One can be excused for pondering the predictable puzzle as to how a one-time European merchant banker transports himself from bean counting in Belgium to the Melbourne office of a worldwide prepress equipment market leader as chief executive of its Oceania division.

The answer is to be found in Frederk Dehing’s gilt-edged career, which had its grounding at UCL – – Belgium’s Catholic Universit‚ de Louvain – – and was commercially given birth at Holland’s giant ING finance group, subsequently supplanted by Belgium-based Agfa Gevaert. At its Mortsel headquarters, the affable Dehing quickly moved through the executive ranks from early days during which he was involved in mergers and acquisitions planning to a variety of other commercial areas, culminating in the position of Head of Finance/Business Control.

All the through-the-ranks promotions notwithstanding, Dehing confesses to having felt a missing link within the process. “I wanted to broaden my scope and to do that I needed a situation which involved the sales aspect,” he recalls.

While his career trajectory gave him the advantage of placing him in line for other senior headquarters positions, he opted for the antipodean posting as head of Oceania, one of the nine regions into which the Agfa empire is divided. Even though it may not have been quite as further up the corporate ladder as some other Head Office opportunities might have offered, the decisive reason for a position which makes him responsible for Australia, New Zealand and the adjoining Pacific Islands region was that it provides exposure to the desired sales environment.

(As an aside, Dehing confides that his wife was somewhat underwhelmed at the thought of having to move to the other end of the world but agreed to be supportive; three months after settling into their outer Melbourne semi-rural home with the Dehing’s two young children, her supportiveness had translated into total enthusiasm.)

20 per cent higher
True to the edicts of every sales manual, Dehing, who next month will have completed his first full year in the CEO’s chair, spent the first three months travelling through his new territory to talk to Agfa customers, a process he describes as “research from the bottom up”.

The exercise left him with some clear cut conclusions and equally clear cut goals, which he is in the process of pursuing. The end game, expressed in the motivated Dehing mantra, plays out in a broadscape projection that “in terms of sales I want to be 20 per cent higher than today”. This despite the fact that in prepress terms he is sitting on a maturing CtP market for which he sees zero growth in the foreseeable future.

Not that this discourages him. “CtF took nine years totally to mature while CtP flattened out somewhat more rapidly,” he notes, adding the sobering fact that there are 400,000 presses throughout the world which will continue to consume their diet of plates. Obviously Agfa’s market leadership within this scenario is not easily toppleable.

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