Xerox Pushes A More ‘Channel-Ready’ Approach

‘It comes down to three things, what are we doing to improve our partner experience, what we’re doing to bring new opportunities which represents revenue growth opportunities and what we’re doing to continue to thrive in our print and document management core business,’ says Karl Boissonneault, leader of Canada operations and North America channels at Xerox.

Xerox is focusing on enhancing its partner experience through a host of initiatives that will bring new opportunities to MSPs while also staying true to its core print and document management business.

“It comes down to three things: what are we doing to improve our partner experience, what we’re doing to bring new opportunities which represents revenue growth opportunities and what we’re doing to continue to thrive in our print and document management core business,” Karl Boissonneault, leader of Canada operations and North America channels at Xerox, told CRN.

This year the company relaunched its partner advisory councils for MSPs and, what he called, SLPs (software-lead partners).

“The purpose of these advisory councils is to make sure that we’re identifying areas that Xerox can do better, and that Xerox is using the opportunity to share with our partners areas that we think they can better leverage,” he said.

[Related: Xerox CEO: Hybrid Workforce Is Benefitting Services, Print Sales]

It also launched a partner survey tool where partners rate Xerox every month on eight different topics. The Norwalk, Conn.-based vendor then uses that data and feedback to take action on specific topics identified in the survey.

“We’ve made some changes to our bid registration process, we’ve made changes to how quickly partners can get [certain] pricing and we’ve made changes to how partners can return damaged equipment,” he said. “I’m getting tactical but it’s really around improving that partner experience and that seamlessness of how we interact with each other.”

The vendor is also enhancing its offerings to partners.

“We positioned to our partners that our print and document management and managed print services businesses are our core business,” he said. “But what we’re bringing is all the elements around that from artificial intelligence to augmented reality to intelligent document capture to document management, workflow and automation…all these different initiatives that, quite honestly, we’ve done a poor job of launching to the channel or making available to the channel.

“If it’s channel-ready, it’s also easy to sell from an enterprise perspective,” he added.

Contrary to other OEMs (original equipment manufacturer), Xerox has mostly been direct, but the firm sees massive opportunity within the partner space that it wants to capture.

“Knowing the opportunities to capture more market share within the small and medium business space, if we want to do that it’s going to be through partners,” he said. “If we want partners to get on board with us to either capture more wallet share within our partners or to capture new partners, we’ve got to have a compelling argument which is, ‘Not only can you leverage your offerings or services and all these great things from Xerox, but we also have to be easier to do business with.’”

And partners don’t need to be print expert as Xerox’s programs enable them to transact with seamlessly and capture new revenue opportunities.

Dawn Sizer, co-founder and CEO of Mechanicburg, Pa.-based 3rd Element Consulting, Inc., said the easiest part about being a Xerox partner is how they handle the maintenance through its econcierge program for supplies reordering.

“Xerox has shifted its focus for the better from a partner’s perspective,” she told CRN. “They have made strides to be more channel-friendly with easy-to-use programs like econcierge. They have marketing assets that are sent directly to partners and a portal that has additional materials.”

And that’s the benefit of being a Xerox partner, Boissonneault said.

“Our tools, products and ecosystem enables them to capture more wallet share within their customers by leveraging Xerox and our partner portal,” he said.