Xerox gets its channel act together

Since Xerox India got into the indirect channel mode six months ago, it has
signed up around 1,000 partners and is busy rolling out initiatives to foster a
better relationship with its channel. For starters, it is educating partners to
take up outsourced print jobs for corporate customers.

For instance, a partner can take over the printing of salary slips, bills and
invoices of a client on a yearly basis for a nominal cost. In fact, Xerox claims
that it prints a bulk of the subscriber bills for several leading telecom
service providers in the country, which is a huge revenue stream for it.

For huge print jobs, partners have to invest in high-end printing systems,
which are expensive. Xerox is therefore working with ICICI Bank to offer
financing options to those partners who would like to procure these systems.

It has set up a call center in Gurgaon that solely creates business leads,
which are then forwarded to select partners who are focused on Xerox. "The
leads are passed onto those partners who have been loyal to us and are major
contributors to our business," noted Natesh Mani, Executive Director (New
Office Group) of Xerox India.

Partners who are committed to Xerox and bid for tenders can also get a
special pricing for the company's products, to drive their bid price down and
help them bag the order. Xerox reasons that the prices of PCs and servers are
more or less static and a bidder can't change it to lower his quotation price.
If he wants to bag a tender, he will have to lower the price of the peripherals
offered.

In fact, Xerox also offers select partners, finance options if the project
calls for a huge investment. "We often offer the earnest money deposit (EMD),
depending on the quantum of the business the tender will generate for us, as the
partner's business relationship with us. The reason we are doing this is to
help our partners grow their business and ours too, by default," added
Natesh. Also, Xerox wants to spread its breadth in the government and
educational segments, which majorly make purchases through the tendering
process.

In another initiative, the vendor is offering extended service packages at a
price to customers, but only through the channel. Typically a warranty package
is restrictive as it might offer either on-site or offsite repair or it might
have a turnaround time, which might not be acceptable to certain customers.

For instance, a data center might want a 24/7 warranty with one-day
turnaround time, which falls beyond the purview of the standard service policy.
Customers who have these specific service needs can get customized warranty
packages from the channel partners who provide the printing solutions to them.

"Even the availability of supplies can be customized within these
service packs," mentioned Natesh. He added that Xerox already has almost 17
partners who offer these kinds of outsourced printing services, including
providing printers on rent.

Setting up exclusive partner portal where technical and product information,
training will be offered on soft skills. These include elements like how to make
the perfect proposal, personalizing your sales pitch, making effecting
presentations to corporate customers, negotiating with partners and handling the
sales management process. A training path will also be defined helping partners
scale up the value chain.

The company is trying to help its channel members to graduate from a printer
seller to a total document management partner. Explained Natesh, "Our
business is divided into three groups-office automation products, IT products
and global service, with the last offering services meant for complete document
management. We are trying to set up a channel which will offer total IT
infrastructure, with a prime focus on document services."

This is why Xerox is going to town talking about its applications like
DocuShare, a search software that can find relevant documents from an archive
saved on a machine. "We have recently implemented this search tool for
Karnataka High Court, so lawyers and other court officials can find archived
case papers quickly. This has actually cut down the time taken for document
processing," claimed Natesh.

Xerox is only focused on lasers machines and has 60 models in printers and
MFDs. It will be launching two monochrome and two color printers, six color and
six monochrome MFDs this quarter.

VINITA BHATIA