Xerox launches affordable color multifunction device for SMBs in India, Eurasia and the Middle East

Xerox announced the launch of DocuCentre® SC2020, an affordable, feature rich device, equipped with Xerox color printing technologies for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in select developing market regions including India, Eurasia and the Middle East.

The Xerox® DocuCentre SC2020 Color Multifunction Printer is an A3 multifunction device, designed to expedite print jobs with color copy and print speeds of up to 20 pages per minute (ppm). By equipping the device with features that meet the needs of these markets and the capability to make high-resolution color prints, Xerox aims to expand its lineup of products for the growing A3 low-end color printing markets across Xerox Developing Markets region.

Features include:

High quality printing in a compact footprint

• The SC2020 packs a powerful punch in a compact size, boasting print and copy speeds of high-resolution prints at 20 ppm for both monochrome and color devices, making it the perfect device for small offices and workgroups.
• The device is equipped with Xerox’s proprietary laser scanning technology and produces scan speeds of 24 ppm for monochrome and 19 ppm for color documents.
• Heavy-duty users also benefit from continuous printing capabilities of up to 999 pages per job and efficient scanning with the 110-page Duplex Automatic Document Feeder.

Convenient features for workgroup/SMBs　

DocuCentre SC2020 has selected optional features that are convenient for the workgroup/SMB users, on top of basic copying, printing, faxing and scanning, including:

• Both sides of an ID card or a two-page document can be printed side by side on a single side of paper to save paper and for easy reference.
• Fax process is streamlined, enabling users to send files by fax directly from their computers. Users can and configure the device to upload incoming faxes to a server or send them to registered email addresses, thereby reducing paper waste.
• With its simple user interface, DocuCentre SC2020 helps users perform desired functions without hassle or confusion. The 4.3 inch touch screen panel leads users through operations, such as copying double-sided ID cards with step-by-step directions.

Supports mobile printing and scanning

• The user can also export documents scanned by DocuCentre SC2020 to smart mobile devices via wireless local area network.
• Scanned documents can be easily uploaded from PCs to the Working Folder and accessed anytime, anywhere or shared amongst co-workers; or viewed and edited on DocuWorks as paper documents.

Environmentally responsible

• The DocuCentre SC2020 enables users to reduce toner consumption by calibrating toner density in three settings: light, lighter and lightest, based on individual print requirements. Furthermore, the product has a low typical electricity consumption in sleep mode, which is the state that printers spend most of their time in, meaning decreased operating costs.

Top salespeople on average spend an hour and half a day on social media and it’s good for business

New research announced by professional network LinkedIn has revealed that Aussie salespeople who spend up to an hour and half a day on average on social media could be more likely to hit their targets compared to their less social colleagues. Top salespeople are also using a suite of digital tools in order to close more deals and grow their revenue.

The rise in social media adoption among salespeople is causing a shift away from the ‘hard sell’ and towards ‘social selling’ which places importance on building relationships. In a survey of 401 Aussie sales and business development professionals, over two- thirds (65 per cent) rated the ability to quickly build trusted relationships as more important than a prospect’s willingness to buy when it comes to winning new business.

More than a fifth (22.2 per cent) of respondents spend 5-10 hours on social selling tools each week. This time investment is clearly paying dividends, with 83 per cent of top sellers considered social selling to be ‘very important’ to ‘important’ in their ability to close deals.

Mark Dick, Head of Sales Solutions, LinkedIn Australia and New Zealand, said, “In the sales function today we are Ginding two types of professionals – those who immerse themselves in online tools and intelligence, and everyone else. Success in today’s social world relies on sales professionals being able to navigate complex social structures within the businesses they want to work with. The top salespeople are using social media to gather intelligence on their prospects and using that effectively to build trusted relationships more quickly”.

Other findings from the research include:

• Social selling tools are now more widely used than customer relationship management (CRM) tools, favoured by 65 per cent of respondents, compared to 32 per cent for CRM
• 83 per cent of top salespeople rely on social selling tools, compared to 65 per cent of overall sales professionals
• Nearly half of the respondents are more likely to spend more time using social selling tools in the next year
• Over half of the respondents (51 per cent) are also closely working with their marketing department to prospect customers

Top tips for successful social selling

With the typical B2B sales process today involving more than five key decision makers from across an organisation, sales teams need to build relationships right across the board as well as making use of connections within their own business to be successful.

To help businesses succeed in the art of successful social selling, LinkedIn has three top pieces of advice:

Every relationship matters: The most successful social sellers make use of all the connections within their own organisations to build relationships with their customers and prospects. Social media has made it easier to see where those relationships exist, whether through an old contact of the CEO or a family friend of the office intern. LinkedIn’s TeamLink feature within its Sales Navigator tool enables salespeople to see who in their organisation might be able to make the key introduction, even if they are not personally connected with that colleague on LinkedIn.

Be relevant: Social media has put more, if not all, of the power into the hands of the buyer. Today business decision makers can be up to 60 per cent along their decision-making journey before engaging a vendor, making it critical for salespeople and brands to find a way to engage their target audience within that initial part of the journey. Having a well-established online professional brand and sharing relevant content are two quick and simple ways to grab the attention of the right decision makers.

Pick your moment: Any good relationship takes time. It’s unlikely you’d ask someone to marry you on a first date, so don’t just jump in cold with a big ask in business without investing in learning more about your prospect first. Social media has made this much easier by enabling you to keep track of the relevant decision makers within companies, take note of the articles and updates they share in a professional context, and look for opportunities to engage them with relevant content of your own.

Investors Care More About Sustainability Than Many Executives Believe

 

A recent study by MIT Sloan Management Review found that investors recognize that good sustainability performance is a source of many types of business value. The top three are: increased potential for long-term value creation, improved revenue potential, and operational efficiency. Click here to view the full figure, or click here to access the full report. | Image credit: MIT Sloan Management Review

Understanding investor priorities is an important responsibility for a company’s top executives and its board of directors, yet, new findings show that managers’ perceptions of investors are out of date.

A 2015 survey of more than 3,000 managers and investors in organizations from over 100 countries conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that investors increasingly believe that sustainability performance creates tangible value and are prepared to divest from companies with a poor sustainability footprint.

The results are captured in a new report, Investing For a Sustainable Future, co-authored by Gregory Unruh, David Kiron, Nina Kruschwitz, Martin Reeves, Holger Rubel, and Alexander Meyer zum Felde. The authors suggest that executives are wrong to buy into the conventional wisdom that mainstream investors care little about an organization’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, and back up the assertion with in-depth analysis. In turn, they also identify what corporate leaders can do to stay relevant to sustainability-oriented investors.

Some of their key findings include:

• Managers’ perception of investors is inaccurate: Only 60 percent of managers in publicly-traded companies believe that good sustainability performance is materially important to investors’ investment decisions, while 75 percent of senior executives in investment firms believe that good sustainability performance is materially important when making investment decisions.
• Investors believe that sustainability creates tangible value: 75 percent of investors cite improved revenue performance and operational efficiency as strong reasons to invest in a company with good sustainability performance, while more than 60 percent believe that it reduces a company’s risks and over half believe it lowers the cost of capital.
• Investors are prepared to divest: Roughly 60 percent of investment firm board members say they are willing to divest from companies with a poor sustainability footprint, while nearly half of investors say they will not invest in a company with a record of poor sustainability performance.
• Lack of communication within corporations and investment firms and between them: In corporations, nearly 80 percent of board members and 85 percent of C-suite executives are fully informed about their organization’s sustainability efforts, while only 51 percent of senior managers and 31 percent of middle managers and front-line employees are equally well informed. At investment firms, only 62 percent of front-line employees and 73 percent of middle managers believe their companies engage in responsible investing despite that more than 80 percent of board members believe the same. Investor respondents estimated that sustainability issues arise in just 54 percent of earnings calls and shareholder meetings they attend.
• Sustainability indices are losing their appeal: Only 36 percent of investors said that being included on a major sustainability index is an important factor in their investment decisions. Just 32 percent of managers in public companies said their business is listed on an index, and only 44 percent of them believe such honors are important.
• Few companies have developed a sustainability strategy, despite considering them important: Nearly 90 percent of respondents said that a sustainability strategy is essential to remaining competitive, but only 60 percent of corporations have such a strategy. Only 25 percent of respondents said that their companies have developed a clear business case for sustainability.

The shift in investor attitudes seemed unlikely even 7 years ago. In 2009, Bloombergresearchers found that just 22 percent of the 766 CEOs they surveyed from around the globe believed investors would be key stakeholders in driving their action on sustainability over the next five years. And while the MIT Sloan Management Review authors assert that this perception “has passed its sell-by date,” they also acknowledge that sustainability metrics have only recently become so important to investors. Their 2015 survey showed that 74 percent of all investor respondents believe that sustainability performance matters more than it did 3 years ago.

The authors suggest that investor interest in sustainability is being driven by at least three factors:

• The growth of analytics and sophisticated modeling that shows how and when sustainability investments create shareholder value;
• Research from academic institutions and investment firms that links effective management of material sustainability issues to strong financial performance; and
• A shift in attitude within the investor community about the connection between strong sustainability performance, value creation, and risk reduction.

“Companies have been complaining that nobody cares about sustainability,” commentedRobert Eccles, chairman of Arabesque Partners and professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. “But investors care, and companies need to up their game.”

by Hannah Furlong

Staples & Office Depot & Reacts to Negative Merger Judgment By Courts

The Chairman and CEO of Office Depot, Inc. has spoken out about the court’s decision to deny the merger between US stationery giants Staples and Office Depot.

Following the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia verdict, Roland Smith has gone on record to say that Office Depot would not appeal the court’s decision, and the proposed merger of the two companies on May 16, 2016 has been terminated.

Previously, the court granted the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) request for a preliminary injunction to block the proposed merger of Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLS) and Office Depot.

“We are disappointed by this outcome and strongly believe that a merger would have benefitted all of our customers in the long term,” Smith declared.

He added, “As the Staples merger process comes to an end, we look forward to re-energizing our business. We remain committed to delivering our 2016 Critical Priorities and realizing the remaining synergies and efficiencies that come from the integration of Office Depot and OfficeMax. Once the Staples merger agreement is formally terminated, we plan to host an investor conference call on May 16 to discuss next steps in our go-forward strategy.”

Ricoh India faces trading suspension, shares tank

Ricoh India shares were locked down in lower circuit on Thursday, after falling by their daily limit of 5 per cent.

Thursday’s selloff was triggered by Bombay Stock Exchange’s warning that trading in Ricoh India shares will be suspended from May 25, if the multinational imaging and electronics firm doesn’t comply with market regulator Sebi’s listing norms.

The BSE said Ricoh India has time till May 20 to comply with Securities and Exchange Board of India’s listing norms.

Ricoh India has failed to report the results for the September 2015 and December 2015 quarters with the exchanges.

Ricoh India’s shares have lost 16 per cent in the past five trading sessions. The stock has slumped close to 66 per cent this year over corporate governance concerns.

On March 28, 2016, Ricoh India was shifted from ‘B’ group to ‘Z’ group on the BSE, leading to further selloff in its shares. Trades in ‘Z’ group shares are settled on trade for trade basis, which means that only delivery-based buying or selling is permitted.

Last month, Ricoh India’s managing director and CEO Manoj Kumar resigned from the board after being asked to go on leave amid an ongoing audit in the company by a committee that includes an independent law firm and accountants.

Ricoh India shares ended at Rs 271.90, down 5 per cent while the broad market indicator Sensex ended 0.64 per cent higher.

Selling Managed Print – Calculating Your Client’s Soft Costs

Great explanation from Daniel Taylor in the UK…..

Typical Small and Medium Sized Business (SMB)

I will assume that your client has a helpdesk and purchasing resources to help manage the supplies ordering workflow. Even a very small client who may not have a dedicated helpdesk or purchasing resource will at least have someone performing those functions.

We will join our imaginary user after they have gone through the preliminary checks (which would be managed and potentially avoided in a proactive environment) only to find that their lack of supplies requires them to call their helpdesk.

Calculating the time taken to handle one printer incident

*The first task of the process occupies both the end user and the client’s helpdesk staff. This means that an effective total of 8 minutes is used.

• Task 1(4+4) + Tasks 2-4 (4+5+5) = Total of 22 minutes of client’s time taken up performing this process

Calculating the salary costs to handle one printer incident

Notes:

• I assumed an exchange rate of £1 = $1.42 and I’ve used the following format to show both calculations £1 ($1.42).
• I used this average salary calculator http://www.reed.co.uk/average-salary to get an average annual salary of £36,820 ($52,284).

 

Calculations

Step One – Calculate the Salary Uplift

Uplift salary by Cost of Employment – Pension, Desk, Phone, PC etc. in this example we have used an industry average of 30%.

30% of £36,820 ($52,284) = £11,046 ($15,685)

Step Two – Calculate the Shrinkage

Shrinkage takes into account the holidays / vacations, sickness, breaks, and is an uplift of a conservative 10 % of the salary

• 10% = £3,682 ($5,228)

Shrinkage example – 100% salary / 52 weeks, But you only work 48 as an example, 10% is 6 weeks out of 52 weeks.

Step Three – Calculate the annual cost

With cost of employment and shrinkage, the annual cost of that employee then becomes:

• Annual Salary + Uplift + Shrinkage = £51,548 ($73,197)

Step Four – Calculate the cost per minute

Take the annual cost and then divide by 52 weeks, by 5 working days, by 8 hours by 60 minutes you get a cost of £0.41 ($.59)per minute.

Putting it all together

If you then multiply the 22 minutes by the £0.41 ($.59) you get £9.02 ($12.98) as the cost of performing the supplies ordering workflow.

The more devices the client has, the more volume they produce, the higher the page coverage and the use of colour will hasten the intervals between the cost triggers.

The HDI Support Center Practices & Salary Report supports this. They estimate that the average help desk call costs £9.86 ($14).

Remember, this is just the IT side of the costs, which shows that my calculation really is very conservative.

IDC estimates that 51 percent of all IT Helpdesk calls are print-related That is a lot of time spent dealing with supplies issues that the IT helpdesk does not have the time or inclination to deal with.

Duplicate calls and false alerts add additional costs

In some situations, multiple users could report the same issue for the same device. There may also be many other types of “false alerts” encountered by the client. These would use a proportion of this four-step incident process, incurring additional soft cost implications.

I have not accounted for any duplicate calls or false alerts in this exercise, but it is worth noting when discussing with your clients.

Calculating the costs for small businesses / solopreneur

For smaller clients or those where an individual user manages their entire supplies process? For this group it can be even worse. These knowledge workers are typically ill-equipped to order consumables effectively.

They waste their valuable working time logging the call to the helpdesk or trawling websites looking for a good deal. You can see that, for them, the supplies workflow could take much longer. They are also more likely to order small quantities, making the shipping costs per item expensive.

Not to mention that, with smaller quantities, the chances of lost delivery compounds the issue further.

The efficiency principle

Now that you have an appreciation for the cost of managing a supplies workflow the question is, can you radically reduce this burden?

Our approach is to introduce process efficiencies before the supplies workflow becomes a helpdesk issue. We do this by enabling our channel partners to provide proactive supplies automation. Easily said, but difficult to do effectively whilst maintaining the client’s peace of mind.

By providing robust supplies automation agents on the network, the client is less likely to contact the helpdesk because, in the majority of cases, the supplies (toner and CRUs) arrive just before full depletion.

It is also important to mention that you need a service contract that covers the proactive management of the different supplies types, including toner and other consumables like fusers and waste toner boxes.

Multiple manufacturers are a common occurrence

Moreover, you need to ensure that this proactive service is available for the many brands that your client has in their fleet and not a ‘cherry-picked’ subset of easy to manage models and vendors. If you do not provide a complete service, the client still has to manage the remaining devices.

A true holistic service, in turn, reduces the burden on the helpdesk and purchasing departments. In addition, the client can also get valuable insights from the extensive reporting tools.

If your client insists on continuing with a ‘toner-out’ approach then Xerox Enhanced Managed Supplies Service (eMSS) will enable them to save these soft costs and allow you to capture the supplies revenue, and help the client make a significant saving in their hard supplies cost.

One last thing… In this calculation, I have not taken into account the cost of actually managing the supplies inventory, supplies obsolescence or the actual cost of supplies. On top of that, I’m going to leave asset management for another day…

Take every opportunity to uncover these hidden costs 

Of course, by completing a full print assessment using the tools provided by NewField IT, you could go even deeper and provide irrefutable documented evidence of how your client’s print infrastructure and document workflow effects their business viability.

Until then, this relatively simple cost calculation should help you get their attention. I hope that from now on, you will never pass on the opportunity to uncover the hidden costs of self-managed supplies management.

Las Vegas Water District says employee spent $4.5 million on printer cartridges she then sold

From 2012 until she quit the Las Vegas Valley Water District under a cloud in December, purchasing analyst Jennifer McCain-Bray spent $4.5 million of public money on ink jet cartridges she then sold to a buyer in New Jersey for a cut of the money, according to new details released Friday by the water agency.

District officials said they were in the process of firing McCain-Bray when she resigned on Dec. 16, 13 days after they say she admitted to “fraudulent purchases that resulted in personal gain.”

The scheme is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI.

A phone message left Friday afternoon for McCain-Bray wasn’t immediately returned.

Water district spokesman Bronson Mack couldn’t say exactly how many toner cartridges were fraudulently bought and sold through the utility’s purchasing department, but “we’re easily talking about tens of thousands.”

According to the district, McCain-Bray used the agency’s mailing system to ship boxes of the cartridges to a New Jersey company called Symm Distributors Inc.

The company does not appear to have a website, and the phone number listed for it is disconnected. A Google search of its address in Woodbridge Township, N.J., returns a photo of a small storefront with a Chinese restaurant on one side and empty office space on the other. A woman who answered the phone at the restaurant said she had never heard of Symm Distributors.

Mack said the district recovered one box of toner that was addressed to the company but destined for a residence in Carteret, N.J.

Even Mack expressed bewilderment Friday at how the woman known as “JJ” apparently managed to make so many purchases and receive and send so many boxes from her cubicle at the water district headquarters on Valley View Boulevard before finally being reported by a fellow employee on Dec. 2.

That lack of oversight may have cost three other employees their jobs.

Mack said the district’s purchasing manager, accounting supervisor and one of its finance analysts were placed on paid leave and were in the process of being fired when they left the public agency earlier this year. The purchasing manager retired in February, and the other two resigned in March.

“There is no indication of any kind that they were in on it,” Mack said of the three, whom he declined to name. “To my knowledge, they are not part of the criminal investigation.”

According to the district, McCain-Bray was placed on paid administrative leave and had all her keys and entry badges confiscated on Dec. 3, the same day the agency contacted the FBI.

The district moved to fire the 14-year employee the next day.

Mack said the termination process at the public agency takes a minimum of 10 days.

Based on a third-party audit and other investigation conducted since the fraudulent purchases were uncovered, “it doesn’t appear that anyone else (from the water district) was involved,” but the FBI probe should answer that question definitively, Mack said.

According to county property records, McCain-Bray and Robert Bray paid $350,000 in March 2015 for a four-bedroom house on just over an acre of land near Wigwam Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard in the southern valley.

Seen inside the gated property Friday were several vehicles, including cars, trailers, an RV, a double-hulled powerboat and a late-model Audi SUV with the license plate JJJAMIN.

The 41-year-old woman has no known criminal history. Records suggest some past trouble with the IRS, but they indicate she worked to repay an almost $20,000 tax lien filed against her in 2008.

She was hired by the water district as an office assistant in the engineering department in October 2001. She joined the purchasing department as an assistant in 2004 and was promoted to purchasing analyst in October 2007. Her job, with an annual salary of $97,880, involved dealing with vendors and buying supplies and materials for the valley’s largest water utility.

“I worked with JJ,” Mack said. “She was definitely a well-liked employee during her time with the district.”

McCain-Bray now works at UNLV, where she was hired in late March to a $50,000-a-year job in the purchasing department.

Lexmark’s earnings report after China deal shows loss

 

Lexmark’s first quarterly earnings report after it announced that it is being sold to a Chinese consortium showed the company continuing to struggle with the same forces that have bedeviled it in recent years.

Its performance reflected the drag of its exit from the inkjet printer market as the company struggled to reinvent itself as a diversified information solutions company.

Revenue growth in managed print services and enterprise software was offset by a strong U.S. dollar and a decline in non-managed print services revenue, the report states.

The Lexington-based company reported a loss of $39.4 million after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier.

On April 19, Lexmark announced it is being bought by a Chinese consortium of companies for $3.6 billion, or $40.50 a share. After the sale, the company will cease being listed on the NYSE.

Chairman and CEO Paul Rooke said then that Lexmark’s corporate headquarters would stay in Lexington and that he would continue to lead the company.

Lexmark did not hold its usual conference call with analysts after the earnings release Tuesday morning, and Rooke was not available to discuss the results.

Revenue of $806 million in the first quarter of 2016 was down from $852 million for the same period in 2015. The gross profit margin of 38 percent was down from 38.7 percent in the same period last year.

Operating income margin was down 4.8 percent. The company said it would pay its 18th consecutive quarterly divided of 36 cents a share.