Can someone please explain Xerox's U.S. structure? I'm in Canada. Here it's mainly a mix of Agent and Xerox Direct, as well as resellers and Channel Alliance partners.
I'm not familiar with many of the terms like Core and GIS to name a couple. What are these groups?
Thanks in advance!
Tektronix turned out to be a failure for Xerox. The Tektronix Phaser name was replaced with toner devices and breakthrough products like ColorQube and CiPress failed.
Another response from initial responder xqa to GIS folks - You were not the first acquired company to dislike Xerox management. GIS cores are not the only entities over the years that have been purchased and dismantled. Most notable is Tektronix Wilsonville. What was once a thriving business with thousands of employees is now essentially gone. It's notable that so few people have posted about Wilsonville on this post - they've moved on.
Thanks for the explanations!
So very well said!
Xerox is like a really selfish parent in a divorce that rips apart the family and it's never the same again, forever destroyed!
GIS WAS a group of independent office equipment companies who were acquired by GIS , a holding company. GIS made a commitment to the prior owner that they would acquire their company and leave the entrepreneurial spirit of the company alone as long as their individual “Core company” performed and met key benchmarks and the original owner stayed to run that organization. The owner was required to sign an executive agreement and stay and run the organization for 3 years.
Xerox acquired GIS( Global Imaging) in 2007. The entrepreneurial spirit remained. Xerox left GIS alone because they represented 20+% of the revenue and 30+% of the earnings of Xerox. GIS was such a proud group of independent companies and were proud of the great service delivery and culture of caring for employees.
Each of the 42”Core Companies “ had high benchmarks and competed against each other as each was stack ranked against each other. Even though we were competitive, we all shared best practices,but each company made their own decisions to what was delivered in each marketplace.
Xerox has changed everything and ruined the best part of GIS. So sorry for all employees, the original entrepreneurs that were sold a lie and especially the clients that will never receive the same level of service.
The only one that wins is the greedy stock holders, Carl Icahn and the competitors.
Xerox bought Global Imaging Systems (GIS) in 2007 but kept it as a wholly owned subsidiary (vs integrating the acquisition). GIS itself had created an interesting structure - a small headquarters in Tampa, with about 20 independent subsidiaries known as "core" companies. Each of these cores were originally standalone sales/service companies that GIS bought. However, once purchased, each core was allowed to retain some autonomy as separate legal entities. Xerox allowed this structure to continue. Over the next several years, more acquisitions, or "cores" were purchased by GIS to cover new geographies within the US not covered by an existing core. Many cores also had satellite locations in smaller cities. The idea was to get more coverage of the SMB market, and yes, there was some overlap with direct Xerox and resellers.
The GIS website has been taken over by Xerox now, but you can still see the structure by looking at the location map (cores and satellites) at this link:
https://www.xeroxbusinesssolutions.com/contact-us/
The consternation now that you are seeing on this site is that Xerox has decided to integrate former GIS locations, per public statements from John V. and also outsource some functions.