Ursula Burns, president of Xerox Corporation, recently visited South Africa to promote the company's new business of printing strategy to Xerox dealers and concessionaires.
Bytes Document Solutions is the authorised distributor of Xerox products and solutions to 24 African countries.
"In the current economy, dollars are being carefully watched and managed, for both businesses and individuals," says Burns. "The printing industry today is not about having the fastest or the best technology, which we have, but customers have told us that it is important to integrate with their existing shops that consist of offset, competitor, and digital devices, and their changing business models."
Burns says the new business of printing, a Xerox phrase, consists of the right technology, the right workflow and the right business model.
It represents a fundamental shift in the production printing industry, away from traditional processes.
"Printers are necessary and important products, but only selling them marginalises the business," says Burns. "We will continue to sell printers, but customers are increasingly asking us to engage with them as to how they run their business, how they manage their content and the complexities of managing both. So our strategy now is to engage them at a process level, over and above supplying them with the technology they need to enable that."
"In the past, printers would accept a job from a client, run that job and then ship it to the client," says Rob Abraham, MD of Bytes Document Solutions. "The new business of printing has changed to one with Xerox working closely with printers to develop business models that drive growth and profitability around information services."
The new business of printing is essentially a greater focus on information and reduced focus on technology or harnessing technology to drive business opportunities.
Burns says the economic downturn has accelerated client interest in the new approach.
"In large enterprises, strategic spending has accelerated. In the past, much spend focused on a big T, or technology, and a little I, or information, but that situation has reversed so companies now focus more on information and less so on technology," she says.
"That situation began last year with a noticeable spike in the last quarter, with a focus on information and maximising the value of the technology that organisations already have. People are asking: 'I've spent millions on IT; now how do I extract more value from it?' Since the crisis struck, more people are trying to extract more value from their existing spend."
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Bytes Document Solutions
Bytes Document Solutions, a Bytes Technology Group company, wholly owned by JSE-listed Altron, is the authorised Xerox distributor to 24 sub-Saharan countries. Bytes Document Solutions is engaged in the marketing and servicing of the complete range of Xerox document equipment, software, solutions and services. The company operates through an extensive network of distributors, dealers, concessionaires and channel partners. Its products include printing and publishing systems; digital copiers; laser and solid ink printers; fax machines; digital multifunctional devices which can print, copy, scan and fax; document management software; and supplies, such as toner, paper, and ink. The company also provides software and workflow solutions to businesses for printing books, creating personalised documents for their customers, and scanning and routing digital information. Black economic empowerment partner Kagiso Trust owns a 27% stake of the company. For more information on Bytes Document Solutions and Xerox, visit http://www.xerox.com/news.
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