18 Oct 2011
Large corporations today are not isolated or quarantined by borders, they work in the global market for their product or service, face global competition and are impacted by global events. As they grow and expand across these borders they are not looking to duplicate infrastructure and resources, but to leverage existing assets and contracts.
Main drivers of global agreements are aggregation of spend and the introduction of shared services models for IT and other business services. These enable them to look at the provision of IT infrastructure and Managed Print Services from a global services perspective.
Given this borderless business environment, Konica Minolta has restructured its global account approach. Its regionally managed Global Major Account (GMA) organisation is now even more operational for international enterprises and ambitious to serve corporate strategic sourcing and companies’ latest managed print service demands. Konica Minolta has thereby put into practice the idea of a dedicated GMA organisation acting as a worldwide network.
The set-up of the GMA organisation is focused on a transparent global programme management and managed print services. It includes international project management, implementation, service delivery and related account management. With the global utilisation of its Optimized Print Services (OPS) programme, Konica Minolta has turned what was considered a challenge into a benefit. The company-wide harmonised OPS approach enables Konica Minolta to serve international accounts individually and adapt to their current and local levels of global sourcing.
“Konica Minolta’s GMA process enables a transparent solution to be sourced globally and implemented locally, delivering increased benefits to both the organisation and users.
“While our initial experience with GMA in Australia has been the implementation end for overseas based corporations, we are now seeing a number of the larger Australian based global corporations express interest in developing global agreements for the provision of Managed Print Services and Print infrastructure,” said Shane Blandford, Konica Minolta Australia’s manager for Global Major Accounts.
Why global account management?
Since the financial crisis in 2008, many enterprise customers have demonstrated a growing awareness of sustainable product and service lifecycles and sought to leverage synergies by means of global contracts. For printing and other IT-related infrastructure costs, Konica Minolta accordingly provides in-depth fleet analysis and optimisation under all relevant aspects. The right integration of multifunctional peripherals (MFPs) and printers within the customer’s processes, related consultancy and services and ensuring the most economic energy consumption are just a few examples of Konica Minolta’s global offering as the partner of choice for multinational corporations with printing systems at different sites and in different countries.
Konica Minolta now combines OPS utilisation and reshaped global account management. The fact that the GMA organisation is not just centrally based is a real advantage. It has enabled a truly global network, seamlessly organised within Konica Minolta’s regional headquarters in America, Asia and Europe, acting locally within defined matrix organisations and related processes, while linking the GMA organisation with Konica Minolta’s national operating companies and partners.
With this newly focused and harmonised account engagement process, Konica Minolta has achieved proven success by winning a number of large multinational tenders, just recently two globally operating corporations, the German car manufacturer BMW and the German-based financial and insurance company Allianz have appointed Konica Minolta for being their managed print service provider.
Cooperation essential
With all its advantages, an essential aspect of Konica Minolta’s decentralised approach to international account management is careful cooperation.
“Given the maturity of Konica Minolta’s MPS offering in Australia to large corporations and government agencies, we have been a strong contributor to the formation and development of Konica Minolta’s GMA capability. Based on our offerings to local client’s over the past 2 years, we have made a solid contribution to the areas of audit methodology and project implementation,” said Mr Blandford.
The GMA organisation holds worldwide GMA meetings to enhance the platform for information exchange on a global scale. Konica Minolta intends to continuously enhance its GMA competence and make further headway in this important business area.
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