Xerox Opens Facility For Expanding Outsourcing Business

No matter how quickly the business world moves in a digital direction, it will always leave a paper trail. Document-imaging and data-conversion hardware and software have been around for years, but the technology has a long way to go before it empties the corporate world's file cabinets, fat with decades of contracts, memos, and photos. Hoping to capitalize on businesses' growing need to convert paper documents to data files, Xerox Corp. Tuesday is opening a new facility dedicated to outsourced document-conversion and data-repository services.

Xerox hopes the 51,000-square-foot Hot Springs, Ark., facility will help its new global-services unit tap into an expanding market for outsourced document-management services. Customers will ship documents to Hot Springs in paper or electronic form. Xerox then digitizes these documents, if needed, consolidates the data into repositories, and ships the data back to clients in the form of data files or new electronic documents.

Eighty percent of the work Xerox did in the area of conversion and repository services in 2001 came from companies that tried to do the work on their own but found that they couldn't do it cost effectively, says Jerry Wallis, general manager of Xerox Imaging and Repository Services, part of Xerox Global Services. Xerox will increasingly emphasize the services side of its business over the next few years, and outsourcing will lead the way, says Tom Dolan, president of Xerox Global Services. Outsourcing and professional consulting services represent about $4 billion of the company's $18 billion in revenue, or about 22%. Xerox is looking to expand this percentage to at least 40% of overall revenue by 2005.

In a move to better promote the professional services side of its business, which accounts for only $400 million of Xerox Global Services' $4 billion in revenue, Dolan Monday named Robert Bauer as Xerox Global Services' VP and chief technology officer. Xerox is counting on Bauer's experience with Palo Alto Research Center's Advanced Systems Development Lab to increase the visibility of Global Services' professional services as he emphasizes high-level knowledge management and collaborative work processes. Bauer has done substantial research on the way people work in an office environment and how business-process improvements must be approached in order to be successful.