How this £85m business TRIPLED revenue in six years

KYOCERA Document Solutions aims to hit £93m in annual turnover this year

This article is brought to you in partnership with KYOCERA Document Solutions UK Ltd

KYOCERA Document Solutions is one company in the UK you should know about.

The printer manufacturer, part of Japanese tech giant KYOCERA Corporation, reported £85m in annual turnover this year and has nearly tripled its revenue over the last six years.

Headquartered in Reading, the company has offices in London and Manchester.

KYOCERA’s sales director Graham Cox reckons the company can hit a £93m turnover this year.

Here’s how they plan to do it:

Q. Tell us a bit about yourself, how did you end up at KYOCERA?

I have been in the industry for 29 years, I had a senior position at Ricoh prior to joining KYOCERA Document Solutions UK Ltd as Sales Director 11 years ago. The overall message from KYOCERA about the environment and its culture appealed to me.

Q. How big is the UK market for KYOCERA compared to the rest of the world?

KYOCERA has a very good foothold in the market where B2B is concerned. We probably have a bigger share of that market than most countries across the world other than the likes of Germany, USA and Japan who are right up there in the KYOCERA pecking order.

Q. You offer both professional and personal products, which are more successful and why?

Up until a couple of years ago we only manufactured products for the B2B market so our impact in the consumer market has been slow – therefore our most successful area is the B2B market which suits us well. The SOHO [Small office/home office] market is specialist and we have been slow to enter, the pricing is cut-throat and probably best looked at as a marketing tool for brand. There is no opportunity to add value which goes against our normal business strategy.

Q. Which products are you focussing on this year?

The hardware element of our market has become challenging over the last few years. Government frameworks have driven prices down to an unsustainable level so this has forced a change in strategy. Moving forward we intend to focus on promoting the services side of our business which includes software, professional services and B2B cloud services.

Q. Who are your biggest competitors?

In brand terms Canon, Ricoh, Xerox, Konica Minolta and HP are all formidable competitors but in terms of relationships and doing business in the right manner none of them can touch us.

Q. What are your biggest challenges?

As a company KYOCERA in the UK has nearly tripled its revenue over the last six years. A big part of this is the experience and service we give our partners as we grow. Our staff numbers have nearly tripled in line with the revenue growth and the challenge is to maintain our culture and continue to provide the customer experience we have become famous for.

Q. What goals have you set yourself for 2015?

Firstly we have to grow our business from £85m turnover to £93m but as I said earlier we will have to establish ourselves as a services provider and grow services such as our B2B cloud offering in conjunction with our sister company KDDI.

Q. Can you list three milestones for KYOCERA in the UK?

1. Change of management six years ago was a key moment, the business has never looked back since and KYOCERA has become a great place to work.

2. Creating our own service division enabled us to diversify our offering to our Channel partners and bring us in to the world of services.

3. Unleashing our relationship with KDDI and delivering a genuinely powerful cloud services offering in the market.

Q. Which technology, according to you, has transformed the printers?

Our long life technology meant that the market has had to follow suit with their pricing strategies to compete with our technology. Subsequently print management software brought another revolution to the industry – organisations can truly manage what they print and where and be much more aware of the costs involved.