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By Cary Sherburne, Senior WTT Editor April 13, 2005 -- On Tuesday, April 12th, Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group, headed by Jim Langley, announced the next stage of its organizational structure designed to accommodate its rapid growth through acquisition and to meet its stated objectives of becoming a premier industry player. The completion of the acquisition of Kodak’s 50% interest in the Kodak/Sun joint venture, Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG), was the driver for this announcement. The company’s acquisition of Creo is still pending regulatory approvals. Kodak had previously announced that Jeff Jacobson, formerly the CEO of KPG, would lead the Graphic Solutions & Services (GS&S) unit as its President as well as taking on the role of Chief Operating Officer for the Graphic Communications Group (GCG). Jacobson has three strategic product groups reporting to him – Workflow & Prepress, Digital Printing and Consumables. The new leadership team is as follows:
Kodak indicated that Homi Shamir, leading the company’s Transaction & Industrial Solutions unit (formerly Kodak Versamark), will make an organizational announcement at a later date. Two other Graphic Communications Group executives were also announced:
WhatTheyThink checked in with Jacobson to gain more insight into the new organization and Jacobson’s vision and objectives for the future in his new role. WTT: Jeff, congratulations on the finalization of the KPG acquisition, your new position and the assembly of your new staff. Perhaps you could start by sharing the top three things on your list to accomplish as leader of the newly-formed Graphic Solutions & Services Group. JJ: These are interesting times. As you know, we completed the KPG deal on April 1 st and set about finalizing the GS&S organization. I am delighted to have Judi Hess, Venkat Purushotham, Doug Edwards and Dolores Traxler on the team, as well as John Robinson, who will be heading up global manufacturing, and Andrew Copley, who is responsible for sales globally and a key driver of the integration effort, working with me. I have been making the weekly circuit between Vancouver, Rochester and Norwalk and expect that to continue for a while. We have been through this movie a number of times, and every time you do it, it is a little different. You can never take anything for granted. Culture and systems are the two most important things you have to get right. We will have put six different companies together by the time this is finished. In preparing for this, we spent a lot of time thinking about the mission critical elements for our customers, from MIS to capture to output. I have been asked many times why we think we will succeed when others have tried it before and have failed. My response: Because others have failed is not a reason to not move ahead. This is a winning strategy. We understand our core competencies. We want this to be very open. And we realize that the customer should be able to choose the combination of products and services that best meet their needs. And we believe we will be able to bring 90-95% of the required components to the customer. But first we have to get the culture right, and we need to keep in mind that every journey starts with Day One. We need to unite people behind the vision and get them to believe in being part of something great. We have to build the systems, put the best people in place, and do what it takes to absolutely make this the best company in the world. WTT: There seems to be cross-over between your group and Homi Shamir’s organization. Why are these organizations separate and how will you avoid creating new silos? JJ: That is a fair question. Jim’s [ Langley] team spent a lot of time on that discussion, whether it should be part of GS&S or incubated, and the final decision was to let it incubate for now. There is a certain amount of overlap, especially in terms of inkjet heads, but the majority of customers they call on today are not in the pure graphic arts industry. The other reason is that Kodak is investing heavily in continuous inkjet technology, and when you do that, you want to stay focused and leave it incubated until the technology progresses. In the future s, we will likely bridge the organizations together more than they are today. Meanwhile, we will have a unified sales and service force; Homi’s sales force will reside in the Graphic Communications Group regions and work side by side with GS&S people. They will call on their own transaction customers,. Every week we will hold what I like to call my Sunday night meetings: I expect them to have a joint call each week to review joint opportunities and make sure the sales organization has a plan for action. Eventually, all of the back room will be the same, and transparent to the customer. WTT: I haven’t really heard a mention of Encad. Where did that end up? JJ: We were originally planning to include Encad in GS&S, but in the end it made more sense to group the inkjet technologies together, so Barry Lathan is part of the T&IS organization, reporting to Homi. WTT: Could you give us a little background on the selection of Puru, Doug and Andrew for their respective roles, as well as their mandates in their new roles? JJ: From a prepress consumables perspective, you want to have the best person in that job to grow that big base of business, and Doug is absolutely the best choice. When you look at workflow and prepress equipment, the vast majority of that—once we close the Creo transaction—will come from what was Creo. In that case, we really want to preserve the investment and the continuity; and Judi Hess, who had served as Creo’s President, was a very logical choice. Puru, from an electrophotography standpoint, was basically the inventor of that business for Kodak, and no one else in the group has that amount of knowledge in that particular area of the business. In the end, I expect people to stop thinking about which company they came from. This is what happened with KPG, and we became a unified organization. What is important is that we can drive commercialization of the technology into the marketplace. When you look at these people and what they have been doing, many come from a technology commercialization background and will need to work closely with manufacturing. That’s where John Robinson comes in. John will be on Jim Langley’s staff as well as mine. He has nearly 30 years within Kodak, and runs eight large manufacturing factories in our plate business. We want cross fertilization across the business in manufacturing, so he will be closely linked with the manufacturing groups run by Puru and Judi. Another key thing is to make sure you have a clear handoff from the strategic product groups to the sales regions. Instead of the strategic product groups having to deal individually with the regions, we wanted someone at the top who understands commercialization. Andrew Copley spent a lot of his career in Europe, and has focused on the Americas since 1998. He will help drive integration for all of GCG, including the back room. Look for Part 2 of this interview tomorrow on WhatTheyThink.com! Search for Kodak in the industries largest archive!
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Prior to launching her consulting practice, Ms. Cary Sherburne was the Vice President of Marketing Communications and Outsourcing Solutions at IKON Office Solutions. In that capacity, she developed and implemented a branding campaign to build brand awareness for IKON in the marketplace as well as enhance employee pride in the organization, and was responsible for all internal and external communications, including trade shows and events, corporate newsletters, and industry and press relations. In the outsourcing role, she set strategic objectives and priorities for IKON’s product and services portfolio in its Outsourcing businesses, including development of programs and sales support materials for that environment. Sherburne was a Director at CAP Ventures, an internationally known firm specializing in market research and strategic consulting for the digital document and print on demand industry, before joining IKON, where she launched and managed the company’s Document Outsourcing Consulting Service. Her tenure in the printing and publishing industry has also included sales and marketing positions at Xerox Corporation, Indigo America and Bitstream. She is a frequent speaker at industry events and a recognized author. Cary can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463.
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