Washington, DC—As the latest stop in Xerox’s The Future of Work Global Tour hit the nation’s capital on Oct. 18, one message was abundantly emphasized: the venerable, century-old manufacturer is seeking to transform the workplace.
It might be safer to say that Xerox is seeking to offer a platform for the transformation, to leverage the cutting-edge technologies that we’re, as a society, already seeing with our personal use toys such as the smartphone and the home personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa. What’s more, Xerox is offering an open architecture that will enable its partners to bring their own transformative magic in the form of apps that will not only further elevate Xerox’s platform but enable these innovative partners to share in revenue opportunities as well.
Much like a rock band hitting the concert circuit in support of new music, The Future of Work Global Tour is backing Xerox’s largest product unveiling in its 110-year history—the release of its new ConnectKey portfolio of 29 AltaLink and VersaLink printers and multifunction devices, dubbed Workplace Assistants. Xerox has spent much of 2017 visiting 25 countries to tout the virtues of the ConnectKey portfolio, and this latest stop at the Xerox Executive Briefing Center provided 30 equipment dealers and analysts the opportunity to enjoy a hands-on experience with the machines and ask questions of Xerox’s experts and technology partners, including Cleo and Nuance.
Lori Francis, director, Global Experiential Marketing at Xerox, explained how the platform is an example of the physical and digital worlds merging to transform work and the customer experience. She cited examples of how transformative technologies such as the Apple iPhone, and the endless array of apps for it, have made the smartphone an indispensable part of people’s lives.
“The Workplace Assistant has the same potential to do that for work and the workplace,” she said.
Steve Hoover, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Xerox, provided an overview of the 19 VersaLink and 10 AltaLink products. The versatile VersaLink is geared for the smaller workgroups and more centralized environments while the high-powered AltaLink is more tailored toward the larger workgroup space. The ConnectKey ecosystem boasts an intuitive user experience, is mobile and cloud-ready, offers benchmark security and enables next-generation services.
Calling it a gateway to new possibilities, Hoover underscored the fact that all 29 devices were built with an open API platform, enabling partners and users to bring their own app-driven enhancements to the table. Users can choose from a bevy of native apps or select specific options in the Xerox App Gallery.
During the solutions showcase, Xerox held a number of demonstrations for apps such as the Business Card AI app, the Easy Translator app and the Healthcare MFP app, the third of which was created in conjunction with health care specialist Kno2. Other apps of interest included the Billboard app for creating display announcements, and Capture Point, which enables users of MFPs to scan and convert papers into the preferred format. Cloud-connected apps allow users to scan directly to or from popular cloud-based repositories like Dropbox, Google Drive and scan to/print from Microsoft Office 365.
The @Print By Xerox Mobile Print is a free service that allows users to print from a mobile device by submitting an email to print@printbyxerox, which will generate a passcode that can be entered on a Xerox ConnectKey-enabled device. It allows for the printing of common business documents, such as Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and PDFs, without the need for IT department intervention.
Users can also initiate service calls directly from the ConnectKey-enabled devices. A click on the user interface triggers a pull of vital information—model number, serial number, firmware and IP address—and sends the request to the user’s service provider.
What the launch as a whole has enabled Xerox to do is fill out its offering on the low end of A3 and provided a stronghold in A4 as well, allowing for more growth opportunity, noted Kevin Warren, Xerox executive vice president and chief commercial officer. Feedback from partners and industry analysts has been extremely positive, with many of them touting the consistent user interface across all models and the ease of use.
Kevin Warren, Xerox executive vice president and chief commercial officer
“The quality and reliability is something we pride ourselves on, but perhaps the most exciting thing is the app and open platform aspect of it,” he said. “From a partner standpoint, they like the ability to be able to customize solutions for their particular clients to make them more relevant. The fact that we’ve got an open platform where they can customize, it allows them to separate themselves from their competitors.”
Warren said the next step is for Xerox to build out its e-commerce capability and craft a monetization model that is attractive to partners who want to develop apps, where it will allow for additional revenue streams and drive the entire app proliferation in 2018.
Demand for the machines was almost immediate. The company previously reported a large order of 150 AltaLink and VersaLink devices at a U.S.-based energy company, new ConnectKey devices at several Canadian educational institutions and a substantial renewal order from a major U.S. food company. For Warren, who has attended Global Tour stops in London, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, the excitement attendees have shown is palpable.
“What we were looking to do was to attract more multivendor partners,” he said. “We’ve done really well with our direct sales force that covers large enterprise, global accounts and the high end of the graphic communications segment. We have our model-branded agents and concessionaires in Europe, who are their own businesses but sell Xerox primarily. Then we have our Global Imaging network of 42 core companies that have been terrific here in the U.S.
“Part of the roadshow was not just to attract the customers, but also to send a message to would-be multivendor partners that we’re serious about going to market with them and we’ll be an asset if we do this the right way. There’s a value-add that they bring. That part has gone well.”
