Xerox today is a US$ 23 billion company worldwide with 10,000 strong workforce in India. It not only manufactures copiers and digital printers but has moved into document management that includes contract printing at client offices, digital data management, workflow management, BPO services and outsourcing. IPP recently spoke with executive director of marketing for Xerox India Vivek Chandel, a veteran of the telecom industry, on the key focus of the company in the near future. Chandel says that though Xerox still draws strength form its core business, it is no longer inwardly focussed but outward looking to build businesses around its core.
Focus on the Opex model
Contract printing at client premises has become a big business with Xerox India accounting for nearly a quarter of its turnover. Among its clients are multinational banks, financial services companies, diversified conglomerates, telecom and software companies such as Standard Chartered, Exxon Mobile and Microsoft. “Xerox India has been very proactive in this area especially since the last five years and has developed solutions peripheral to its core competencies that give it a definite edge,” says Chandel. “For example, when we do work for a tolling services company, we capture data from the number plates, clean, decipher, process, add analytics and
build on these to create zone-wise traffic details, model-wise demographics, time-wise traffic density charting.” The standard document management services is supplemented by workflow, analytics and data management services. Similarly, when they work for a healthcare company, the services are not restricted to simply imaging from the equipment like X-ray, sonography and thermal images but go beyond scanning to creating databases and classification systems for archiving.
Chandel confirmed that Xerox is providing end-to-end solutions to the customer, reducing cost, increasing convenience, and providing secure environments with an optimized print
policy that conforms to the IT policy of the client. The work begins from the procurement of paper to keeping printers operational and manned, and in print-ready condition at convenient locations so as to provide a better customer experience. It also includes scanning, collating, sending, customizing and retrieving data in and from multi format devices providing in-house site management directly or through partners. Xerox addresses all aspects and more often than not goes beyond pure MPS for such enterprise solutions. They usually don’t sell printers in the contract printing segment so the customer need not worry about capital costs but only about the operating costs. Clients have no Capex, no risk of obsolescence, no fixed cost, no consumable procurement, maintenance or manpower worries in this model which is structured on pay as you use.
BPO and outsourcing services
Xerox’s business process outsourcing and contract services revenue accounted for 56% of the global turnover during the third quarter. Xerox bought over Dallas-based Associated Computer Services (ACS) along with its large BPO presence in Bangalore for US$ 6.5 billion in 2009 to enter the outsourcing business in a big way. Though the BPO operations are low with respect to North America, Xerox sensed that it could leverage its geographical footprint to do cost effective outsourcing services for global customers from the emerging economies. “It is becoming more and more popular in India to outsource work outside the core functions to specialists, and Xerox being a specialist in document processing and management found immediate acceptance,” says Chandel. “Almost all major companies today outsource their non core services but the trend is more prominent in the banking and telecom industry that have an elaborate verification and validation process and large scalable numbers.” Indian telecom companies like Airtel have ushered in a low cost model where other than marketing and brand building all functions are outsourced – leading to shared infrastructure and extremely low entry costs.
The outsourced operations begins with customer acquisition and the on- boarding process. Till recently there used to be 20 to 30 million gross additions to the customer database each month. Since the compliance rules are extremely tight in the industry, each of the three documents needed for customer on boarding like the proof of identity, proof of address and customer enrollment form required verification, validation, document storage, data processing and data analysis – all to be done within 48 hours. Apart from sales, customer care, IT services, networking, operations, tower services, account payables, all are outsourced services for telecom majors and many of these services revolve around document and data management which make the Xerox BPO division extremely useful.
Similar outsourcing work is needed by the banking, insurance and the financial services sectors as well as the healthcare and the infrastructure services sector. The synergy in Xerox’s core competence of document management system (DMS), content management system (CMS), print supply chain management, mail box operations that are part and parcel of its Opex model of contract printing and its BPO operations of data collection, data verification, data processing, data analysis and service management. It is here that Xerox hardware solutions and its multi- functional printers enabled by software ecosystems like Xerox ConnectKey add strength to its services and outsourcing portfolio unmatched by competition
