Real Business at Xerox

Submitted by Brian Samuelson, Xerox’s traveling “roadie” blogger

So you might be thinking, what does Sting, one of music’s biggest superstars, have to do with Xerox? 

Good question.  What you might not notice from first glance is how much goes into putting on one of Sting’s legendary shows.  Xerox comes in to tackle the real business of entertainment and keep everything running smoothly behind stage.  Between printing programs, banners, contracts, venue maps, and even the Royal Philharmonic’s sheet music, there sure is enough to do before show time. 

Check out what Ciaran Flaherty, Live Nation global tour manager, has to say about “the big machine moving behind stage.”                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCPtPXuYgeA

Watch Craig Evans, Live Nation senior vice president of Global Operations, explain how high quality tour partners, like Xerox, help make the artist’s vision come to life.       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnATN3hb8aU&feature=related

The tour runs in North America through the end of July, then over to Europe for Sept – Nov.  I’ll be there to share some  exclusive  clips of what happens behind the scenes, so stay tuned! – Next stop Toronto!! Canada eh!

Need more Sting?  Check out www.xerox.com/sting

Submitted by: Andy Jones, Director, Global Document Outsourcing, Xerox Europe

Good news for those looking for further cost savings: getting a handle on print costs is still an untapped opportunity for most businesses to save money and operate more efficiently. A recent report from research firm Quocirca says despite the huge growth in electronic communications and mobile device usage, printed output is still widely used in business.

Louella Fernandes, analyst and author of the Quocirca report says:

“We estimate that only 15 per cent of large enterprises currently use managed print services (MPS) to reduce office printing costs, and most aren’t controlling and managing printed output wherever it is produced – in the office, at a remote location, in the print room or in commercial print shops. This represents a huge unnecessary cost, but also an area for easy potential savings for large businesses that have complete print transparency.”

To help get to grips with MPS I’ve outlined a few of Quocirca’s top tips for organisations considering MPS:

• Ensure your provider has a level of maturity: select a provider with experience of delivering office MPS, print room services and external procurement. They need the agility to respond to changing business dynamics and expertise to deliver services on a global scale, including technology depth and local experience to facilitate global transactions

• Conduct a detailed evaluation: go beyond analysing print volumes to understanding what type of documents are being printed, where and by whom. This ensures that effective transformation programmes can be implemented, predicted cost savings are realistic and the need for document workflow solutions can be assessed, based on existing business processes.

• Think beyond cost per page: an enterprise-wide print strategy should avoid simply focusing on reducing acquisition costs and cost per page. Implement a flexible and sustainable print strategy that delivers ongoing cost savings through a standardised technology platform and optimised business workflows.

All too often printing is managed in silos across the business by different stakeholders, with separate budgets.  By taking control of the print environment, businesses can look to save costs, operate more efficiently and ensure document security.

So, the good news is there are still cost savings to be made. Even better news is that Xerox can help. We were first to offer Enterprise Print Services (EPS) to embrace all elements of an organisation’s print infrastructure – from the networked office to the in-house print centre to the virtual worker. And because if this, we lead the market – Xerox was positioned by Gartner, Inc., in the Leaders Quadrant in the “Magic Quadrant for Managed Print Services Worldwide”[1] for 2009 and recognised as a leader in IDC’s 2010 MPS MarketScape report[2].

– Andy Jones, Director, Global Document Outsourcing, Xerox Europe

² IDC “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Managed Print Services 2010 Hardcopy Vendor Analysis.” Doc # 222872, April 2010.

Submitted by Brian Walsh, regional vice president, Xerox

Outsourcing isn’t a well – loved word, especially in the public sector. But in a time of finding new ways to get work done while saving as much money and time as possible – public sector organizations are reconsidering, and reaping the benefits of letting someone else handle what they’d rather not.

Print is often one of the last areas organizations in the private and the public sector think to optimize – but doing so with a sound managed print services (MPS) strategy can reduce print related costs by up to 30 percent.

Yesterday’s Plain Dealer covered two of our Ohio-based clients Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) and Cleveland State University in “Economics 101: Colleges Cut Costs by Outsourcing Tasks from Making Copies to Running Dorms.”

Tri-C and Cleveland State signed on for Xerox MPS to not only reduce costs (Cleveland State plans to save $500,000 per year), but to keep up with the document demands of a growing student population. Working with Xerox to monitor and provide pre-emptive maintenance for all print and copy devices, school staff members no long have to spend time on print-related activities. Al Moran from Tri-C said it best:

“Tri-C’s primary mission is the education of students and to train and retrain the workforce in Northern Ohio,” said spokesman Al Moran. “We shouldn’t be in the business of doing things that others can do more effectively and more efficiently.”

MPS is a logical business decision for IT leaders in higher education – it helps them reap cost savings benefits and redirect dollars back into student programs.

— Brian Walsh, regional vice president, Xerox

Submitted by: Laurie Riedman, Xerox public relations consultant

I wanted to highlight what Xerox Chairman and CEO Ursula Burns said about innovation when she spoke earlier this month at the World Innovation Forum in New York.  While many other bloggers have posted comments about her keynote,  I thought it would be remiss if we didn’t do the same here on this blog.

Speaking to top innovators, Ursula talked about the ‘roller coaster ride” we’ve been on for the past 10 years including shifting our business into document management and business process while bringing to market over 80 new products in the past 3 years alone.   Now that’s a lot of innovative thinking.  How does Xerox do it?

Well much of it comes from the  Xerox Innovation Group and its four R&D centers located across the globe, including the wholly-owned, but independent  Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which not only conducts Xerox research but also partners with other companies to do independent research projects.  Ursula mentioned some great work PARC is doing on solar energy – which incidentally has come from Xerox core competencies in printing!    By the way, besides the four research centers, the company recently opened an innovation hub in India to focus on projects specific to developing markets.

Ursula talked about our  collaborative innovation approach including  how we  ‘dream with our customers,’  in other words,  getting closer to our customers so we can truly invent products and services that meet their specific needs.   She also addressed how important it is to ‘roll with the punches’ and embrace change.  For example, Ursula sees crisis and the need for change as a great motivator because when everything is uncertain – it gives you permission to do something differently.   Personally, I like that kind of thinking because if you don’t embrace and welcome change – you can’t have innovation.  How do you innovate?  I’d love to hear from you!

In the meantime — check out what the Innovation Playground had to say about Ursula’s talk or some great pearls of innovation wisdom from all 13 presentations from Blogging Innovation.

– Laurie Riedman, Xerox public relations consultant

We caught up with Xerox chief marketing officer, Christa Carone, after her DMDays 2010 Keynote recently.  She gives us her opinion on the current state of direct marketing, and how agencies and companies can benefit from subtle customization, and how XMPie, a Xerox company can help.  Read more about her talk on direct marketing and customer relationships, and through some of the news reports on Christa’s keynote.

Submitted by: Patricia Calkins, vice president, environment health and safety

A couple of weeks ago I attended a forum convened around the topic of sustainability.  While there is no shortage of sustainability forums these days, I do find it valuable to carve time out to get to a few.  The forum was attended by about 200 folks representing 75 companies and various roles within those companies.  In fact it was great catching up with some of you there!

There was lots of discussion about how we can continue to advance the sustainability dialogue when back in busy work environments.  This inspired me to get feedback on a few observations from that forum:

1. There is a broad range of organizational maturity on sustainability.  While we are all on this journey together, for a variety of reasons, some have been on the journey longer.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness the experience of those who have been on the journey longer to accelerate the path for those newer to the journey?   —  I would like to mention that Xerox is joining the Sustainability Innovation Forum, a group of companies coming together to create a best practices approach to sustainability—tools, tips and strategies to help those further down the learning curve to integrate sustainability into their business.  Read more about the Sustainability Innovators Working Group.
2. More roles within businesses are becoming involved in sustainability.  This is very encouraging because getting where we need to go will require everyone to contribute.  So how do we most effectively harness the power of the people in our organizations to contribute in a meaningful, effective and active way?
3. Regardless of where we find ourselves on the experience maturity curve, we still have daunting challenges.  Many of these challenges are industry, business and firm agnostic (#2 above is an example).  We are each wrestling with some of the same challenges, each expending intellectual, human and monetary resources toward finding effective solutions.  How can we effectively pool our collective resources to solve problems common to many of us?

Patricia Calkins, Xerox vice president, Environment, Health and Safety

As you may have concluded by now, inefficiency drives me crazy…  whether environmental or organizational…  and perhaps is why I am in this profession.

Actually if you really think about it, the low hanging fruit in the environmental sustainability arena is reducing waste/inefficiency.  Eliminating the “collective” cross company inefficiency could perhaps significantly accelerate our journey.

I look forward to your thoughts about my observations as I continue to travel along Xerox’s sustainability journey.

– Submitted by Laurie Riedman,  Xerox public relations consultant

Last week I spent some time with digital marketers and executives from XMPie, a Xerox company, at the Digital Marketing Days Conference in NYC.  Besides getting a pulse on what the latest buzz is in the digital marketing world – I went to see Xerox CMO Christa Carone deliver the keynote.

Christa’s keynote reminded me of some marketing truths that frankly get lost each time I get enamored with the latest and greatest technology.    Here are a few of her gems:

• Real brand value comes from the customer experience — not the technology Christa cautioned the audience not to get too caught up in the latest technologies, and reminded the group of the customer’s experience with the brand that is paramount.

• When companies want to cut through the information clutter – getting closer (more personal) with the customer counts. She highlighted just how hard it is to cut through the information clutter out there.  For example according to some statistics she shared — consumers see  about 3,000 media messages a day, but can only pay attention to 52 and really can only remember four.

• 1:1 is more than an email mail/merge campaign.   When we make the message “personal”– it works! During her keynote – Christa shared examples of great creative and effective cross media 1:1 campaigns including a  viral email campaign Xerox produced to highlight IOS – Information Overload Syndrome – to draw attention to Xerox as a partner in document management and workflow solutions.   The campaign resulted in 50% referral rate.  You can see more at http://www.IOSnews.com.  Also highlighted was a direct mail and email campaign Australian Pet Super Store – Best Friends conducted using personalized information (content tailored to the  type of pet and the pet’s name)  that resulted in double digit sales return for the site.

Many of the campaigns and examples shared used XMPie’s technology.

Although the campaigns could not be possible without the technology – Christa reminded us not to “take our eye off the ultimate prize, which is creating value through exceptional brand experiences.  The key is relevant communications: the right messages via the right media at the right time.”

– Submitted By Dr. Carol Marchetti

My day job is professor of statistics at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), teaching a variety of courses including one on statistical quality control. This class focuses on managing and improving quality through statistical analysis. I often see people’s eyes glaze over as I give this explanation, but it’s much more straightforward (and interesting) than you might think.  It’s simply using data to drive business decisions about products and processes.

Every year I bring in guest lecturers from Xerox and other local businesses to discuss Lean Six Sigma and how this methodology goes hand in hand with statistics. My own interest was piqued and I wanted more than a once-a-year lecture. I wanted to immerse myself in Lean Six Sigma to better understand how quality is implemented in business, how I could bring this information to my courses, and how some Lean Six Sigma tools might be modified for use in academia. And thus began my year with Xerox while on academic sabbatical…

For those of you outside the Lean Six Sigma realm, let me give a quick introduction: Lean Six Sigma is a set of tools and procedures used to identify opportunities and implement actions aimed at improving what we do. The methodology can help cut unnecessary steps in an invoice process or spot and fix product design flaws. There are different levels of training in the use of these tools – Yellow Belt, Green Belt or Black Belt. And that’s where I started with Xerox, by attending Green Belt and Black Belt trainings.

Once I had the training under my belt, pun intended, I worked on a variety of improvement projects, from outlining ways to better track Xerox Lean Six Sigma projects to improving the pricing strategy for Xerox service parts. I also tapped into my teaching experience to provide input to Xerox’s Black Belt curriculum, tutor several Black Belts and master Black Belts and co-present several Black Belt statistics refresher sessions.

My time at Xerox has been very rewarding and I just have a few weeks left until I go back to my full time faculty responsibilities at RIT; my sabbatical will officially end in July.  This year has laid the groundwork for my teaching and research in the years to come.  I hope to continue my relationship with Xerox, looking for additional academic and corporate opportunities and to maintain the personal relationships that have resulted from this partnership.

Lean Six Sigma and statistics are sometimes misunderstood (and often under-appreciated!). But in a world where resources are at a premium – time, money, energy – I think we can all benefit from programs, processes, and tools that help us make sound decisions.  We may not be able to solve world peace, but we can improve the way we work, making our every day practices faster and easier.  And that’s something everyone can appreciate.

–   Dr. Carol Marchetti

By John Kelly, president, Xerox Global Services North America

I recently spoke with Duane Woods, senior vice president for Waste Management’s Western Group about the steps he’s taking to transform the business – as all businesses search to find ways to operate more effectively, reduce costs and lower environmental impact. Waste Management is a proven innovator in its field, and not unlike Xerox, they are using data and automated processes to reinvent traditional processes to be more efficient.

For example, the company typically picks up waste containers on a set schedule, but often makes unnecessary trips to empty containers that are only half full. To save the time and money by eliminating these extra trips, Waste Management added wireless sensors and transmitters to report when containers are full and ready for pick up.

It may be surprising to draw parallels from the Waste Management business to Xerox, but we too are looking for ways to use data analytics and innovative technology to improve the way our business and our clients’ businesses perform. Xerox puts sensors on printers and multifunction systems to monitor when they need maintenance or support. We also automate the collection of data about enterprise printing so clients can get a true picture of their total costs – often for the first time.

So while enterprise printing and waste management may not seem like showcases for innovation, Woods and I, found that both of our organizations are pushing the envelope in terms of technology-driven process improvements, delivering results for our clients and our companies.

You can see more of my conversation with Duane, including more innovative examples, in the video.

 
It turns out that real business really can be conducted on a golf course.  I’m not a golfer myself so I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the 18-hole business meetings. But this week may turn me into a believer.  It helps that the tee time is at Pebble Beach, one of the world’s best-known courses.  It also helps that it’s the site of this year’s U.S. Open Championship. 

But, more important, it’s where we’ll be hosting a number of significant Xerox Real Business Live! meetings with customers, prospects and partners from around the world.  Sure the ocean-side fairways and cool coastal breezes are quite a draw — not to mention the action on the greens. But there is action off the course as well as we tee up our Partner Conference for dozens of Xerox’s valuable selling partners to recognize their achievements and strategize growth opportunities. Then, we’ll host our High Tech CIO Advisory Council Meeting — a gathering of the minds to discuss future tends in IT. We’ll also present a Real Business Live! that focuses on a subject near and dear to Xerox: optimizing print. That’s a business buzz-phrase for reducing the cost of printing.  And, we’re saving some of the California sun for a meeting with customers and prospects about growth in IT services. It’s a big focus area for Xerox, especially with the added capabilities from our acquisition of ACS.

A highlight of the week for me will be meeting with our customers and partners from emerging markets in South America, the Caribbean, and Russia for what will likely be a lively discussion on our brand and marketing activities.  It’s always an engaging — never shy — group that asks great questions and gets us thinking differently about our brand in global markets.

Oh yea, then there’s that tournament happening too.  In our world this week, that’s how some real business really will get done.

– Christa Carone, chief marketing officer