Real Business at Xerox

Janet Harrison and Megan Hernandez receive EarthCharter award

-    Submitted by Janet Harrison, Solutions Services Executive, Public Sector Operations, Xerox Tampa

From its beginnings, Xerox has helped shape the idea of corporate social responsibility. Our education and social service efforts reflect our belief that a successful corporation must be an active participant in society. The impact of business on the environment is a large part of this.

We challenge ourselves to help clients meet environmental sustainability goals by inventing new products and services, while improving current ones that have smaller environmental footprints than in the past. Our clients in turn shrink their environmental impact by reducing paper consumption, decreasing power use, and eliminating landfill waste.

All of this hard work is why we are excited about winning the EarthCharter U.S. Sustainable Business Awards. Xerox’s Tampa Bay operation was honored for exemplifying the charter’s triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. The local efforts made by employees to positively impact the environment, like those in Tampa, are combined with our corporate strategy to create the success we continue to have on a global level.

The EarthCharter encompasses, as Xerox does, values and principles for a sustainable future. At Xerox we define that as a place where our world economies, societies and environment thrive together in a harmonic state. The EarthCharter recognition validates our efforts toward sustainable business practices and we’re pleased to share our “world society” and economy view with local businesses and community leaders.

Our CEO, Ursula Burns, states our position best when she says, “To us, sustainable development is a race with no finish line. It requires leadership that sets high expectations and clear direction, and innovation that constantly pushes the frontier of what is possible.”

-          Janet Harrison, Solutions Services Executive, Public Sector Operations, Xerox Tampa

Submitted by —  John B. Jones, Vice President, Healthcare Providers, Xerox

The buzz among attendees (27,500 healthcare industry experts) at HIMSS this year seemed reflective of how patients, providers and payers are feeling right now. There’s chaos in healthcare overall and we need to reduce the complexities in the system to influence a positive experience for patients.

If those complexities can be reduced and if we give a better experience, patients will realize the benefits of a functional healthcare system. They will do what they need to do to stay healthy and are less likely to return for more care (meaning more reimbursements for providers).

Walking the 7 million square feet of HIMSS (yes, my feet still hurt!), you see a sophisticated group of vendors, with sophisticated technology. But they haven’t necessarily integrated it with how healthcare organizations make money, or with the way they get work done. We have to integrate technology into the work practice – enable physicians to easily use both paper and electronic information at the point of care.

My colleague, Will Saunders, COO Government Healthcare for ACS, A Xerox Company, sums it up well, “The only way to change healthcare is the to change the economics of it. Physicians are among the smartest people in our society. If you don’t aggregate technology to how they make money, they don’t use it.” Here’s more from Will on the HIMSS show floor:

Hear more commentary on changing healthcare during our Real Business Radio show today at 4:30 p.m. ET.

—  John B. Jones, Vice President, Healthcare Providers, Xerox

– Submitted by Laurie Riedman, Xerox public relations consultant

It’s no surprise to any of us that the world is going mobile.   According to an IDC study by the close of 2011 75% of the U.S. and 80 % of Japan’s workforce will be mobile workers who use the latest technology to essentially work effectively from almost anywhere.   What technology will help them be more efficient and productive?  Xerox wanted to know.

This led to a study of “The Future of Work” where Xerox ethnographers like Jennifer Watts-Perotti (pictured above with one of the participants) and Mary Ann Sprague studied a group of non-traditional, virtual workers observing how they used technology, collaborated with co-workers and integrated work and personal life. (Full disclosure — as an independent consultant for Xerox who works from a home office — I was actually one of the participants.  Yes, it was interesting to be ‘studied’ for a good part of a day – but that’s fodder for another post)

You can check out The Future of Work study finding – but contrary to what you might believe – mobile workers do use paper more than you might think – often because it helps them make up for the technology gaps that exist.    Study participants were observed still using lots of paper (notes, printing documents to read and edit)  and often were  frustrated by lacking the technology to help them easily merge their paper and digital worlds.

I, as well as many study participants, shared frustration around how impossible it is to easily access the same material from my many mobile devices including my laptop and Smartphone.  What’s with that? You’d think it should be easier!

Xerox will continue to study mobile workers to shape future offerings.     Are you a mobile worker?  What would help you be more productive?  Drop us a comment and we’ll pass it along to our ethnographers.  Who knows, you may spur a new future Xerox product or service!

You can listen to ethnographer Mary Ann Sprague  talk about the study.

– Submitted by Brian Segnit aka “The Xerox Photo Guy”

I just got back from PMA 2010, the photo industry’s largest annual trade show.  I heard over and over how excited people are for the photo applications.  Consumers are excited about these since they are affordable and easily customized.  And print providers are responding, giving consumers access to high-quality prints, while also being a lucrative and expanding market.

One of our customers, SendOutCards, produces millions of customized greeting cards annually on its Xerox iGen3 Presses.  They had fantastic results this past December— the company printed and sold more than three million cards, which was more than double the sales from the previous December.  Imagine how many they’ll be doing in their next holiday rush!  Check out a few other customers who are having great success with photo applications .

If you’re interested in hearing more, check out the video of me in my office where I chat about some cool photo applications.

That’s all for now!

— Brian Segnit aka “The Photo Guy”

By Mark Bernstein, CEO of PARC

Today was my first “Real Business Live” event, where select Xerox customers get together socially to think differently about their business. I always enjoy talking with customers and clients because they have very real business challenges, often linked to the information problems we are working on in research.

My goal for the time I had today was to be provocative about the future of work and to incite broader thinking about information since the nature of the problem is growing faster than the capability for effective solutions. I used a few slides compressed from collaborative research done on “Knowledge Work 2020” by PARC and other researchers from the Xerox Innovation Group centers in Toronto, Ontario in Canada; Grenoble, France; and Webster, New York.

The findings point to more intelligent systems operating on information in support of humans engaged in complex tasks that require knowledge to make decisions; more use of collaborative and social technologies to mediate the time and space problem of distributed and even asynchronous work around the globe; and lots more networked computation operating in the world at large.

A few of the key problems faced by businesses over the next decade will be the social contracts with their employees and partners as the adaptability and flexibility enabled by technology become requirements, not opportunities. How do businesses capture the critical tacit knowledge of their older employees as they retire? How do businesses enable new employees to be productive in different ways with new technologies and the skills that come with them?

Much of what we know about today will not be relevant in 10 years. We will all need to become skilled at learning new things from new sources and working more effectively with more people from different backgrounds. That sounds like an exciting future for all of us!

Jon Fortt, technology & innovation editor for FORTUNE magazine, and Mark Bernstein, CEO of PARC, gather onstage for a Q&A during the Real Business Live! event in Phoenix.

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Sunday’s New York Times featured Xerox CEO Ursula Burns in a candid profile of her career and passion for Xerox. With the right blend of personal and professional storytelling, writer Adam Bryant gave readers a view of Ursula and her Xerox goals as the CEO.

Bryant writes:  “And so, while the Xerox story is not all about Ursula Burns, it is still a lot about her, particularly because there are few visible seams between who she is as a person, her life story and how she plans to lead Xerox.”  Check also the accompanying podcast interview with Bryant and his impressions of Ursula.

Mr. Bryant, you are correct, Xerox got the REAL thing in Ursula Burns.

– Karen Arena, Xerox public relations consultant

- Submitted by Falynne Smith, public relations manager, Xerox

At this point it probably feels like your business has pinched every last penny. Maybe not. Could you save by better managing something that’s sitting on your desk right now?  I am talking about documents.

You may know that documents touch every corner of your business, but Did You Know that if you have 500 employees you may be spending as much as $260,000 per year printing those documents? Did You Know that most companies underestimate their print spend by 30-40 percent? Did You Know that in one corporation, the average office worker spends 250-400 hours per year on unnecessary print related issues?

Did You Know this video highlights what you may be missing? The opportunity to pinch more pennies, increase employee productivity and meet environmental sustainability goals – by simply leveraging investments you’ve already made in your print infrastructure. Check it out, and then check out Enterprise Print Services.

- Falynne Smith, public relations manager, Xerox

Here’s a simple way to help women enter the workforce – donate the suit off your back.

Be part of the national Dress For Success “S.O.S.” Send One Suit drive. Donated suits are given to disadvantaged women so they can enter the workforce with confidence and style.

From Thursday, Feb. 25 through Sunday, Feb. 28, nearly-new suits can be dropped off at any Dressbarn location.

At Xerox, we’re getting started a little early by encouraging all of our employees—including their friends and family—to bring their suit donations to work from Monday, Feb. 15 through Friday, Feb. 26. Volunteers from The Xerox Women’s Alliance (TWA) in select Xerox locations across the U.S. will accept donations right in their offices.

As an active TWA member and charity co-chair, I look forward to this initiative every year. It allows those of us fortunate enough to work for a great company like Xerox to help those less fortunate in their efforts to begin a career. I encourage anyone who has a gently-used or never-worn suit to take advantage of this worthwhile cause.

– Susan Weiss, Manager, Worldwide Customer Business Development, Xerox Corporation

– Submitted by Nick Stevenson, Xerox product manager

Another Super Bowl in the books and it appears that Peyton Manning’s offense hit a bottleneck with the New Orleans Saints’ defense. The Colts’ trouble on Sunday made me think of the many offices large and small that often get blocked when it comes to printing. It can seem impossible for print jobs to push through the other jobs in the queue that might be held up because of lack of resources. Like when faced with a great defense, the offense must go around, not through them.

To avoid bottlenecks in the office, Xerox offers a “Print Around” feature on its WorkCentre multifunction printers (MFPs) so that print jobs in the queue are not held up because of others that need resources such as a different paper size. From playbooks to presentations, Print Around makes sure that you have the right printing game plan by guaranteeing that prints aren’t being held captive at your MFP.

I decided to have a little fun a few weeks ago with this analogy and created a two-part video series to show the Print Around technology in action.  We had a blast putting them together and loved being able to bring out our inner football players at work – I hope you enjoy them too.

– Nick Stevenson, Xerox product manager

– Submitted by Karen Arena, Xerox public relations consultant

I’ve always thought it was a great asset for Xerox corporate communications to claim its share of former journalists as employees.  It’s an insider’s advantage to knit the stories that help shape press coverage.   This continues to be a significant part of the job, but now more than ever, Xerox is creating original content to reach customers and stakeholders directly through new media like this blog, user-generated video and micro-blogging.  With a crop of ex-reporters on hand to hold the camera, the microphone and write the copy, their work and “dulcet” voices become another business advantage for Xerox in the marketplace.

The latest case-in-point is Xerox’s venture into Internet radio.  Just this week, Xerox launched a show on the wildly popular blogtalkradio.com called Xerox Real Business Radio.  Listen to Xerox’s Bob Wagner, a former television correspondent and currently in charge of the company’s analyst relations, talk with Tom Blodgett, COO of Commercial Operations at ACS, A Xerox Company and Jim Firestone, president of Corporate Operations at Xerox as they discuss the recent acquisition of ACS and provide details on the merger’s  advantages.   As Bob puts it, “A combination that will be very hard to beat in the marketplace.”

Listen to Bob’s entire conversation with TomBlodgett and Jim Firestone.

So, I hope you continue this journey into new frontiers with the company’s seasoned former journalists and, to use a dated term, “dial-in” to Xerox Real Business Radio for news, tips and insights with Xerox executives, customers and business thought-leaders.

– Karen Arena, Xerox public relations consultant