buy-in to the strategy.
It is becoming apparent that it is the ability to manage this whole network of relationships effectively which is proving to be a critical corporate competence that some companies have and others do not. The ability to manage a complex set of interacting relationships is beginning to look like an important core competence for many companies. Developing strategies which rely on this competence, when it does not exist, is extremely dangerous.
Reducing market strategy to these components as a basis for strategising and creative strategy development is a precursor to planning and scheduling marketing activities. Without clarifying the strategic pathway, how will we know whether marketing plans and activities make sense? The strategic pathway is a template for testing assumptions, looking for new perspectives, uncovering new opportunities for value creation, and challenging competencies to deliver superior value to customers.
4.2 Kodak’s practices
Although Kodak does hold several patents for its products, other companies are still able to imitate and create their own similar products. In other words, Kodak does not have highly differentiated products. Kodak’s visible products are not rare. Consumers desiring film, one-time use cameras, laser printers, digital media, and even infoimaging technologies can acquire these products quite easily on the market.
From the point of market choices, Kodak’s growth strategy is to develop new businesses in new markets with enhanced services. As the new era coming, Kodak has found new market opportunity define as infoimaging. This is a $385 billion dollar category created by the convergence of imaging science and information technologies (Carp, 2003). Infoimaging is creating new growth opportunities. Though still emerging, infoimaging is changing how people live, work, communicate and do business. The market is four and a half times bigger than the traditional photographic market, and is growing.
The Kodak Express Digital Imaging Center is a new-age photographic store that offers the consumers a range of traditional & digital imaging and complementary lifestyle products and services, in world class open merchandising retail format with warm ambience and caring service. The first Kodak Express Digital Imaging Center was inaugurated in Bangalore in May 2003. This was followed by three more stores in Chennai, Surat and Noida (Carp, 2003). At a Kodak Express Digital Imaging Center the product categories cuts across communication, data capture & storage, lifestyle & imaging, making for a strong value proposition which will delight consumers.
Kodak already has a huge existing network of Kodak Express outlets across the world. Kodak Express is a one stop photographic store, offering consumers a comprehensive range of quality photographic product and services. With the new Kodak Express Digital Imaging Centers, retailing in the imaging industry has reached a new level enabling consumers and professional photographers to do more with pictures than ever before. The Kodak Express Digital Imaging Center is thus the store of the future.
From the point of value proposition, Kodak does not leave its product positions to chance. It determines a core benefit that they can deliver better than anyone else does. They don’t rely on selling traditional products; they sell advanced services. Thus, Kodak’s major value proposition is best value for the services. “You press the button, we do the rest.”(From www.kodak.com) The Eastman Kodak company’s chief objective is to provide the convenience and quality to its customers ,so more and more people can experience the special wonders of photography and capture and re-live their more cherished moments.
Kodak put large investment on Kodak’s Service & Support. KODAK Service & Support is a premier provider of global multi-vendor IT services, installation and support for data storage systems including Tape libraries and drives; Optical libraries and drives; Mass storage devices (NAS/SAN); Disk array/RAID systems; Autoloaders and Document Imaging products for over 1,000 models from over 100 manufacturers, all supported by an extensive worldwide team of Kodak employed manufacturer- and industry-certified technicians and field engineers. KODAK Service & Support has years of experience with the issues that are most likely to affect your customers’ storage needs (Itreselleronline 1996). It particularly understands its customers’ need for maximum uptime, high productivity, extreme cost-efficiency, and complete confidence that everything you’ve stored is both secure and accessible.
Kodak’s customers can get:
- Single-source, one-call-gets-it-all advantages
- Maximized uptime and expense control
- Manufacturer-trained and certified experts
- Well-stocked global/national/local parts depots
Thus KODAK Service & Support is running a unique, comprehensive marketing programs, keep customer satisfaction ratings of over 95%, provide more customer touch points for more sales, include products and services (Itreselleronline, 1996).
As key relationships, corporations have some key relationships from customers, competitors, collaborators and coworkers (Piercy, 2002).
Kodak has already found that the traditional rules and processes of marketing are not as effective. Rather than using mass and segment-based marketing, leading industries utilize technology to focus on individuals, which makes it easier and more economical to address their customers’ needs and wants. Therefore, Kodak has been quick to adopt strategies, processes, and technologies to develop deeper relationships with its most valued customers.
VOICES OF EMPLOYEES: Kodak sponsors eight employee networks, which support a culture of inclusion and measure the pulse of cultural developments at the grassroots level. These networks—Women’s Forum of Kodak Employees, Network North Star for African Americans, HOLA for Hispanic and Latino employees, VetNet for employees who served in the military, Empower for employees with disabilities, Lambda Network at Kodak for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, Native American Council at Kodak and Asia-Pacific Exchange—have given rise to affiliated employee networks elsewhere in the U.S., Japan, Latin America and Asia. What Kodak has done is to recognise the central role of employees and get their participation in the marketing implementing process
Reference
Benchmark Research Ltd (2001) ‘Market Intelligence for Profit’. Online. Available: [ ]
Piercy, Nigel (2002) Market-led Strategic Change. 3rd ed., Oxford : Butterworth-Heinemann
CRMToday (2004) ‘Eastman Kodak Selects Edify’. Online. Available: http://www.crm2day.com/news/crm/EplFlFpyupwZXywEPa.php
Kodak (2005) ‘Kodak to Purchase OREX, Leader in Compact Digital X-Ray Image Capture Products for Specialty Markets’. Online. Available:
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2608/2609/4073/6780&pq-locale=en_US
Carp, Dan (2003) ‘Kodak Directions for the 21st Century’. Online. Available: http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/pressCenter/cpqstratpathways.jhtml?pq-path=2509/2882/2921
Itreselleronline (1996) ‘We are here for you: Kodak’s Service & Support’. Online. Availale: http://www.itreselleronline.com/ecommcenters/eastmankodak.html
Bibliography
Works Cited:
Eastman Kodak Company 2001 Annual Report, 2001
Eastman Kodak Company 2001 Health, Safety, and Environment Annual Report, 2001
Eastman Kodak Financial Discussion of First Quarter 2002 Results, 2002
Eastman Kodak Company 2002 Annual Meeting of Shareholders “State of the Company”, 2002
Web Sites:
www.conservationfund.org
www.epa.gov
www.epa.gov/tri/
www.kodak.com
nature.org
newyork.sierraclub.org/Rochester
www.worldwildlife.org
www.itreselleronline.com
