Xerox looks to expand channel network

SHIVANGI YADAV

GURGAON

OCTOBER 18, 2006

Xerox is looking to expand its channel base across India. The company has
kick-started lots of new initiatives in the channel space not only to strengthen
existing relationships in the segment but to also to build newer ones.

Explaining the rationale behind these new initiatives from Xerox Gurpreet
Kanwal, Head-Channels Marketing, New Office Group, Xerox India Limited said. “We
are looking at expanding our channel network in the country. At the beginning of
this year we had 1,000 resellers in our network, now we have 1,400 and we are
aiming to increase the number by another 15 percent by the end of this year.
Another main focus of the company now is to get a foothold in the huge SMB
segment in the country, and we are also looking at creating an extensive market
for color.”

To meet these objectives Xerox this week started Momentum 2006, a reseller's
meet, which will be held across the country over the next three months.

Explaining the objective behind 'Momentum 2006' Kanwal said, “We are
targeting this meet not only at the people who are already in our network but
more importantly at those resellers who are not engaged with Xerox. The aim is
to tell these people about our products, share information and thus engage them
to work with Xerox. That is why the meets are being held in mostly B and C class
cities. We have already conducted the meet in Kolkata and Lucknow. On the anvil
are similar events in Cochin, Coimbatore, Ludhiana, Indore, Jaipur, Nasik,
Ahmedabad, Trissur and Kottayam. We are driving these events with our
sub-distributors in that region. Another thing that we are aiming is to engage
more partners in suburbs of metro cities. See when you work with people in
metro's the suburbs like in case of Delhi Gurgaon and Faridabad get neglected.
So we are now aiming to rectify that and engage more partners from suburbs of
metro's.”

Talking about the feedback that they have received from the events that have
been held so far Kanwal said, “The feedback has exceeded our expectations. This
is after a while that Xerox has directly engaged the resellers, where we are
sharing information with them and receiving feedback on the kind of response and
products that they expect from us. It is also important since this is the
festival season and we are launching lot of new schemes for our partners and
resellers. The Kolkata event was very good, more than 150 resellers attended the
meet and we got instant orders at the venue itself. The feedback from Lucknow
where we just held an event has been tremendous. I am still getting calls from
people who attended the meet informing us how they are extremely happy about
this new meet that we have started.”

The new leash of partner activity has also seen Xerox ramping up its online
partner interaction; they have recently added some more tools on their partner
portal. Elaborating about these tools Kanwal said, “We have recently added two
new tools on our partner portal which we feel will be very beneficial for our
partner community. The first is an e-learning tool wherein the partner gets a
tour of all our products and gets all the necessary information about any Xerox
product at one click. We have also introduced co-branded collaterals on our
website wherein our partners can download these collaterals from our website
which will feature their name and Xerox branding. We have also launched a
proposal wizard onsite wherein the partner just has to give us details about
what kind of project they are bidding for and the tool we generate the complete
proposal for them.”

Talking about the future plans of the company Kanwal added, “We are aiming to
become the number two vendor in the Indian market place by the end of 2007 and
all these initiatives, some which have already been launched and the ones which
are in planning, are aimed at achieving the same.”