IKON Office Solutions continues to restructure as it works to bring its costs in line, most recently reducing the size of its marketing department. The company has stated that its goal is to bring its Sales, General & Administrative (SG&A) expenses into alignment with competitors in the marketplace and to position itself for improved earnings and revenue. A closer look at IKON’s performance reveals:

On a positive note, IKON has significantly beefed up its professional services offerings, particularly to serve mid-market customers, many of whom do not have robust IT resources and look to vendors like IKON for turnkey services. Targeted professional services had a strong third quarter, up 15%, with improvements in all key metrics including systems analyst utilization, document strategy assessments, and hardware enablers. Additionally, the company reported record third quarter placements of the IKON CPP 500, the IKON branded version of Konica Minolta’s 50 ppm color printer. This product is now a top revenue-producing color product for the company. In the U.S. office color segment, IKON grew placements by 75%, and across all segments of color, copy volumes were up 47% from the prior year.

IKON reports that it is committed to reducing costs across the organization, and that early 2005 expense actions are now delivering positive results, with SG&A expenses down 7% year over year. At the same time, average equipment sale prices continue to decline due to a combination of new product introductions and lower price points, as well as increased competition.