At its European Leadership Campus (ELC) 2017 in Berlin, Germany, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe will be joined by more than 1,000 of its international retail partners from a total of 53 countries operating within Europe and CAMEA. This summit will be dedicated to the future of their cooperation and joint market efforts. Last held in 2013, the ELC’s format traditionally deepens the strong connection between Konica Minolta and its partners, providing a framework for discussing market needs and introducing the company’s newest products and services. Set up in the form of a “campus” this year, the event will feature seminars on key industry developments as well as an exhibition area measuring more than 2,000 square metres in size and showcasing Konica Minolta’s different market solutions.
Since the ELC is an event directed towards sales partners, a strong focus will be placed on how Konica Minolta can help them grow their business and provide their customers with solutions that prepare them for future business challenges. Living up to the campus character, participants will be able to set up a customised seminar schedule as well as have direct product and solution experiences during the exhibition. On behalf of Konica Minolta, introductory speeches will be held by Shoei Yamana, President and CEO of Konica Minolta Inc. and Ikuo Nakagawa, President of Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe. Furthermore, the acclaimed futurist author and globally renowned speaker Stefan Hyttfors will present a particularly inspiring keynote speech entitled ‘Business as Unusual’. This speech will provide insight into the disruptions and changes the business world is facing in the wake of digitalisation.
Dealer relations are of key importance to Konica Minolta. This is why the stage of the ELC will also be used to elaborate on the crucial role partners play and discuss how collaborations can be further developed. Seminars will cover overarching industry topics such as ‘Driving service profitability through device innovations’, ‘Business transformation – best practice from the field’, ‘Quick wins for sales teams’, ‘The essence of inside selling’.
Konica Minolta’s products and services will be presented at an exhibition in five different areas, each reflecting the relevant markets and industry developments: ‘Professional & Industrial Printing’, ‘Workplace of the Future’, ‘Office Information Management’, ‘Business Drivers’ and ‘Sustainability’. As a part of the programme for each area, dedicated seminars that delve deeper into relevant topics will take place.
The future of professional print
With the recent launch of the Professional Print division in Europe, Konica Minolta is directly addressing the changing environment for production and industrial printing: the division aims to expand the company’s digital printing business by leveraging its technologies to meet the need for high-mix, small-quantity variable production and short lead times, and by offering solutions to enhance printing operation efficiency.
Over the past few years, Konica Minolta has strongly expanded its position in industrial printing markets with the launch of its innovative AccurioJet KM-1 UV inkjet sheet-fed press and AccurioLabel 190 on-demand label printer. Other important developments in the packaging and professional printing sectors will be presented at the event as well. The seminar ‘The next phase for production print – technology insights’ provides insight into new exciting products that are just around the corner for the partners of the professional print sector.
The changing Workplace of the Future
Innovation and customer focus are deeply rooted in Konica Minolta’s DNA. Anticipating and shaping the Workplace of the Future is thus a must. Konica Minolta provides various technologies to enable the workforce to revolutionise their way of work and protect the business of the future, in both the digital as well as the physical world. A platform that seamlessly integrates hardware, software and services into a multi-vendor, one-stop solution by eliminating repetitive IT tasks, enhancing standards, ending unwelcome distractions and reducing total IT spending is fundamental to this. Konica Minolta’s revolutionary solution: The Workplace Hub.
Various technologies for environmental monitoring at the ambient and desk level, such as Mobotix smart cameras and other Konica Minolta sensors, are capable of not only optimising and individualising working conditions, but also raising the level of security at the workspace in general.
These are just a few examples of the groundbreaking technologies for the Workplace of the Future, which Konica Minolta will be showcasing at the ELC. Complementary to the technology displays, the seminars ‘The Workplace of the Future – how it will enable your future business model’ and ‘The road to technologies of the future – a visionary insight’ show the road map to future technologies, such as augmented reality, 3-D printing, virtual reality or the integration of artificial intelligence, and the way they will be applied in the future.
Office solutions to excel in future information management
Organising today’s offices is becoming increasingly challenging because the volume of data being produced is exploding. To support their dealers in helping their customers tackle this challenge, Konica Minolta will present powerful workflow solutions: print and scan management solutions such as YSoft SafeQ, print security systems such as bizhub Secure, smart information search such as dokoni Find, file share and synchronisation such as dokoni Sync and Share, invoice management and mobile scan and transaction management.
The transition to paper-free workflows and offices is a main goal alongside ensuring both data security and revision-safety combined with easy accessibility and searchability of data. This topic is elaborated on in the seminar ‘Paper-free office – dream or reality’.
How specialisation and individualisation will drive the future of business
Customer needs are changing – and so must the products and solutions catering to those changing needs. The individualisation of the underlying hardware and IT office infrastructure, which is used by workers with knowledge, is a key factor driving demand in the future.
With solutions such as bizhub MarketPlace, Konica Minolta is providing customers with the means to implement the solutions they need – exactly on their terms. Products such as bizhub legal cater to specific customers in industries where exceptionally high standards apply in terms of security, accessibility or searchability. ELC participants will be able to gain detailed information on smart cloud solutions, for example, bizhub evolution as well as on on-demand panel creation and development with the UI builder and development services. Special design and operating features such as speaking MFPs and voice operations will also be put on display. During the seminar ‘Accelerating digital transformation’, Konica Minolta will explain how dealers can seize international opportunities while transforming their business according to their customers’ digitalisation process.
Sharing sustainable business
Besides serving customers, one of Konica Minolta’s prime objectives is to help tackle the global community’s issues with its business operations. The offer of a carbon neutrality programme for the entire printing device portfolio allows Konica Minolta to provide its partners with chances to minimise the environmental impacts of business by footprinting and compensating all CO2 emissions generated over a device’s lifetime. Konica Minolta thereby offers an efficient and easy-to-use option to make a contribution towards climate protection. The solutions displayed at the exhibition help companies to address the needs of a growing number of environmentally responsible stakeholders and customers as well as deal with growing market pressure to provide ecologically responsible products.
At the heart of Europe – and the industry
On 20 October 2017, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe will welcome its partner dealers to the ELC 2017 at the CityCube in Berlin.
Konica Minolta’s sponsoring partners for the event – Ysoft, Hyland, Nuance, Scanshare, efi, Plockmatic, Antalis, DLL and Virtual Works – will also be there to provide valuable insight into joint solutions. They will be available for personal presentations and dialogues – in the true spirit of the campus event: with interaction and open exchange.
The European Leadership Campus 2017 is a fully climate neutral event. In cooperation with ClimatePartner, Konica Minolta accurately calculated the CO2 emissions of the event with 785.1 tons CO2-equivalents and is consequently offsetting them by supporting the certified carbon compensation project “Vader Piet”, which produces energy from wind on the Caribbean island Aruba. Konica Minolta sets highest standards when it comes to sustainability, which directly translates into the products and services for the customers.