Xerox Corporation today announced its has completed the separation of Conduent Incorporated, creating two market-leading, publicly- traded companies.
While there’s a strong buzz how the new initiative will impact its stakeholders and more so its channel partners as Xerox has been a company heavily relying on its channel play, the company clarified that Xerox as a standalone company will be able to leverage more time and resources into channel recruitment and activation programs since all of its marketing and research and development funds will be reinvested into this business.
“Xerox partners will not find themselves competing against the newly independent Conduent since they focus on outsourcing operations in areas such as call centers, toll processing and student loans. That’s very different than the products and services provided by Xerox’s channel,” Mike Feldman, Xerox’s new North America president told CRN. [Read the full article here]
The newly spun-off company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange this morning, with its Chief Executive Ashok Vemuri – alongside a number of other Conduent team members – ringing the opening bell to commemorate the new listing, according to a company statement.
After bearing some rigors of a fazed time, Xerox seems to be retrieving its stand in the market with several new moves and the successful completion of the spin off is a testimonial to this change.
“Today is an historic day for Xerox. The successful completion of the separation sharpens our market focus and commitment to our customers,” said Xerox CEO Jeff Jacobson. “I am confident the transformational actions we are implementing position Xerox for long-term success and unlocks shareholder value.”
In connection with the spin-off, Xerox received a cash transfer from Conduent of $1.8 billion, which it intends to use, along with cash on hand, to retire approximately $2.0 billion in debt.
“We are all geared to make a success of 2017. We already have a strong pipeline of large scale deals and are excited to launch multiple new products next year to complement our current portfolio further. With these, we will be able to expand our coverage area, provide more opportunities to our channel partners,” he pointed out.
With the new initiative, the CRN report mentions that while enterprises with 1,000 or more seats [classified as large enterprise accounts] are eligible to be serviced directly by Xerox’s sales force, Xerox plans to cover the smaller accounts that are part of its large enterprise group today in a more cost-effective way by having them serviced by channel partners.
Channel partners are a very important part of Xerox’s business across the world. Talking about its India business, Ashraf ElArman, MD – Xerox India said that the company is excited about the possibilities emerging technologies can bring to its customers and its partners. “We will continue to focus on providing superb printing solutions around color to our customers and via our recognized MPS solutions. We also plan to invest in our renewed marketing communications plan with greater dependency on digital,” ElArman said in a statement outlining Xerox’s roadmap in India specifically.
The company, which has around 200 partners across the country, also offers managed service through which the corporate clients can use the print services without owning the equipment. Overall, Xerox India has seen 10-12 per cent growth in number of channel partners in FY16, according to a Business Standard report. Last year, Xerox India, also announced Supertron Electronics as its new national distributor partner for Office products and Supplies.
