Xerox signs up 22 new partners to offer Managed Print Services across Europe

Xerox has signed up and fully accredited 22 European partners to sell Xerox Print Services [XPS]. Launched last year, XPS is Xeroxs enterprise-level managed print services offering sold through its channel partners, to their mainly SME [small medium enterprise] customer base. Xerox has also extended its service and support to accredited partners by offering click based, cost per page contracts on non Xerox devices and added new tools to its MPS software platform to help manage customer environments. 

The 22 new partners, spread across 13 countries, include 6 partners in the UK.  UK partners including Bytes, Document Express, and Xenith have completed a formal accreditation programme to become certified XPS resellers. Xerox partners are certified for sales, solution design, and service delivery of managed print services which they can use to help their predominantly SME customers fine-tune, assess, optimise and manage their printing environments. For end customers this results in lower print and copy costs, reduced IT support costs and environmental impact, as well as increased office productivity.

Louella Fernandes, Principle Consultant, Quocirca said: The growing availability of packaged print services for the channel means MPS is no longer the exclusive domain of large enterprises. SMEs are facing the combined pressure of increasing productivity with constrained resources, both at a skills level and trying to deal with variable costs. Services such as XPS enable businesses to manage their print costs more effectively and divert IT resources to core business activities.

Xerox gives its partners the flexibility to build their own branded services capability backed by a common technology platform and a single global support infrastructure. Certified resellers can buy from other vendors and use their own agreements and contracts.

Pete Bedford, Managing Director at Document Express commented, Increasingly customers are turning to us for service-led solutions rather than just hardware. A key challenge for many resellers is that they dont necessarily have the resources and experience to offer services like MPS. XPS ultimately enables resellers who recognise the MPS opportunity to get up and running fast, providing them with a compelling offer to succeed in the MPS market.  XPS is at the heart of our proposition and our key differentiator.

From this month, certified partners can buy click based, cost per page contracts for their customers non Xerox devices.  Xerox will provide the service, support and supplies to maintain these devices.  Notably Xerox manages over 1.5m devices globally, over 50 per cent of which are non Xerox devices, underlining its strength in managing multivendor print environments. 

Xerox will also expand its MPS software platform by adding new tools such as local device management, integration with partners systems, a software development kit for third party software and full branding of customer facing elements with the partners own branding.  Further, Xeroxs Global Delivery Centre will provide partners with a service desk, including report management, consolidated per click billing, and extend its buying capability through its cloud service.  This will complement partners existing business capabilities, strengthen their offering and reduce the large investment in staff and systems as required by other programmes.

We anticipate huge growth in the MPS market and having these new partners on board and providing them with the service, systems and support to capitalise on this fantastic opportunity is fundamental to our long term growth strategy, said Darren Cassidy, Vice President, Channel Managed Print Services, at Xerox. These partnerships will give us a strong foothold across Europe; allowing both parties to support each other and grow our businesses respectively.