Rob Watts
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Solutions Feature: Xerox Pushes New Growth Opportunities for Channel Partners
Sep 16, 2015 12:22:28 PM
Xerox’s New Push for MPS growth
Attention dealers: You have a huge revenue opportunity waiting with your current customers. According to research compiled by Xerox from CSI, Dun & Bradstreet, Harte-Hanks and CPO Analysis, small and medium-size business (SMBs) are expected to spend in excess of $40 billion on technology and document-related services this year in North America and Western Europe. Fortunately for equipment dealers, service providers, value-added resellers (VARs) and the like, more than 75 percent of those sales are expected to happen through such channels, not through the OEM’s direct sales. So Xerox announced in September that it plans on launching a new initiative—entitled “Innovate to Grow”—designed to help channel partners to not only increase sales, but to improve customer productivity and enhance security in the workplace.
John Corley, president of Channel Partner Operations for Xerox, aims to provide customers with a more complete office technology package. “Success for Xerox and our partners is more than selling boxes, it’s about becoming a strategic partner and finding ways to improve their business processes,” he said in a recent post. “At Xerox, it’s our mission to arm partners with the tools they need to better service their customers and uncover new revenue opportunities, and this initiative sparks innovation and helps drive growth.”
This initiative comes at an important time for equipment dealers and print service providers. Print output is steadily declining and margins on hardware and even MPS contracts are growing ever-thinner, so dealers looking to increase revenue will need a comprehensive package of technology to stay ahead of their competitors.
So far, Xerox reports that the initiative has done well, with several providers across the country seeing substantial increases in both sales and customer satisfaction.
The initiative Corley outlined includes sales talk tracks, videos, marketing toolkits, and a Partner Solutions Playbook instructing channel partners how to best use Xerox assets to meet their customer’s needs. The playbook is described by Xerox as an “interactive library of real-world customer scenarios, each showing how to solve a workflow problem with a step-by-step overview of possible solutions.” This guide explains the product as well as the technology and time involve with deployment.
Providers are being trained in a number of ways, including an MFP app that shows the customer how to order service and supplies and a custom workflow software for a healthcare customer. So far, Xerox reports that the initiative has done well, with several providers across the country seeing substantial increases in both sales and customer satisfaction. That, in turn, should improve a partner’s “stickiness” with its customers: If the partner is viewed as an integral part of an organization’s IT and workflow processes, the customer is much less likely to replace that partner when competitors come calling.
“Innovate to Grow” is currently available in the United States and Western Europe, and is expected to launch in other territories later this fall. BLI has examined ways for providers to expand their offeringsbefore, and programs like these seem to be where the market is headed. Those looking to add more solutions to their offerings will want to check out our Solutions Center coverage for a variety of value-adding software products.
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