Executive Q&A: Xerox

Xerox recently launched Baltoro, its next-generation production inkjet platform. WhatTheyThink spoke with Marybeth Gilbert, vice president general manager production inkjet and packing business; Chris Irick, worldwide product marketing  manager, entry production inkjet; and Bill Bay, manager, production cut sheet business team, about the company’s new flagship product, how the company sees the production inkjet market and how inkjet and xerography are not necessarily competing technologies.

WhatTheyThink: Xerox recently made some significant changes to its organizational structure. How are these changes positioning the production group within the company?

Marybeth Gilbert: Production printing continues to be a core part of what Xerox is offering. The structure of the company has remained the same, where we have a production business group that I lead that includes both xerography and inkjet. We just announced the Baltoro platform, which is a huge step in innovation and which we’re very proud of. We actually feel that we’re more powerful today than we have been in the recent past.

Chris Irick: When we did our address to the marketplace, we said our reorganization was to streamline the business. So, if anything, we’ve expanded our offerings. Our customer-facing stuff is expanding.

WTT: Xerox continues to tweak its production inkjet portfolio. Can you tells us about the strategy behind this updated portfolio, such as discontinued production of Brenva and the launch of the Baltoro platform?

MG: We didn’t tweak our production inkjet strategy. We are continuing with our inkjet strategy. We looked at the space, we’ve looked—like all of you guys have—at the migration from offset, what did and did not come true, what will and will not come true. We’re aligning our strategy and innovation to point towards those spots that are going to continue to help our customers grow their businesses. Inkjet has its space, xerographic has its space and offset still has its space. So when we talk to our customers, we talk to them about the breadth of our portfolio. The new press that we just announced is a platform. It’s very similar to what we did with Nuvera and iGen; the platform has been the model. It’s an invest-with-confidence that our customers have enjoyed. When they invest with us, they know we stay with them. Baltoro is the first press off of our new inkjet platform, so it’s more than a tweak. It’s the next generation that needed to happen.

WTT: What is the status of the other inkjet offerings, like Trivor?

MG: Trivor is at the high end of the continuous-feed market, and then we have Rialto that sits below that. We continue to innovate on those and hopefully sometime this year you’ll see. We did pre-announce the Rialto 900 MP at Hunkeler Innovationdays  and will be in the marketplace shortly.

WTT: With all the emphasis on inkjet, where does Xerox see the future of toner?

Bill Bay: We tell a story that we call “better together” because we’re not expecting in the near term for the market to land on either inkjet or toner. It’s going to continue to be both because there are some strengths that toner-based products like iGen are going to continue to have—around media latitude in particular. There’s been such a strong emphasis on the beyond-CMYK story, not just from Xerox, and that continues to be a real strength in the toner-based products. There may be a time when inkjet becomes a dominant technology, but they’re going to exist together in the market for a long time. And the fact that Xerox has that breadth of portfolio with leadership products in both technologies is going to help our customers as much as it’s going to help our business.

MG: Inkjet and xerography are technologies that provide different types of output. Let’s dial it back to 20 years ago and we would have been talking with you and we'd be talking about the demise of mono[color]. Well, guess what? Mono is still a really healthy business. Maybe we think we’re Nostradamuses, that we can predict that mono will be dead and color will take over everything, or print’s dead because your iPads are going to take over everything, or no one is going to print another book because of the Kindle. What history has proven to us is that none of that is true. There’s not this on/off. We’re helping our customers to define what they really should have on their floor when they come to us with their printing questions and their value prop of where they need to go with the business. We do not talk to them strictly about inkjet. We talk to them about the value of printing, from workflow through our offerings and what’s the best mixture.

BB: We are uniquely positioned in the market because we have flagship technology in xerographic-land as well inkjet-land and what customers care about is “how quickly can I get this up and running and how can I get it to look similar to that device next to it? And how hard is it to train an operator into using it?” So toner and inkjet are going to coexist and they’re going to coexist nicely because of Xerox.

WTT: Do you find that as a printing equipment manufacturer today that it’s less about selling boxes and more about forming more of a consultative relationship with customers?

MG: I don’t think it's consultational. I think it’s a partnership. When we talk to them, we remind them of that value prop that we bring in. We bring in the professional services, we bring in the consulting, we’re there with them. We don’t drop the box and run. Look where our customers have stress points right now. It’s not all about the engine. It’s the end-to-end value prop. It’s the workflow. It’s how to get color management, how to work with the finishing. What else can we do within the workflow component to get them to drive to their value prop? What is the right box they need in their production space? Then, how do we migrate that through all our other partners? We’re in a unique position where we’re known for that and we continue to bring that forward.