Xerox To Share Document Consulting Tool With Channel

The Stamford, Conn., company will make its Xerox Office Productivity Advisor (XOPA) available to members of its Peak Reseller Program who receive training in its use, said James Firestone, president of Xerox North America. The company has about 2,500 solution providers in the program.

Firestone told CRN the move shows that Xerox is making good on its promise to work more closely with the channel.

"I think it is a capability we're giving to the resellers that they can use in a broad solution to a customer," Firestone said. "We've been saying we're going to do this. Here it is." Xerox has used XOPA to evaluate large customers' business processes, output, current hardware and document needs. That evaluation can reveal efficiencies and savings gained by, for example, consolidating copiers and printers or upgrading to new hardware.

"The assessment itself isn't the money maker, it's what happens when a customer understands what his environment is," Firestone said. "They want to move from black and white to color, but they think it's too expensive. They want to move from standalone to network devices. This gives them a framework to understand all those choices. Our experiences is when customers understand those choices, they make changes."

Among the first partners to use the tool, solution provider Landmark Systems, of Madison Heights, Mich., tried XOPA during a pilot program even though Landmark has its own assessment offerings. Chris McPherson, a sales manager and solution consultant at Landmark, said XOPA helped him show one customer a 22 percent cost savings if it upgraded to new devices.

The result: Landmark sold the customer copiers, printers, faxes and an extra multifunction device that it bought because of the savings revealed by XOPA, McPherson said.

Landmark does not charge an hourly fee to customers for use of XOPA, McPherson said. "We want to show the customer that we're willing to invest if they're willing to invest."