Xerox to close almost half of its XBS offices
February 20, 2019
The OEM has begun closing approximately half of its 186 Xerox Business Solutions offices across North America due to “a massive consolidation.”
As CRN reports, these closures will force “sales teams to work remote” and will involve “laying off support staff”.
According to two sources, Xerox will keep 40 of its “core” businesses intact but will close many of the smaller field offices across the country.
Xerox Business Solutions garners 22 percent of the company’s channel sales and is cited by the OEM as being its SMB channel for North America.
One of the workers affected by the closures revealed that the news was broken by a senior manager via speakerphone during a staff meeting.
“We were told that sales would remain, but the office staff would be let go,” she said. “The sales team is going to work remotely and report to the regional office.”
The OEM’s spokeswoman, Caroline Gransee-Linsey, made no comment on the closures or job losses, instead stating that Xerox “planned to grow sales teams within the XBS unit.”
“As discussed during our Investor Day, we shared that XBS is an important part of Xerox’s three-year strategy. While we have plans to reduce our global real estate footprint to ensure our facilities meet our operational goals, we also have plans to grow the XBS sales team,” she wrote.
During the OEM’s Investor Day, CEO John Visentin also commented on XBS and described its importance to the company, saying, “You’ve heard us in the past talk about GIS, and how GIS was and still is a successful part of our organisation. So what did we do? GIS became XBS. We took what they do best, which is the last touch to the client, and we asked them to be our SMB channel for North America. So we transferred 28,000 of our SMB accounts into GIS and are now naming it Xerox Business Solutions. Because the mechanism is there to go penetrate, XPS, penetrate our SMB clients.”
Categories : Around the Industry
Tags : Closures Consolidation USA XBS Xerox
