Ricardo Perez Garrido

In the last ten years Kodak lost more that 80,000 employees. It has recently sold one of its most profitable business, the health imaging unit. And now they are anouncing another reduction in workforce of more than 10% (see a reference in
Business Week ). But they are optimistic they finally got the digital world right and are ready to compete.

They just entered the printer business (see a reference in the NY Times), competing face to face with HP (the company part of the top management is coming from), and trying to change the business with cheaper cartridges, the space where everybody was making a lot of money now.

Kodak is a great example of how changes int he market can send you a lot of signals and you can ignore them, just because you are sure you are the best and change is not needed. The "all digital" world is reaching every space of your life, which means that you will interact with most of the companies offering services and products for you and your company, at some point of this interaction process, by a digital channel. The question for most companies today could be if they are ready for this evolution, and for those offering digital communication, if they are doing all they can to put themselves at the middle of this flow of interactions and transactions, making it simple for the customer, and branding this position as something valuable for the customer.

Probably you are thingking that the answer is no. Kodak, by changing completely its structure is communicating to the market that they are making the effort to understand what the customer interaction with imaging is going to be in the near future. Success is not clear, but the fact that they focus, in the printer business, on something that was clearly demanded by some heavy users of the product is a good sign. This time they are listening a little bit better to the market.

Posted on 9 February 2007 in Gestión de Tecnologí­as / IT Management

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