Xerox has introduced a fast, high-priced commercial printer that many analysts say will probably sell well. It is filling in gaps in its portfolio of office copiers and printers and is strengthening offerings of high-margin services, like maintaining customers' electronic archives.
And it has fixed organizational glitches. In 1999, it reshaped its sales force, making representatives responsible for specific industries, not territories. A result was a mass exodus of disaffected sales representatives. Xerox also consolidated its customer administration offices, wreaking havoc with billing procedures and infuriating customers.
Today, Xerox people who sell high-priced copiers are still assigned to specific industries, but sales representatives for less-expensive office machines are back to pounding familiar beats. Xerox Capital Services is combing out the tangles in accounts receivable -- and teaching Xerox people the complexities of Six Sigma, a statistical method of eliminating waste and errors that has saved General Electric billions of dollars. In fact, Nayden of GE Capital said, the joint venture already has "15 Six Sigma quality projects to work on."
Competitors are still eating away at Xerox's market share, but Xerox is using price cuts and promotions to bite back. Last week, it ran full-page newspaper ads offering US$99 monthly leases for office copiers that it had been renting for at least US$150.
Without much fanfare, Xerox has reduced the size of the words "The Document Company" in its logo, aiming to shift its image away from copying and printing to the storage and management of data. In October, it formed Xerox Global Services, made Dolan, Mulcahy's brother, its president and charged him with creating and selling packages of document processing and storage services, many of which Xerox used to provide free to equipment customers. Mulcahy exempted that fledgling unit from Xerox's hiring freeze, and Dolan said he has already hired about five senior executives and 25 field people. "We're going to provide half of Xerox's revenues by 2006," he predicted.
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