Originally posted by Medium FormatPro Two years is a lifetime in any electronics field. If they do not renegotiate their SLA within the next two quarters then Pentax may very well be beyond repair.
I'll give them those two quarters myself. If not I'll shelf my entire Pentax system and look elsewhere
The two years refers to the entire job of restoring full corporate services across the spectrum, beginning last October. Buyout "Best Practices" suggest the acquiror just take an "inventory" of people, practices, assets and business conditions over the first six months before making substantive changes. Then they start making changes - which appear to have begun right on schedule. Some changes don't take long at all. Others can take a very long time. When I say Ricoh has a plan, I mean they have thought through all the issues and things that need to be fixed and changed, and prioritized them both as to urgency and cost. They should do the most important things first, then the next most important, etc. They've announced some corporate restructuring actions - perhaps those steps were necessary for legal reasons before they could start on operating changes.
We know they advertised for a Media Realtions / Trade Show person. One would hope they are negotiatiing any SLA's with C.R.I.S. as we speak. One would hope they are negotiating with any Customer Service Call Center contractor or hiring new employeees if that is still in-house. One would hope they are. They likely can't hire a national sales force to cover all those new dealers in 12 weeks - that would take the two years, for instance. They can't immediately build a complete schedule of local workshops - needs staff and space. Etc.
When changes start rolling out one hopes there is a positive corporate announcement every two or three weeks and excitement about positive change builds on the positive changes.
I know some here will call that fanboyism (or worse), but I am absolutely not a fanboy. As a student of businesses, I'm simply fascinated to watch how (for that matter, whether) PRI manages this. I put myself in the position of a decisionmaker and ask myself, "What would I do?"
Some of the things people here are asking for are really good ideas and necessary to Pentax's future, but perhaps cannot be accomplished at the desired (from a customer's point of view) time nor in the desired order for various reasons, including perhaps legacy legal agreements.
Some things are really good ideas that can't be accomplished at the desired (from the customers' point of view) prices.
Some things are desireable (third-party lenses in K-Mount) but cannot be controlled by Pentax.