New York-headquartered Canon Business Process Services Drives Business Results, Creates New Forms of Value for Clients

Among the 50 Innovative Companies to Watch this year is Canon Business Process Services (Canon) – a firm dedicated to helping its clients adapt to a rapidly changing business environment. Canon offers a range of services encompassing information and document management, business process outsourcing, managed workforce services, accounts payable services, insurance processing, logistics management, records management and information governance, legal discovery services, print services and financial services application processing.

Proud Moment

Canon was recently named a Global Outsourcing 100 Leader in 2018 by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) for the twelfth straight year. For a number of years running, Canon has earned additional IAOP recognition by receiving top honors in the ‘Programs for Innovation’ category, which recognizes a company’s ability to implement specific programs and resulting outcomes that produce new forms of value for customers.

Interview Excerpt: Joe Marciano, President/CEO

The focus of Canon’s mission goes beyond cost reduction to enable client businesses to run better and operate more efficiently.

“Canon supports this goal by partnering with clients to enable business agility, digital transformation and lead an increasingly evolving workforce,” says Joe Marciano, president and CEO of Canon Business Process Services. “We solve these challenges by leveraging our experienced team backed by Six Sigma expertise and best-in-class technology,” adds Marciano.

Corporate Campus Logistics Services

One program to receive IAOP recognition is Facilities and Logistics Management Services, a program the company has implemented for a variety of clients. Canon created the solution because when corporate sites grow to thousands of employees, the number of services, requests for services, employee amenities, materials and suppliers grows exponentially. A new approach incorporating both logistical expertise and smart systems is necessary. The program offers that new approach; it gives clients a solution for the daily running of large, multi-building corporate campuses. Key tools and technologies that comprise the program include warehouse management systems, facilities management systems, help desk ticketing, call center and dispatch, smart controls for safe equipment operation, mobile communications, reporting and data management, shipping and parcel, accountable mail and parcel tracking, mail and parcel screening and more.

An example of the power of this approach is a global chemical company with over 4,000 employees at a central campus. The company teamed with Canon to drive such business results as reduced overall headcount and labor expenses. Due to a pending merger, the company needed to meet several key objectives. One was to reduce facility management costs and headcount while delivering improved services to existing and new residents. Other goals included integrating a variety of service categories, streamlining supplier relationships and maintaining a safe workplace.

The company engaged Canon to manage its warehouse, print, mail, and shipping and receiving operations. Results included a 20 percent reduction in headcount and labor expenses as well as a workspace consolidation that reduced square footage by approximately 25 percent.

Solving Complex eDiscovery Challenges

Programs implemented by Canon’s Discovery Services business unit were also recognized by IAOP for its innovation and ability to drive business results. Canon Discovery Services offers a skilled, dedicated team of discovery professionals with a proven track record in solving complex discovery matters. Backed by over twenty years of experience, Canon Discovery Services helps law firms and corporate legal departments develop practical, defensible eDiscovery response plans to support successful outcomes. Services range from ESI (electronically-stored-information) processing, culling and analysis, document review, hosting and production to implementing information governance and readiness response programs.

Most importantly, its broad expertise enables Canon Discovery Services to meet a number of pressing legal industry needs that have received much attention, particularly at the 2018 LegalTech conference in New York City. One of those needs, which a Canon Discovery Services team discussed in a video interview at the show, is navigating the industry turbulence that has been created by the massive amount and types of data that people and organizations generate every day. As a market leader, Canon’s approach is to listen, consult and leverage industry-leading technology to help clients solve this and other complex discovery challenges.

Canon leverages this approach to work with large firms, but also with mid-sized law firms, providing resources they often lack. Some of the specific challenges Canon helps clients solve include complying with the EU’s Privacy Directive; investigating data breaches; assessing and mitigating data management risks; and implementing defensible, cost-effective discovery response plans.

Canon’s Digital Intake Center Solution

Another reason why Canon is an innovative company to watch for in 2018 is that more and more businesses are leveraging its digital intake center solution. This hybrid mailroom/scanning system approach offers substantial gains when it comes to improving the flow of information and streamlining processes within the enterprise.

Here are three other critical benefits of digital intake centers:

Improve process efficiency – It is a constant challenge to make sure that each piece of mail that a business receives is sorted, classified, repackaged, tracked and shipped to the intended recipient. For many organizations, this process involves dozens of full-time workers, duplicative work and unnecessary workflow stops. A digital intake center, however, whether created and managed internally or in conjunction with a managed services provider, can help eliminate these inefficiencies by scanning inbound mail immediately upon receipt, while simultaneously indexing and classifying each piece of mail. The digitization and ‘straight through processing’ boosts efficiency and enables the instant delivery of business information to the intended recipient or business workflow.

Reduce risk – A digital intake center can help make business mail more secure than ever, only accessible by its intended recipient or workflow. One option is to team with a managed services provider that can create a controlled intake environment, which can only be accessed by badged employees and monitored 24/7 by surveillance cameras. Once the mail is received, it is processed, time-stamped and added to the desired workflow with a clear audit trail. This gives the company’s security team confidence that the right systems are in place to maintain compliance with strict audit requirements.

Enhance customer response time – When customers have a question or a problem that needs resolution, they expect fast response times. A digital intake center can enable a business to meet this challenge faster than ever. Whether a client inquiry is received in paper or digital form, a digital intake center solution gives an organization the ability to process inbound mail and route it to the appropriate recipient or workflow instantly. This helps ensure that customer response times are as short as possible, which in turn helps maintain high customer satisfaction.

“These programs illustrate how we are leveraging innovation to better prepare our clients for what we refer to as the future of work,” says Marciano. He explains that the way business is conducted will continue to change dramatically in the next few years due to cultural, demographic and technology shifts. Whatever challenges arise in this new scenario, Canon’s mission, via its transformative approaches, is to ensure that its clients are ready to succeed.

Silicon Review Magazine, July 2018