A company known for its copying products is copying the competition.
Xerox Canada Ltd. Wednesday announced the launch of Xerox Global Service Canada, becoming the latest entrant in an increasingly crowded field.
“”Instead
of just being a pure technology company we are really looking to aggressively move more into the services space. Not an unusual phenomenon in today’s business world,”” said Thomas Dolan, president Xerox Global Services. “”This is really tailored toward responding to a marketplace need.””
Dolan said providing services isn’t entirely new at Xerox, since the firm has long offered technical services for its products. Its goal now, however, is to provide knowledge, content, document and infrastructure management to companies with and without Xerox hardware. The four categories will fall under one of two umbrellas: business innovation services and managed services.
While it could be argued Xerox has been beaten to the services punch by companies like IBM and Fujitsu Ltd. (which plans to fold DMR into its services unit next month), Dolan disagreed. He reasoned that Xerox’s long history in the document space gives it some unique exerptise.
“”We really believe that we have permission to play in these spaces because our foundation in document management has been very rich, and a lot of companies today look for us,”” Dolan said.
“”We’re not starting from scratch by any means, but the real opportunity for us is in this US$300 million global revenue number that’s in business innovation services, hosted services and in IT managed services.””
Dolan said these services constitute new revenue streams for Xerox and aren’t dependent on the sale or use of Xerox products.
Mel Thompson, vice-president and general manager Xerox Global Services – Canada, said it already has a network of employees across the country ready to provide services like consulting, implementation and hosting. While the announcement was made Wednesday, he said it has been in the hosting business for a few years and it already boasts managed services clients like Royal Bank Financial Group, Bell Canada and CIBC Trust. He added this should help it be viewed as more than the document company.
“”We’ve been providing these kinds of services on an ad-hoc basis over the last couple of years as customers required it,”” Thompson.
Xerox won’t forsake its roots, however. Dolan said he expects two-thirds of the services business to come from hardware customers, and the document solutions and office systems aren’t dead markets.
“”Those two organizations represent our traditional business, it still represents the lion’s share of our revenue, it will continue to be a significant portion of our business,”” Dolan said.
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