The Eastman Kodak Company empowers people and businesses everywhere to express themselves in images. To connect business customers with the products and services they know and love, Kodak began a digital transformation with SAP solutions to simplify business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and increase sales.
We have to do business the way our customers want to do business – not the way we want them to. SAP solutions help us live up to the modern customer’s expectations of an innovative name like Kodak.
Jim Continenza
CEO
Eastman Kodak Company
“Kodak” has long been a household name. Today, Kodak remains a company of innovation, focusing on commercial printing and advanced materials and chemicals. Companies everywhere depend on commercial printing from Kodak to meet their unique business needs.
For instance, Kodak’s innovative, process-free printing plates eliminate the need for plate processors, effectively cutting out an entire step from conventional printing methods and providing businesses with greater efficiency and potential savings.
Despite a dedication to simplicity, Kodak’s CEO Jim Continenza could admit that the company’s e-commerce experience was not as intuitive or easy to use as the printing products Kodak sells. Customers wanted a better way to buy reoccurring consumables, such as ink and toner.
“I would constantly hear, ‘Great technology . . . unbelievable quality . . . love your product, love your service, love your innovation. But you’re hard to do business with,’” Continenza says.
Just as Kodak greatly reduced the barrier to entry for businesses doing their own commercial printing, the company needed to reduce e-commerce complexity for customers buying Kodak products.
I’m big into being ‘customer first.’ That’s why we’re putting the Web portal first. Let’s make it easier for a customer to do business with us. If we have to change, we’ll change. But we’re going to do it around the customer.
Jim Continenza
CEO
Eastman Kodak Company
Kodak has used SAP solutions since 1995. The e-commerce solution the company chose would need to integrate nearly seamlessly with the existing SAP solution landscape on the SAP ERP application. So, Kodak decided on SAP Business Technology Platform as the basis for its digital transformation and the SAP Commerce Cloud solution to enhance e-commerce.
Faced with increasing demands and expectations from its B2B customers, Kodak knew it needed to improve its digital experiences, starting with e-commerce. The SAP Commerce Cloud solution revolutionised Kodak’s front-end e-commerce by building a better experience that guides and informs customers each step of the way.
“The shopping cart is the last part,” Continenza says. “It’s the experience of getting to the shopping cart that matters.”
The company also used Experience Management solutions from SAP and Qualtrics to find out how employees felt about the transformation. With the right sentiment-gathering technology, Kodak felt empowered to approach transformation in a way that would bring employees on board and ultimately help them do their jobs better. A unique blend of both qualitative and quantitative data empowered Kodak to set the stage for a successful digital transformation. Kodak used SAP Analytics solutions to make the most of these insights with powerful analytics tools.
Businesses want to buy Kodak products. An enhanced e-commerce experience based on SAP solutions will empower them to do so, thanks to Kodak’s powerful IT foundation enhanced with a variety of intelligent SAP solutions, including those for analytics.
These solutions keep Kodak moving, even during times of disruption. They even helped Kodak continue to meet customers’ expectations amid the challenges of the pandemic. Employees were able to quickly shift to a work-from-home model on SAP solutions.
“The bulk of our revenue comes from overseas and 80-plus other countries. I need a global platform that allows customers to do business with me anytime they want,” Continenza says.
Just as easily as Kodak can do business overseas on SAP solutions, it can enter entirely new markets and begin selling products and services in new countries. The company can scale its new e-commerce experience on the SAP Commerce Cloud solution to meet growing demand.
SAP solutions will enable Kodak to live up to its legacy as an innovator. The company continues to revolutionise commercial printing as it innovates in chemicals, and its new e-commerce experience will enable customers to buy these products quickly and transform how they print.
The SAP Commerce Cloud solution helps us meet the demands of our current customers while, at the same time, making it possible for us to expand into entirely new markets.
Jim Continenza
CEO
Eastman Kodak Company
Continenza says there are two ways of looking at growth and technology. The first way is examining a company’s current growth objectives – the immediate growth Kodak enables with its digital transformation. The second is thinking about the growth that’s possible with this new technology, well into the future. Both approaches are important.
He says the best-case scenario is that, in five or more years, he will need to enhance Kodak’s systems with additional technology. He may even need to implement a more powerful SAP solution foundation for the company’s technology. This would mean current SAP solutions have done their job in helping Kodak maximise growth and achieve its goals for expansion.
In the meantime, Kodak will use the SAP Commerce Cloud solution to delight customers around the world. With the right SAP solutions, the company can perform customer outreach to receive feedback from customers regarding how they feel about this e-commerce experience. Based on that feedback, Kodak can quickly make updates to its front-end e-commerce and continue exceeding customers’ expectations.
The Kodak Eastman Company develops and manufactures a wide variety of innovative products for printing. Kodak has a lasting legacy in photography and has expanded its focus to include B2B printing, which empowers businesses to meet their in-house printing needs with printers, toners, and other products.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
|---|---|---|
| High tech | North America | 4,500 employees |
