MORRISVILLE – Gianfranco Lanci is retiring as president and chief operating officer of Lenovo in September. But if he were leaving today his exit would be at the pinnacle of Lenovo’s growth as a global technology company. And he’s feeling pretty good about where Lenovo stands today after the company reported record revenues and earnings for its most recent fiscal year. To what does he attribute Lenovo’s success?
“A relentless commitment to putting customers and communities first.”
Lenovo revenues, profits soar to record highs – sales top $60B for first time
Lenovo, the world’s top PC seller, operates global headquarters in Morrisville and Beijing, In comments published at Lenovo’s Story hub, Lanci discusses Lenovo’s performance and future.
- What are the highlights from your business performance in the past fiscal year?
“I’m incredibly proud of the entire IDG [intelligent devices group] team for their remarkable resilience and optimism during a challenging time for all last year. Through a relentless commitment to putting customers and communities first, IDG achieved a record high revenue, growing 20 percent year-on-year last fiscal year.
Lenovo president and COO Gianfranco Lanci
“We had our best fourth quarter ever for IDG’s PCs and Smart Devices business, up 46 percent year-on-year and profitability at an all-time high at 6.7 percent. In fact, every single one of our geographies achieved high double-digit growth in PCs and Smart Devices revenue and PC volume outgrew the market to further reinforce Lenovo’s position as the world’s #1 PC company. Tablets also saw a breakthrough quarter, soaring 157 percent year-on-year, outpacing the market by 3x. Our high-growth segments including gaming, thin and light devices, Chromebooks and visuals solutions also continued to beat the market and deliver strong double-digit growth rates.
“Our Service-led Transformations strategy is also paying off – with software and services revenue growing at almost 40 percent year-on-year. All these milestones are proof of the strength of Lenovo’s culture in always prioritizing the customer, never ceasing to innovate, embracing entrepreneurship and the power of what diverse and inclusive teams with a bold vision and shared values can accomplish together.”
- Asked about lessons learned in the year of COVID, he explained:
“Last fiscal year offered ample lessons for us, as businesses across every industry had to use technology to adapt and survive. Technology became the lifeline that kept businesses productive, kept students educated, and kept families and friends connected. As a global company operating in nearly every time zone, Lenovo understands the importance of work-life blend and embraced a flexible work policy even before the pandemic. This culture of trust and empathy towards employees as well as equipping our teams with the right technology for working from the office and from home, have made Lenovo better equipped than many in maintaining business continuity.
“While we were prepared for work-from-home and knew that Lenovo would weather the storm, we were surprised to see how many employees at Lenovo and other large companies flourish in their productivity and job satisfaction while working remotely – tempering initial concerns of decreasing efficiency or remote work burnout. Over the course of the year, work-life balance has evolved into a healthier work-life blend for many employees, as smarter technology has enabled better virtual collaboration. This is a testament to Lenovo employees’ remarkable resilience and resolve in adapting to remote work. As the world transitions into hybrid work, I’m confident that the Intelligent Devices Group under Luca Rossi’s new leadership will continue to thrive because of our teamwork, passion, and determination for what we do, regardless of circumstance.”
- And what are the opportunities he sees coming?
“Firstly, we’ll continue to prioritize listening to the needs and feedback of our customers and employees, who are the center of our business. We’ll also continue to step up and show up for our communities around ESG (environmental, social, governance) as we did with donations of PCs to students in Italy and distance learning toolkits among many other efforts in response to COVID-19.
“As we know, the pandemic-triggered disruptions in work, school and social connection has accelerated digital transformation and an ‘everything-from-home’ environment that will continue to affect the transition into hybrid. With the renaissance of the PC as people’s dominant device for day-to-day productivity, collaboration, education, we must never stop innovating in PCs and smart devices – from 5G to AI to new form factors.
“In addition to staying focused on our core PC and smart device business, we see great opportunity in tapping into our hardware and software capabilities as an enabler of services and solutions, in partnership with the recently formed Solutions and Services Group under Ken Wong’s leadership. As the “everything-as-a-service” trend continues to grow, Lenovo is ready with solutions such as Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) that leverage the powerful combination of our innovative hardware, seamless software and complete services.
“We will also continue to incubate emerging technologies as a growth engine for new customer needs in a hybrid environment across healthcare, smart collaboration, edge computing, commercial augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), etc. And last but certainly not least, we will go all in in making it as easy as possible for our valued customer and partners to do business with us. This includes continually optimizing the tools and processes for sales and marketing transformation and harnessing the collective capability of One Lenovo.”
