Bespoke solutions for Arabic-speaking world

Sunaina Rana / Emirates Business

Kodak Alaris was created on September 3, 2013, by the UK Kodak Pension Plan (KPP) after it had taken over the Kodak Personalised Imaging and Document Imaging businesses from Eastman Kodak Company. Alaris is licenced to use the Kodak brand. Kodak Alaris is driven by the simple belief that ‘we can always find a better way’. The Information Management (IM) division of Kodak Alaris was set up to help organisations deliver the right information to the right people at the right time and across the right channels, with an essential role for intelligent document recognition, business processes automation and intelligent information management overall.
In 2013, the company established its regional branch office in Dubai. The Middle East IM business has more than doubled in size since then. This is the fastest growing region in the world for Kodak Alaris’ IM business and the company will continue to expand in order to provide the best service to the customers and partners.
Kodak Alaris has been investing considerably in the Gulf region, opening dedicated service centres in Dubai, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Khamis Mushait, providing fast local support for organisations that use both Kodak Alaris and third party scanners.
Arabic is widely spoken across the region; Kodak Alaris launched both Arabic Interface and Arabic TWAIN drivers into its scanners capable of displaying Arabic text in its LCD panels, unlocking new opportunities for Arabic speakers. The launch of the Arabic interface followed the opening of the service centre in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia mid of last year demonstrates Kodak Alaris’ commitment to offer the best possible service to the region and its growing demand by offering tailored solutions for the Arabic speaking world.
David Whitton, regional sales director for Middle East and Africa, Kodak Alaris, talks to Emirates Business about their venture in the region.

What is Kodak Alaris’s core
competence?
Information is the lifeblood of any organisation, large or small business, government, healthcare and insurance entity. The common denominator is that data forms the basis of every decision and every action. The most successful organisations are those that know how to harness the value of information to better serve customers. Kodak Alaris’ Information Management solutions enable customers to capture and consolidate data from digital and paper sources, understand and extract valuable insight from the contents, and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. It’s offerings include:
• Award-winning document scanners and capture software
• Information management software, driven by artificial intelligence
• A wide range of professional services that is continually expanding
• A global service and support team
With customers ranging from small offices to global operations, Kodak Alaris delivers superior systems and solutions to automate business processes, enhance customer interactions and enable better business decisions.
Our differentiation centres around three areas. The first being our innovative solutions and products. We have an incredible amount of intellectual property that translates to exceptional value for customers. As a proof point, buyers laboratory presented Kodak Alaris with the Winter 2016 Scanner Line of the Year award for superior performances across our scanner portfolio. In addition, Kodak Alaris also won three ‘Pick’ awards for scanners tested this past year, and we also won four Pick awards in 2014. Kodak Alaris holds the most Pick award wins out of any scanner manufacturer tested by BLI.
The second is our commitment to the region. We are not interested in investing at a surface level, but are fully committed and have invested in sales, marketing, channel, service centres as well as product localization. So we have a mature business model. And the third area is the breadth of our solutions: we play in hardware, software as well as services.

What are the latest trends that are influencing the sector?
The biggest challenge for most businesses in the coming years, as has been the case over the last few years, is how to channel information. And this is not just direct information — letters, emails or documents that pass directly to and through a business or government department. But information, in this Information Age, comes from everywhere now.
We all know about the power Twitter, YouTube and Facebook and all other aspects of Social Media. Things go viral! So not only do businesses want to be a part of that, but they want to control that, to remain reputable in a time when a mention of your company, in either a negative or a positive way, can snowball and catch you unawares. Governments want to protect its citizens and maintain national security. These are all pressing issues which need solutions. All this information needs to be gathered and harnessed somehow. There are products out there that are pioneering in this field and will become a much larger aspect of business practice and everyday life.
Another big trend in the Middle East is the drive to E-Government. There is the need to reduce operating costs and manage resources better, deal with ever-changing regulations and improve staff productivity, enhance the citizen experience, build smart cities of tomorrow, increase transparency and accountability, unlock the knowledge and information needed in today’s knowledge economy in an efficient and secure way.

Can you share about your presence in the Middle East?
The main regional headquarters for the Information Management Division of Kodak Alaris is in Dubai and it has dedicated service centres in Dubai, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and KhamisMushait. The company has plans to expand further in the MENA region, continuing to help make its customers and partners more competitive through innovative solutions.
The company’s go-to-market model is indirect and partner focused. 90 percent of our business in the Middle East goes through channel partners. Kodak Alaris has a two tier (distributor & reseller) model on the hardware side, but for the software and solutions side of things the company is moving to a one tier model where we sell directly to resellers without the involvement of distributors.
Within the Middle East, the GCC countries are our priority markets and again, within this territory we are focusing our efforts on the Saudi market. Saudi Arabia represents the largest market for ICT sector in the Mideast in terms of capital and volume of spending, representing 50 percent of the total sector in the GCC. We find that with the Kingdom’s smart government initiatives and focus on digital transformation, Kodak Alaris’ solutions become increasingly relevant.

What has been your biggest
success in the region?
Kodak Alaris is a US$1.2 billion company globally and in the Middle East the business has more than doubled in the past 2 years. We have a 20 percent unit share of the Distributed Capture and 38 percent of Production Capture markets. Every third scanner sold in the MENA region is a scanner from Kodak Alaris. We have a strong presence in the government and banking sector as well as with BPO sector. We are poised for accelerated growth in the next few years.

What are your regional goals?
The primary goal is to continue to drive rapid growth within the region by increasing our in-country investments and resources and introducing innovative products and solutions. Naturally, no growth strategy is complete without a highly skilled and motivated channel. Therefore, we aim to ensure we have the highest performing channel in the region with continual investment in training and channel programs throughout the coming years.