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Relationships built on trust and a human-centric approach are the lifeblood of successful print providers. These values are fundamental to delivering exceptional customer experiences, fostering collaboration, and driving resilience.

That’s why print manufacturers need to go beyond products, demonstrating a deep understanding of the people behind their customers’ business, including their challenges, ambitions and goals.

Print providers face diverse and complex requirements based on the industries they serve. They have to meet tight deadlines, greater customer expectations, and the pressure of delivering flawless quality every time.

They can do this by:

  • Making sure they offer truly tailored solutions – adapted to their customers’ specific needs, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach, to help navigate obstacles, drive business growth and foster loyal relationships.
  • Becoming strategic partners, rather than just service vendors, enabling increased focus on creativity, strategy, and customer engagement.

Meaningful benefits

Manufacturers can support print providers with a genuine partnership that enables the following four operational benefits:

  1. Personalized approach - Human-centricity is at the heart of partnership and often involves consulting with print providers to understand their workflows, then customizing equipment and services to fit their specific operational needs. In other words, offering solutions designed with their unique business challenges in mind.
  2. Faster problem-solving - Human-centric service includes accessible and responsive customer support, where print experts are readily available to address issues. This approach ensures quicker problem-solving and minimizes downtime, so providers can keep printing with no interruptions and meet tight deadlines.
  3. Assistive technology - Tools like automated workflows and quality control reduce significantly manual intervention in routine tasks. For example, color profiling used to need skillful operators to match and profile colors meticulously by hand. Now, intuitive systems and app integrations simplify time-consuming processes, so operators can manage diverse projects with minimal training or technical expertise.
  4. Training - Comprehensive training and development help employees stay current with the latest technologies and processes. This ensures that staff feel confident using the equipment, which leads to improved productivity and a quicker return on investment.

Partnership power

During Konica Minolta’s 20-year journey of production print, we’ve fully embraced human centricity and the power of partnership. For us, it’s much more than a strategy. It’s a fundamental shift in mindset that places people at the heart of operational success.

Long-term customer relationships are essential to the success of Konica Minolta's businesses and customer feedback is used to improve products and services. The company strives to strengthen its relationships by helping customers achieve their unique goals. We incorporate design thinking to derive the value truly sought by customers and provide products and services from a more customer-focused perspective.

We have created a
specialized organization to increase the speed of decision-making and build stronger relationships of trust with customers in areas such as industrial and textile printing, where requests for customization from customers are frequent. The specialized organization works closely with the development, quality assurance, customer service, and business divisions to communicate directly with customers, which enables it to quickly respond to special media, provide optimal customization of workflows and software, and make functional improvements that increase equipment reliability. These customer-focused efforts and requests have helped us to increase customer print volume and the number of new installations.

Led by the Design Center, and with cooperation from the business divisions, Konica Minolta is introducing design thinking and developing value-added services based on a customer perspective, rather than a manufacturer's perspective. Design thinking is the process and mindset of defining issues based on empathy for the customer, generating ideas based on issues, and refining value.

Through the incorporation of design thinking, Konica Minolta is developing service from the customer's perspective in a wide range of business areas. It will continue to pursue the creation of value that customers are truly seeking, in various business areas and produce innovation that contributes to the identification and solution of challenges for society and local environments.

Lasting legacy

Our legacy in the production print industry is deeply rooted in our dedication to building enduring relationships. We don’t see the most pressing needs in print as challenges, but as opportunities to innovate and adapt to the changing world of print.

Our local print consultants work closely with our customers to really dive into their specific business needs. Plus, we offer customized training, maintenance and expert consultation, to ensure our customers make the most of their investment and remain competitive in a fast-changing landscape.

But don’t take our word for it. Discover why we have more than 12,600 commercial and industrial printing customers in Europe, and 82% customer happiness.

Also see how this complete approach has supported investment, implementation and subsequent profitable growth for these customers.

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