Siddhartha “Sid” Bhattacharya took time out of his busy schedule to talk with BLI about ConnectKey’s success, the “app-ification” of the industry and how Xerox plans to create—and keep—customer loyalty by delivering a complete integrated package for any size enterprise.
According to Siddhartha “Sid” Bhattacharya, Head of Technology Marketing for Xerox Corporation’s Office & Solutions Business Group, 2015 was a good year for Xerox’s digital imaging lineup, especially taking into account that there were not as many product launches as with some other manufacturers. He told BLI that in the 2015 calendar year, “We’ve been pleased with the overall performance,” of Xerox product and services sales, “and have picked up some share and some revenue as well.”
He said that the products introduced in late 2014 (including the WorkCentre 7970, the Color C60/C70 Printer series and the introduction of the Xerox ConnectKey 1.5 platform) all helped Xerox win back market share, particularly in the A3 41-ppm and faster, under $100,000 color segment.
Fluctuating Currency Rates and Price Erosion Were Challenges in 2015
The last year was not without its challenges for Xerox in the office document and light production arenas. Bhattacharya said that international currency fluctuations had some effect on the overall profit margin, noting that, as of our interview, the Euro and Yen were both down by about 18 percent versus their value last year. “As with other multinational corporations,” he said, “we have to factor that into many of the decisions and investments we make.” Price erosion was another challenge over the last year, according to Bhattacharya, a factor that “plays across both hardware equipment prices as well as cost per copy, in both the mono and color sides of the business.” He said that both of those factors are “key levers of profitability for us.”
As a result, Xerox has two strategies moving forward. “We have to sell more pages,” said Bhattacharya. “What that means is that we have to drive activity and drive share. Over time, that will reap benefits as people print more.”
The second strategy, he said, is a renewed focus on “stickiness,” which he said requires working very closely with dealers and partners to maintain customer loyalty by building a steady, recurring revenue stream. “The more we can help our partners and dealers build that ‘stickiness’ in the end relationship with the customer, the more beneficial it is for them and hence for Xerox, as that revenue stream comes into play over time.”
He said Xerox intends to deliver “value beyond the box” and explained that “value is mostly through solutions and through apps, both of which are key areas of investment for us moving into the future.”
Channel MPS Offerings for Dealers of Every Size
With an eye toward making sure dealers and partners have a strong set of tools and access to the entire Xerox product and services offerings, Bhattacharya said, “We continue to invest in technology, we continue to invest in managed print services, and we realize that one of the areas of opportunity for us is to make sure that the partners and channel MPS becomes a strong story for us. Xerox is a clear leader in any kind of study that you look at from an MPS standpoint, and what we are beginning to do is focus much more on our channel MPS, our MPS for SMB, and how to package our overall MPS offerings to make MPS more attractive for the channel, and thereby build on selling value to the end customer.
“Simplification is the key to this,” he continued. “As much as possible, we are working to equip our partners and resellers with the best set of tools and support,” including “turnkey tools that they can then use to train their sales force.”
He explained, “This year we announced a global partner relationship portal that streamlines our working with partners across Europe and the United States to make things much more consistent and leverageable across the globe. We are working on building a whole host of next-generation Xerox Partner Print Services tools, which extend from best-in-class services and systems and support, in the form of advanced software tools, specialized customer service centers, to, obviously our award-winning Xerox office technology, as well as both Xerox and non-Xerox price-fixe services. We’re working with our global partners to define a new approach to delivering value. In fact, delivering value is really organized along the lines of our next-gen MPS story.” This will be evident in the first half of next year, he said, when the portal is fully implemented.
“It’s not about a faster box or a smaller box. It’s all about a box that is a valuable connector into solutions and apps. It’s no longer about the customized UI. Now it’s about the personalized UI—one that recognizes what you do, when you do it, how often you do it, and can help you become more productive by leveraging those capabilities.” –Sid Bhattacharya
Bhattacharya says Xerox is trying to help with tools for each of the three sales ‘planks’ that constitute its value equation: “Assess and optimize; secure and integrate; automate and simplify.” He told BLI, “We’re working on a set of tools that align to each one of these three planks, that the reseller or partner can then take advantage of and then go to market building up a stronger channel MPS story. What it means for our partners is expanding their partner revenue opportunities through these onramp-to-MPS offerings, advanced solutions and professional services. For our mid-market clients who want service by Xerox today, or by Xerox partners or resellers, it allows them to take advantage of the really strong, powerful set of MPS tools that exist today, that we are planning to take more down-market into the small and medium-size business."
“App-ification” and the Smart MFP
Bhattacharya said Xerox has noticed a few trends over the last year or two. “We’re seeing MFPs growing and printers declining,” he said. “The second trend is that our A3 midrange business is growing. What we plan on doing next year is leveraging the enormous success we’ve had with ConnectKey since we launched it in December of 2013, and really taking this to the next level with what we call our Smart MFP ecosystem. The Smart MFP ecosystem is a journey we started on about three years ago. Many of our customers are still not fully exposed to the breadth of the ecosystem we have. When we talk about ecosystem, we talk about a complete set of hardware, software and solutions that we’ve developed, that work across a vast range of our mid-range portfolio, and the high end of our entry-level portfolio, all based off a common platform. That is what we’re looking to leverage further into 2016.”
One way Xerox plans to put that into action, he said, is with “a huge focus on ‘app-ification’ and all of the extended possibilities we have with that. A key underlying assumption of this ecosystem is that it will revolutionize productivity in the workplace in keeping with our very recent Xerox brand makeover, which is all along the lines of improving the way our customers work.”
Customer expectations continue to evolve as technology enables more functionality, both at the MFP and at the customer’s own workspace as well. In today’s workplace, Bhattacharya said, “It’s more about the document handler being a gateway into a document services highway. It’s not about a faster box or a smaller box. It’s all about a box that is a valuable connector into solutions and apps. It’s no longer about the customized UI. Now it’s about the personalized UI—one that recognizes what you do, when you do it, how often you do it, and can help you become more productive by leveraging those capabilities.”
ConnectKey Continues to Unlock New Potential
Bhattacharya told BLI, “Over the last couple of years we have had a number of third-party partners as well as our resellers and partners, whom we have been able to work with through our EIP architecture, to develop specific ConnectKey apps that solve very pertinent business problems.”
He used an example of one Xerox partner who created an app that can automatically do firmware upgrades across an entire fleet of devices. That not only makes servicing customers easier, but it cuts down on a lot of costly time for the dealer. “Now, you no longer have to send out a service tech to go upgrade every device each time a vendor upgrades their firmware. We can now deploy that through this app that does just that, across a fleet of devices and across different customers. So that’s a huge time saver and a huge cost saver, and a huge benefit—because at the end of the day, for our partner to be able to go in and upgrade all the devices in accounts that they manage, this means that it’s lower cost for them to maintain. Plus, their customers have the latest and greatest features and capabilities, and they are able to realize the potential of their MFP.”
Xerox will also continue its focus on mobility across the entire range of its MFPs. At the low end, current offerings include Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Mopria and a Xerox print service plug-in; on the high end are premium mobile offerings, which include Xerox Mobile Print Solution 3 and Xerox Mobile Print Cloud 2. Xerox recently announced details of Print By Xerox, a mid-range mobile printing service that enables fast, seamless mobile print throughout an enterprise. “Essentially,” explained Bhattacharya, “you send a job attached to your email, to an email address (for example, BLI@printbyxerox.com), which sends back a four- to six-digit code to your email. Then, you walk up to any device in your vicinity that has the app on it, and just enter the code to release the print job.”
Bhattacharya summarized, “Our belief is we are one of the strongest players in the industry. We have greatly added value in the last year or so with a complete suite of software solutions and apps. We plan on hugely leveraging our ecosystem story by adding more value, both for our customers and for our partners. What we are trying to do is build strong customer loyalty over time, improve the way our customers work, and in the end make that MFP a smart MFP integral to the document workflows that exist in our customers’ environments today.”