“Hey, Dad! Did you see my goal,” my 10-year old son Michael shouted. His face beaming.

Of course I saw his first goal in his first soccer game of the year. It was a fantastic play. The midi passed the ball from near the sideline to my son right in front of the goal. A quick little tap was all that was needed for the score. Michael’s team won 7 to 2. In large part, they won due to their passing abilities versus the other team.

Watching the practice the day before, you never would’ve imagined the boys would pass the ball at all. At the scrimmage, the players looked more like NFL football players in a huddle instead of a 4th grade soccer team. But Coach Dave was confident everything would be fine – and it was.

Today, Xerox is announcing a brand new offering for offices everywhere. With the new Phaser 8860 or 8860MFP, customers can now print in color for the price of black & white. Here in Wilsonville, Oregon, the engineering, manufacturing and marketing teams have been working feverishly on this significant announcement over the past year.

At one of the first meetings during a pricing discussion, we where acting just like my son’s soccer team at scrimmage. Pricing, always a heated topic, was being talked about like every other product on the market. With customer opinion survey results sitting on the table, every team member picked their favorite data point to defend their point of view. We were all huddled around the “business as usual” ball.

We don’t have Coach Dave, but our “coach,” Jim Rise, the vice president of the Solid Ink Business Unit, thoughtfully said, “Could we price color prints at the same price as black & white prints?”

Silence. “Surely, pricing color prints at the same price as black & white prints can’t be possible ... or could it,” was on everyone’s mind.

Suddenly, like Michael’s soccer team on game day, we started passing this new idea back and forth. Phrases like “Marketing needs to...” or “The machine must be able to...,” or “We have to make this real ...”, and “No gimmicks, no tricks ...” were being used to describe this new offering. In the intervening time, the group has labored to make “color for the price of black and white” a reality.

It’s too early to tell if we scored. But one thing is certain - businesses will win by purchasing the Phaser 8860 or Phaser 8860MFP.

Shell Haffner
Product Marketing Manager - Office Group
Xerox

Posted by Big I, little t at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today Xerox announced the purchase of Advectis whose Blitzdocs suite helps lenders to streamline the mortgage origination process using electronic loan folders. You can read all the news and background in the Xerox Newsroom.

In this turbulent time for the mortgage industry, lenders more than ever before are working to improve the mortgage origination process and speed up the sale of loans to the secondary market. Streamlining the loan process and making it easy for the originator or broker to track progress of the loan online, will help to improve the customer’s experience of working with the lender.

This exciting acquisition demonstrates Xerox’s commitment to the financial services industry as it finds new ways to improve business processes that depend on documents. There are few processes as dependent on paper as the mortgage loan process and with Xerox’s ability to scan documents and the blitzdocs suite’s management of the electronic mortgage file these capabilities together provides a powerful solution for mortgage providers. An electronic loan file allows many people such as the loan originator, the underwriter and others to access and update the loan documents online and at the same time. This speeds up the origination process and cuts the cost of a new loan. It also provides an excellent audit trail that helps third party auditors or investors to perform their due diligence and quickly assess the quality of the loan book.

Julian Troake
Global Industry Marketing Manager
Xerox Global Services

Read more about financial services on Julian's Blog

Posted by Big I, little t at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The next generation of MFPs, or smart MFPs enabled by EIP, is AVAILABLE!! Be ready to experience the change in the way you work. Our Global Application Server is alive, so if you want to see how this technology works, just hit “the button”. Do you think that you can improve the way you work using one of this or just want to know if what you think is doable? Please visit the EIP information corner for more information. More than 200 experts can help you find out. Tell them want you want, they will answer you. You will find developers, partners... even myself ;-). See you there.

Jose Nevado
Marketing Manager, Office Group
Xerox Europe

Posted by Big I, little t at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why EIP? There are not many times we have the opportunity to face a big change in the industry. We find ourselves in the beginning of a journey that will definitively change the way we interact with technology, not only in the office, but also in the rest of our lives. Users have taken the lead in deciding how they want to work and the economic situation has encouraged the evolution of the information worker. So, the time of providing access to information has gone and the challenge is to provide it in the way that people really want it. We decided to open the door of our systems to the world - this way they can adapt to the business, providing the right info to each user in the way it suits them. But that also means we can't do this journey alone - we need the rest of the players in the office value chain: our partners. The good news is that we know them and that’s a great position to be in. Of course, we are not alone. The competition is playing in this space too and this is great because it means we going in the right direction. Thankfully, the industry analysts see us as best positioned, so there is just one thing to do, hit the road. The 6th of September is the day.

Jose Nevado
EIP Marketing Manager, Office Group
Xerox Europe

Posted by Big I, little t at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)