As part of a promotional campaign for its new internet telephony products, AccountingWEB's Jon Wilcox asked Panasonic about its "recession busting" promotions. The company's UK marketing manager for Communications Solutions, Steve Gerrard, provided the answers.
Q: The past 12 months have been difficult for business. What feedback have you had from clients about how the recession has affected their plans to update their office technologies?A:
In our experience it has really only been the past 6 or 7 months that have shown real signs of economic belt tightening and this trend has varied widely from business partner to business partner. Partners with a broad, geographic base of customers have noticed a decline in their business, not necessarily with projects being cancelled but with purchasing decisions being stalled. Partners focusing on government, education or healthcare have not necessarily seen any drop-off in business over the past 12 months. In response to the economic belt tightening we have introduced specific promotions to ease the burden of upgrading to a new communications platform so companies can benefit from the latest developments in technology.
Q: What advice do you have for businesses looking to improve efficiency through technology?
A: There are many day-to-day activities that organisations have not optimised. Look for key processes in your business that suffer from slow progress or response and employ suitable tools, mechanisms and applications to increase the process speed. A simple example would be how voice messages are dealt with for people temporarily out of office. Do current systems allow messages to be diverted instead to available staff, enabling immediate response?
Q: Businesses have a wide range of communication tools today, including social networking and voice over internet (VoIP) services. Are traditional telephony solutions likely to play second fiddle to the internet as a means for efficient and effective communication?A:
This is a very valid point, if the telephony solution does not now incorporate such facilities as standard then there is a danger of losing out to other available services. However, it's important for businesses to have control over such services through an integrated telephony solution rather than allowing open access to freeware, unrestricted software or web-based tools.
Q: What products have continued to prove popular despite the recession; has there been a change in trends over the past twelve months?A:
Panasonic launched its new NCP (Network Communications Platform) range at the end of September 2008. Within the first six months we sold in excess of 1,000 NCP systems in the UK alone. The NCP is a true internet protocol (IP) PBX platform with a unified communications server built into its ‘appliance format’. This combination of IP and business communication applications has proved a real winner with small and medium-sized businesses mainly because of its ease of installation and operation. Panasonic has seen some downturn in sales of legacy systems, but not as much as we expected. Although there is a large acceptance of IP and unified communications within the market there are still end users out there who focus purely on the cost of a new system as opposed to the technological advances and business benefits it can offer.
Q: Panasonic has launched three "recession busting" promotions including 0% finance and trade-in campaigns for businesses. How successful have the promotions been to date, and how long will they will be open for?A:
The initial reaction to the campaigns we launched in April has been very encouraging. Take up of the 0% financing and trade up/trade in promotions in particular has already far exceeded our expectations. We originally envisioned the campaigns running for a period of three months, but based on the initial successes we will now be extending the programmes until September.
Q: Panasonic’s global sales dropped by 20% in the last financial quarter; how will this affect the company’s plans for new business solutions, and what initiatives have been launched to stimulate a recovery before the end of the recession?A:
There was some downturn in Panasonic’s global business in the past 12 months but this has to be put into perspective. The downturn in global consumer spending has had a dramatic effect on all businesses. However, this downturn is not necessarily mirrored by business spending. Whereas a consumer might postpone the decision to purchase a new TV, camcorder, digital camera or Blu-ray player a business cannot necessarily postpone the decision to purchase a new communications infrastructure or extend its existing system. We shouldn’t confuse the business and consumer sides of Panasonic’s business. Although there was invariably a downturn in our communications business it has not impacted our development track or commercial promotions. Indeed we will be launching version 2.0 of the NCP and Communications Assistant (Panasonics Unified Communications suite) within the next few months.
Q: Panasonic’s CES 2009 booth in January showcased a Corporate Eco Corner. Is the company on track to deliver on the vision unveiled at Las Vegas in spite of the current economic climate?A:
Panasonic has embraced "greening" with enthusiasm at every level of the company. All our new products both B2B and B2C are conceived, designed and engineered to be increasingly energy efficient without having to sacrifice functionality. For example our NCP systems consume less than half the power of their TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) predecessors.
Likewise our offices and factories have adopted green working methods and are constantly striving to improve on our own high standards. Going green is not something that Panasonic associates with the recession - going green is a part of our normal business life. For our customers the benefits are obvious not only do they get state of the technology products in terms of feature set but the operational costs also look good on their budgets.
More details about Panasonic's telephony products and recession-busting promotions are available from the company's UK website .
