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 Perry Perkins commented on Jim's post, asking about the reaction to solid ink at the Partner Summit. Of course I have a lot to say on the subject of solid ink in general, so I thought I'd respond with a post.
During the event we set up a “Solutions Pavilion” to show off new products along with new service offerings, document solutions (like DocuShare and Nuance ScanSoft), and leasing offerings. I manned the solid ink section which included a Phaser 8560 and Phaser 8560MFP… I was swamped!
The answer to your question, Perry, is best illustrated by a wonderful discussion I had with a potential new reseller. This reseller did not know much about solid ink and frankly was unsure whether he was going to carry the product line. Of course I then launched into all the good news around solid ink – extremely easy to load supplies (I had him drop in a solid ink stick), brilliant colors (I showed him print samples and made some color copies on the 8560MFP), and demonstrated real world performance by showing the fast first page out time. Although he agreed with all the points I made, you could tell he was still on the fence a bit. Without any prompting from me, another existing reseller just stepped right in and started talking about how he sells solid ink, (paraphrasing) … “This product is great because only Xerox has solid ink. We tell customers about the easy to load sticks and how they are good for the environment. A lot of customers ask us why Xerox is the only company that has solid ink. I tell them because Xerox is the only company that cares, then I write up an order….” Then he (my new best friend) literally did my sales pitch for me while I was standing there nodding. Nothing is more powerful than a peer in the same business praising a product. As they walked off together, still talking about solid ink, I knew that new reseller would sell solid ink.
All in all, it was a very good chance to meet our partners and talk to them in depth on what they are seeing in the market. My impression was that the resellers were excited about the new solid ink products and look forward to receiving their demo units--but I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on solid ink here!
Shell Haffner
Worldwide Solid Ink Product Manager
XOG Marketing
I recently left a small business to join Xerox. Having been a partner, the CFO and COO of a small business (women’s fashion accessories – talk about something different to Hi-Tech!), I totally relate to what came out of the SMB Roundtable last week (check out the podcast to draw your own conclusions). Searching for relevant, trusted information when you have absolutely no time to do so can be really frustrating. So the challenge for us is to provide products, information and tools that REALLY address the SMB environment. What I took away was confirming some of the reading I have been doing lately (Check out Scott McKain’s “What Customers Really Want”): we need to focus on creating customer experience, not customer service; personal focus, not product focus; reciprocal loyalty, not endless prospecting; and innovation rather than status quo.
Thank you to all the Roundtable participants – now it’s up to us to translate this feedback into our products, our communication and our people…
Paul Herman
Business Strategy, North American Resellers
Xerox
 Last week we held our first-ever Xerox Partner Summit in Orlando. If you were there, check out the photo gallery and see if we captured you. If you weren't, the webcast is worth a look--we had a lot of fun in the general session. It was a high-energy event, fueled by the enthusiasm of our partners. I was very encouraged by the whole week and I thought it was worth sharing my key takeaways.
Action: We wanted to send a message to the partner community that we are serious about doing what is necessary to be a good partner in the SMB space. Judging by the reaction from the crowd, I think we got that message across. They believe we are "talking the talk". Now we have to deliver and "walk the walk."
Commitment: We wanted to engage our agent partners with a message that we are investing in their growth as an important element of our approach. And that we will not disadvantage them as we add additional partners. I think the agents got this message and were gratified by our continued dedication to their success. But they also realize that Xerox needs to grow in the SMB space and will continue to press the margins of what has constrained our growth in the past. We received some great input as to what is not working well and what other actions we can take to improve our collective results.
New Opportunities: We wanted to engage a new set of partners - the IT resellers - in a significant new way. This message seems to have been received with enthusiasm and excitement by the resellers and distributors at the event. They feel Xerox is a great brand that has a big opportunity in the SMB space. They would like to work with us, and they liked what they saw. Now we have to deliver the means and the programs.
The energy and positive spirit around the Xerox brand and what we can do together with our partners was palpable in the hallways and evening activities. I come away feeling even more convinced than ever that this is right direction for Xerox and we can't move fast enough.
Jim Firestone
President, Xerox North America
 I have spent the majority of my 33 years with Xerox working in sales and marketing with small and medium sized customers. For about eight of those years I was a sales rep and later General Manager of the Caribbean Region. The majority of my customers in the Caribbean were small businesses, a few were medium businesses and it was very rare I dealt with a customer with more than 500 employees! As a matter of fact my team in the Caribbean region itself would qualify as a medium sized business (less than 300 sales, service & administrative employees)
Needless to say it was a big eye opener when moderating the roundtable on Monday I came to learn that most of the very popular SMB bloggers (Evan Carmichael, Chris Brunner, Patrick Cook, James Gaskin, and Denise O'Berry) did not know we have an SMB oriented line of products... HELLO!!!! The alarms went off and I realized that we have some work to do!
 The good news is that we have the right set of products (or at least I think we do) and we have a good set of partners (there were 800 at the event in Orlando). The bad news is that we need to listen better and we need to reach out to small and medium business owners... the message needs to get out and hopefully it will.
Orlando was a start... please stay tuned for the podcast and know I will be out there listening to anyone who cares to share their opinions. I will be a champion to make sure others inside Xerox hear what needs to be passed on from workers in small and medium sized businesses that have pain points with managing documents (paper or digital) in their businesses.
Paul Gleason
Vice President, Small and Medium Business
Xerox
It’s no secret that when it comes to IT, small businesses mean big business for vendors. It’s a huge market opportunity and we're very focused on the needs of this vital customer segment.
For some, seizing upon the short term market opportunity gets in the way of truly understanding and meeting the needs of the SMB market. It's my job to ensure we don’t fall into that trap of short term business results versus delighting and keeping our customers over the long term. We’ve been selling to and supporting small and medium businesses for a long time and we’ve gathered a lot of expertise to help our customers to not only survive, but succeed. But it’s an ever-changing market we live in and to be sure we’re still hitting the mark, we’re doing something I’m really excited about.
It’s a focus group, if you will. Next week, at our Partner Summit in Orlando, we’ll be bringing together a sampling of small business consultants/experts and entrepreneurs to just talk ... exchange ideas and help us to be certain that we are on the right course. We’ll chat about what SMB priorities are today, about how they buy, choose and use technology, about how we can communicate better with them, and much more. We’re going to podcast the conversation here on the blog and I hope it will inspire you to join the conversation—the focus group doesn’t have to stay in the room in Orlando, I welcome your thoughts and feedback anytime. Stay tuned for more ... and I'll stay tuned for your feedback!
Paul Gleason
Vice President, Small and Medium Business
Xerox
Yesterday John Mancini, president of AIIM, put up a great post about the use and perception of the scanning function on multifunction products/devices (MFPs or MFDs) on his blog, ECM Industry Watch. He says end users are finally starting to use the scanning capability, and my experiences with customers certainly supports that data. Scanning from MFPs is becoming the norm. However, the new challenge is to get end users to use the scanning capability beyond scan-to-email, as part of a larger workflow strategy.
Since a solid scan-to-email capability is almost universally available, and is intuitive enough that it can be quickly adopted by most office workers as an easy way to move a hardcopy document into their desktop’s largely e-mail based workflow, it’s a common-sense starting point, Why do they do it? Put simply, scan-to-email is copying in the digital realm—people do it to share a document, file a copy, or to re-use it.
When working with customers to look beyond scanning e-mail, I have seen a range of “postures” from “We know we need to get started with scanning but aren’t certain what the answer is...” to very clear direction on how the scan-enabled MFPs are going to integrate with their ECM system and what the user experience should be. I am not an ECM industry expert, but I believe that the market forces are moving it (finally) into the mainstream. At the same time I believe that users will soon begin to acclimate to basic scanning capabilities – beginning to see them as “business as usual.” These two trends will come together over the next 1-3 years, and in the end more “advanced” applications such as scanning to ECM systems will be as scan-to-email is today.
Roger Ellefson
Manager, Office Solutions Marketing
Xerox
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