Canon USA Inc. has sued William D. Crow, a former employee, as well as 10 other "John Does" for allegedly revealing trade secrets and other proprietary information to Ikon Office Solutions Inc. in violation of a confidentiality agreement. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, Canon sued Crow, for allegedly disclosing Canon's confidential information to Ikon, as part of a scheme to switch Canon's customers from Canon to Ricoh.
In the complaint, it is explained that, Crow resigned Canon Jan. 5 to join Ikon's government marketing division. In his new position with IKON, according to the complaint, Crow is working Canon's customers in violation his contractual obligations to Canon.
As a condition of his employment, Crow signed a confidentiality agreement the complaint said.
"CUSA has been and will continue to be irreparably harmed by Crow's misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair misuse of CUSA's confidential information, and usurpation of CUSA customer opportunities and goodwill," the complaint said.
It is alleged that between approximately Nov. 17, 2008, and Jan. 6, Crow downloaded information such as pricing reports, customer contact information and monthly machine population reports, for use in his new position, the complaint said.
It is also alleged that Crow deleted quotes, proposals and pricing from his computer.
The case is Canon U.S.A. Inc. v. William D. Crow et aI., case number: 09-cv-OOllO, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. ----------------------------------------------
DOTC Analysis, thoughts -
The copier industry is a "revolving door" for sales people in "normal" times, with all the changes going on today, more good people are out of a job or looking for a better position with a more stable company.
The situation displayed above happens daily, but it is rare to have a company sue an ex-employee - but times are different and the battle is being waged on all fronts - something we should be aware of when attempting to better our position in the world.
In California, it is difficult to prosecute a "non-compete" so the angle used could be the confidentiality agreement.
You signed it.
Get a copy, keep it with you, review before jetting...
TOKYO, March 5 - Ricoh Co Ltd said its products accounted for 90 percent of sales at Ikon in January, up from 30 percent before the office equipment distributor was acquired by the Japanese copier maker last year, underlining a smooth consolidation of the key U.S. unit.
Ricoh, the world's largest copier maker, said it aimed to raise its profits in the year from April despite a tough business environment, thanks to bigger contributions from Ikon and its high-end printer business. Ricoh bought Ikon Office Solutions for $1.6 billion in October, delivering a heavy blow to rival Canon Inc, whose machines had represented 60 percent of the products Ikon handled before the October acquisition.
Investors have been keeping a close eye on Ikon's performance during the transition from an independent distributor to a Ricoh unit due to concerns that some of its existing clients may leave Ikon to keep using rival products.
"We ourselves have been worried about that, too. But all of its clients said they have no problem with Ricoh machines except for one company, which did not give us a clear answer," Ricoh Chief Executive Shiro Kondo told Reuters in an interview.
Ricoh competes with Canon, Xerox Corp, Konica Minolta Holdings Inc in printers and copiers.
The Tokyo-based company held a 19.7 percent share in the global copier market in value terms in 2008, according to research firm Gartner, ahead of Xerox's 19.2 percent and Canon's 18.9 percent.
PROFIT REAPING
Kondo said he aims for sales and profit growth in the year starting April 1 as it benefits from a full-year profit contribution from Ikon, and its commercial printing business will likely take off in the new business year.
Ricoh in 2007 bought International Business Machines Corp's digital commercial printer business for $725 million.
Digital commercial printers are used to print such documents as product manuals and direct mail quickly and in large volume, and are a fast-growing segment of the printer market.
"We have conducted various acquisitions such as the Ikon purchase and joined new business areas," Kondo said on Thursday.
"And we are now entering a period of reaping profits, although it is not very fortunate for us that the timing of profit-reaping coincides with this tough business environment."
Ricoh forecast a 45 percent fall in operating profit to 100 billion yen ($1 billion) in the year ending this month due to slumping demand and a firmer yen.
For the new year starting April, analysts on average expect Ricoh to post an operating profit of 62 billion yen, according to Reuters Estimates, making Kondo's target look challenging.
He also said Ricoh planned to stick to its mid-term target to boost operating profit to 250 billion yen in the year ending March 2011 despite a widening recession.
Prior to Kondo's comments, shares in Ricoh closed up 0.9 percent at 1,085 yen, underperforming the benchmark Nikkei average, which gained 2 percent. ($1=99.17 Yen)
I found the article very interesting for those of us hammering out MPS deals - or at least trying.
I found the article very illuminating regarding the current selling to IT model and why it is sometime difficult to get IT providers to succeed with Managed Print Services.
In it, Jay reveals how he "handles" a cold sales call from a vendor; imagine you are setting down with your list of prospects (the yellow pages) and you are dialing up Jay's number.
If he answers, he clearly states to you, "...You have five minutes to tell me what your product is and how it will help me. At the end of that five minutes I will tell you if we’re interested, if it’s something we want to look at in the future or if I want more information.”
It's like Detroit all over again.
Now I disagree with the premise, but let's continue down this road.
You have five minutes to "wow" this guy - the neophyte will stumble into some sort of rote "value statement" ending with "we have the lowest prices around..." click.
The advanced selling professional will realize that five minutes is plenty of time to close for an appointment. Because this professional knows a great deal about this IT guy and his set-up and probable pain points.
The Consummate Selling Professional will never be in this position because he has been introduced into the C-levels and is talking to the person who tells the IT guy what to do.
Which is why I do not like the premise - cold calling. When you read the post, and the comments, a clear view of how the Sales Person is viewed by many prospects. It isn't pretty.
Cold calling is fine if you are "churning and burning" or looking for that one or two machine sale, down the street.
But as a first step in the dance of relationship building?
There is a small firestorm of "concern" brewing around the comments I shared here from the Lyra Symposium regarding the Edgeline.
Couple this with the report that HP moved Edgeline assets "off-shore", and Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt are bound to permeate.
It's referred to as the F.U.D. selling technique and is used by the more shadier copier sales people out there - "X".
If you run your business, your department or your life from a position of Fear, then you have probably been a victim of this selling technique. If so, stop right now, move your mouse over the "X" in the top, right hand corner and click.
No room here for the fearful.
Here's the story - HP is NOT putting Edgeline out to pasture, end of life.
HP IS behind Edgeline, supporting Edgeline, and Edgeline is part of the future.
Resellers are still certified, my techs still service Edgelines, I can still get service parts, toner and engines - all is moving forward.
So if your "X" sales person is telling you that the HP CM8060 is at "end of life" - move your mouse over the "X" and click him out. ---------------------------------------------
All this hub bub has given me pause, so I reflect. It's true, HP has not sold as many units as they would have liked, but how have I been effected?
How have my clients been effected? What does this all mean to me, personally?
Sparking up PrintSolv and checking into our fleet of CM80x0's, I remember the dozens of reasons these clients chose Edgeline.
One company, wanted to explore saving money by reducing energy consumption as compared to their Canons. The Canons had "all the bells", including 3 hole punch, 11x17 and scanning. After looking at the actual usage, 11x17 output was less than 1% of total. Three hole punch, hadn't been used for "...2 years..."
At last month's Customer Review Meeting, we confirmed that since August of 2008, energy consumption for copiers declined 11%.
This was predicted. This is measured. This is a fact. The Edgeline is GREEN.
A side benefit was a reduction in paper purchases from 17 cases/month to 12 cases/month. Duplex was set as default on the Edgeline and all other HP devices.
Scrolling down, I see one client who currently prints about 15,000 color images a month.
Well, I should say, 14,500 Color Accent images a month.
This client was absolutely fed up with the poor customer service, unpredictable color quality, numerous jamming and a ridiculous contract the Konica Minolta dealer was "unwilling to help with".
Indeed, when the unit did print color correctly that is without a "pinkish" hue, a 12 cent/page charge was incurred. After looking at their output, which is revenue generating, almost 80% of the pages had less than 150 characters of text in color. Not many pictures or graphs.
We installed the Edgeline for a 30 day evaluation, which expanded into a 90 day evaluation. Earlier on, the cost savings looked significant for color cost alone. But when we rolled in the ease of use, lower energy consumption, lower amount of disposable service parts(no drum, fuser, etc.) - and the ability to EASILY remove mis-feeds - the Edgeline looked even better "on paper".
I can not say that the Edgeline will not mis-feed, but when it does, end users do not simply walk away from the "blinking wrench"; they easily fix the problem using the AutoNav and live video display. Simple.
Today, because of the Color Accent functionality found only on Edgeline, my client saves a significant amount of money printing color at the black and white rate - printing color text.
The biggest impact on the organization has been reliability - the Edgeline is bullet proof.
But, the client is saving "lots" of money - the Konica is sitting in the corner of the room, used as backup - the lease is still in effect - for another 21 months. Even carrying the lease on this dead machine, they are reducing costs.
One more example -
A very small fleet of Edgelines(4 units) we installed before going with PrintSolv.
These units notify my offices and the client when supplies hit a minimum and service issues reach a certain level. For instance, magenta down to 3% issues an email; three consecutive mis feeds in the ADF, trigger a service email.
To date, we have dispatched 3 service calls to each machine, when notified of a problem, by the machine. That's 12, premptive, non PM service calls in the last 18 months.
Our tech shows up before the end user calls our toll free number. There have even been cases when our tech will show up while the Admin is speaking to our dispatch.
These four Edgelines replaced five boxes from Xerox. My client had been a Xerox customer for DECADES. But saw an "account executive" rarely if ever; the end users knew the service technicians by name, first name.
This account represents quite a few Edgelines - quite a few.
The Take Aways - How to work with Edgeline, from a customer's view and from the Reseller's perspective.
If you arelooking getting more than 4 Edgelines, install a trial unit.
If you are a reseller and you have a prospect who is looking to roll out more than four Edgelines, install a trial unit.
And when going through the trial process, treat it as a sale - perform the site survey, collect end user requirements and network security issues. Train the end users(twice or more) on all the relevant functions.
Set the system up to email your client and you when issues arise.
Do not try to fit this "square peg" into a round hole - do your homework. Both client and provider.
Sustainability - the Edgeline and HP is very Green. Reducing power consumption and landfill materials.
When the unit is installed in an environment that fits, the system performs very well.
I know. I have replaced Canon, Konica Minolta, Xerox, Imagistics and Toshiba with Edgeline.
Edgeline treats business documents the way they are in the real world - hardly anyone uses 11x17 - it's a fact. Sure you can find some who run nothing but 11x17, those are not Edgeline prospects.
Hardly anyone use the 3-hole punch - it's a fact. If it is a "big" issue, pre-drilled is the way to go.
Whenever one penetrates a market with very established players, who apply a tried and proven sales and manufacturing model, such as the copier industry, one is bound to take a few hits.
HP is not going to someday stop printing - but there will be companies that will one day stop copying.
Crazy Disclaimer - the above accounts are a "conglomeration" of cases illustrated as individual clients. The facts remain the same.
From the article by Morgan Bettex, of Law360:
