One of the things we are regularly saying to companies within this industry is that they have to continually reinvent themselves to adapt to the changes that are happening in the market. As an example of this I recently wrote about the needs for printers to reestablish themselves as integrated communications providers. To see what is happening in companies making this transition we must look at what some major companies are doing. Perhaps the best example of this is to look at the changes that have and are taking place within Xerox.

Over the past ten years Xerox has fundamentally changed itself. Initially it was in order to survive. Eventually Xerox needed to drive the company into new business areas to enhance its profitability and revenues when its traditional markets became increasingly competitive. I recently attended the annual Xerox Analysts and Advisors event, and when I listened to some of the presentations I wondered if this was the same Xerox I have known for many years. For many people Xerox is still thought of as "the copier company", but this is something that has not been applicable for a very long time. In the 1990s Xerox first changed itself to 'The Document Company" to try to get away from the copier reputation, but in reality it did very little that was different from before as a large proportion of its revenues came from printer sales. It was really only that Xerox almost went out of business in the late 1990s that the company was forced to fundamentally start the process of reinventing itself.

The catalyst for this was the appointment of Ann Mulcahy as CEO of the company, and she and her team were faced with the decision to restructure and change or go out of business. At that time Xerox's business was fundamentally selling boxes for printing and copying and running a managed print services business. While the year 2000 was the year that Xerox almost went out of business, it was also the year it introduced the product range that changed the printing business. This included the Docucolor 2045/2060, the printers that drove Xerox to be the leader in digital color printing. This showed a key aspect of Xerox's future strategy: working with partners. I n this case, Fuji Xerox co-developed and manufactured the product. The Docucolor 2045/2060 allowed Xerox to switch from being a monochrome to color printer supplier thereby increasing its ongoing consumables business.