CRN Interview: Emerson Fullwood, Xerox

Senior Editor Edward F. Moltzen met recently with Emerson Fullwood, president of The Xerox Channels Group, to discuss the company's aggressive new channel focus and its new coloR printer lineup that targets the small- to midsize-business space.

CRN: Xerox has said that it will significantly increase its margins and incentives to solution providers in an effort to grow channel sales. How important is the channel to Xerox's overall strategy?

Fullwood: The channel is very, very important to our strategy going forward. We're focusing on how we extend our reach to the marketplace in a very comprehensive manner. And, quite frankly, we are looking at covering the market in a very, very broad perspective.

CRN: Describe your SMB strategy and what Xerox is doing to engage the solution provider channel.

Fullwood: In the small- and medium-business segment, we participate but we see tremendous opportunity. Now we have a product portfolio that extends into that [SMB] marketplace. We've had our PEAK program for resellers, and we've completely revamped and enhanced that. We listen closely to what resellers are telling us and, based on that, they have an opportunity to make a lot more margin.

I spent [seven days earlier this year] with our reseller channel, kicking off the year. I was in Las Vegas several days ago, kicking off the year. We're really engaged around the world with our channels.

CRN: For a long time, Xerox was a company that was clearly focused on large corporate sales. With your latest line of Phaser color printers, you're clearly targeting the SMB space. Is this a big change in the corporate culture now, to focus on this part of the market?

Fullwood: It's recognized at the very top level of the company for us that this is an important market for us. It's a large market. It's a $30 billion-plus market in revenue and we want to participate much more strongly. If you think about the economy and where we see growth, it really is in the small- and medium-size businesses.

CRN: Throughout its history, Xerox has been a company focused on large, direct deals or deals through agents. Yet, of late, we've seen increased focus on the reseller and the solution provider channels. What happened to cause that change?

Fullwood: I would say, probably over the last 48 months or so, all of that has pretty much changed. I think for small customers, Xerox may have been stodgy, or perhaps in their words, overpriced. Perhaps we didn't do a lot of business through the channel. We really have offerings now at that end of the market that we didn't have a few years ago. It began to change with the acquisition of Tektronix and that printer line.