Xerox Blogs

Open Xerox Innovation

Francois Ragnet

Nice initiative: test drive some of the latest Xerox Innovation - Open Xerox is an Open Innovation space to explore Xerox technologies, interact with Xerox scientists, or even establish innovation partnerships. Currently only one demo is available online - Natural Language Color Editing. This technology lets user use common words and phrases to change and improve color images - no need for advanced photo editing skills and tools. Nice example of making very complex technology much simpler to use and accessible, with a simpler version being part of the Xerox 7500 color printer driver.

Geeks Unite

Guest Blogger

OK. So I guess I am a geek at heart. I’ve been doing public relations for technology companies for over 23 years. I love technology and telling the world about it. Last week the geek in me hit the jackpot. Daily, I have the opportunity to talk with some of the most brilliant minds at Xerox – the company’s research and development team. And for this announcement I worked with Paul Smith, who heads up the printable electronics lab at the Xerox Research Centre Canada, to help promote a really cool innovation – a silver ink -- that could help make plastic circuitry commercially viable. So before you scratch your head and wonder what the heck is silver ink and what does it have to do with me …. let me explain. Think it might be cool to have a medicine bottle instruct a patient of the proper dosage and possibly notify them that they opened it less than 4 hours ago which could indicate it’s too soon to take another dose? Or how about an e-reader that could cost a tad more than a few hard covers, and is the size and weight of a spiral notebook and wouldn’t break if you dropped it? Or how about a sweatshirt that monitors your heart rate and suggests a new jogging route while playing your favorite running play list? These applications may sound futuristic, but they provide a glimpse at what plastic circuits could do. There are a lot of reasons plastic circuits aren’t widely used yet – cost, limits of technology etc. And for awhile scientists have been hunkering down in labs all over the world (including at Xerox) trying to solve these hurdles. This new silver ink, along with two other printable electronic components developed at Xerox, address quite a few of these issues. Ok. Here are a few facts so bear with me for a minute. Silver is conductive. You need it to make a circuit capable of conducting electricity. Silver melts at a very high temperature (1000 degrees c). If you try to jet this ink onto anything remotely like plastic – it melts. Xerox created nano silver molecules that melt at much lower temperature – less than 140 degrees c. – so voila – you can print it on a wide variety of materials including a ton of different types of plastic. Another issue that affects the reliability (and therefore the cost) of producing circuits is that they require an expensive clean room environment to be manufactured. With this new invention, you can now print reliable circuits in a normal room – just as if you are printing a piece of paper in your ink-jet printer. How cool is that? Xerox hopes application developers will think this is cool enough to take these new materials for a test drive. The company is making the ink and other printable electronics materials available as R&D samples. If you want to hear Paul Smith talk more about the technology behind this news or take a quick tour of the lab (yes, complete with a look at the nano-size ink droplets shooting out of the ink jets – sooo cool ) check out our newsroom. Or read a sampling of coverage at CNET, Venture Beat, Popular Science or PC Magazine for example. See, I wasn’t the only geek that thought this was interesting.

Laurie Riedman, PR consultant for Xerox Corporation

Projetos sustentáveis e produtos inteligentes para a redução do consumo de energia e preservação da biodiversidade

sergio.machado

[caption id="attachment_166" align="alignnone" width="440" caption="Fontes: Daniele Bori Rodrigo, Cristiana Lannes e Rodrigo Palo (Xerox Global Services)"][/caption] A Xerox é uma empresa que tem um histórico de iniciativas voltadas para o meio ambiente, sendo a primeira empresa a introduzir o conceito de redução de consumo em seus produtos além de ser a pioneira na implementação da remanufatura durante a década de 90. Hoje, a Xerox continua inovando seu pioneirismo para preservar o meio ambiente com projetos sustentáveis que combatem os atuais desafios globais:

Alterações Climáticas e Energia
Preservação da biodiversidade e Florestas
Redução da emissão de produtos tóxicos e metais pesados
Gestão e Prevenção de Resíduos

Estas iniciativas sustentáveis fazem da Xerox o parceiro ideal para a sua empresa na consultoria de assuntos voltados a sustentabilidade e responsabilidade social que agregam valor ao seu negócio.

Produtos Inteligentes

Produtos Energy Star - Os produtos Xerox com Energy Star possibilitam 600,000 Ton. anualmente sem emissão de CO2 . Esta quantidade é o suficiente para iluminar 1.0 M de casas por ano. Multifucionais – As multifuncionais Xerox reduzem de 1422 kWh para 706 kWh o consumo de energia na sua utilização, em relação ao conjunto de equipamentos para a mesma função. (Redução de até 50%). Xerox Green Aliance - Através do nosso programa Green World Alliance, os clientes Xerox reciclam milhões de cartuchos por ano. As embalagens facilitam o uso e envio dos cartuchos para a Xerox onde são reciclados e mais de 90% do material é reutilizado ou reciclado. Para mais informações sobre sustemtabilidade e valor ecológico entre em contato com: rodrigo.palo@xerox.com

Projetos Sustentáveis

Na Xerox, a sustentabilidade é um meio de fazer negócios. Junto com nossos fornecedores, clientes e colaboradores, buscamos manter o mais alto padrão para a preservação do meio ambiente, protegendo e melhorando a saúde e a segurança de todos os membros das comunidades, dentro e fora da empresa. Redução do consumo de energia para proteção climática Nós reduzimos a emissão de carbono cortando o consumo de energia nas instalações Xerox e fornecemos produtos e soluções altamente eficientes a nossos clientes. Preservação da biodiversidade e das florestas do mundo inteiro Trabalhamos com parceiros no desenvolvimento de um ciclo de papel sustentável através do avanço nos padrões de gerenciamento de florestas e da oferta de produtos e serviços que reduzem a dependência do papel. Preservação do ar e da água Estamos comprometidos em eliminar o uso de materiais tóxicos e metais pesados em toda a nossa cadeia de suprimentos de produtos. Prevenção e gerenciamento de resíduos Os produtos da Xerox são desenvolvidos para utilizar os recursos com eficiência - minimizando os resíduos e reutilizando ou reciclando os materiais. Para maiores informações sobre projetos sustentáveis entre em contato com cristiana.lannes@xerox.com

Calculadora de Sustentabilidade

A Calculadora de Sustentabilidade emprega algoritmos e pesquisa na avaliação de documentos para proporcionar dados sobre a frota completa de produtos dos escritórios dentro de uma empresa, desde impressoras até dispositivos multifuncionais e copiadoras, independente de quem seja o fornecedor dos equipamentos. Depois da análise inicial que gera uma avaliação detalhada da sustentabilidade das suas operações, a Xerox se associa com os clientes para criar um ambiente de escritório que economize energia. Veja os resultados obtidos clicando nas imagens abaixo:

Para maiores informações sobre Calculadora de Sustentabilidade entre em contato com danielle.bori@xerox.com

Patient Care, Loyalty and "Meaningful Use"

nancyrichardson

Where did September and October go? It's November, with months passing like weeks. Holiday preparation begins, as the Healthcare industry also anticipates December's arrival of The Proposed Rule. Hopes are high that early EMR decisions and investments actually do meet requirements, while looking forward to a unified format and interoperability for patient records that will transforms the industry. However, one will not survive on EMR alone, with tightening "Meaningful Use" requirements progressively increasing as 2015 nears - and as the size of subsidized payments will decline. Everyone is coming to terms with the Proposed and final ruling on "Meaningful Use" as a moving target. The good news lies in with tightening requirements, comes broadening of the definition and qualification. Dr. Blumenthal reiterates that EMR is only part of this industry-wide initiative, and that providers need focus on and impact what he defines as five key domains including: 1) Improving the U.S. health system 2) Safety and quality 3) Engaging patients 4) Populations 5) Privacy Think for a moment about "Engaging patients". This is a huge opportunity to step back and think about the improved "Patient Experience" experience as an outcome, positively affect providers and patient perception. What is your Patient Engagement strategy? As a patient, my ability to clearly follow pre/post directions directly affects how confident I am about advice, treatments, procedures and their outcome. How well my provider communicates, in all forms, affects my faith in him /her or the facility / institution will also affect how I adhere to their councel, and future decisions about returning to that provider for my healthcare needs - and patient costs to the US. Healthcare system. With increasing flexibility by patients to switch, comes the need for providers to develop patient loyalty - a following, also encouraging referrals by patients. HCHAPS will continue to be the scorecard by the patient, as will patient behavior affect other hospital metrics. So let's think about this...effectively communicating to patients can affect: 1. Engaging patients, 2. Safety & quality, 3. Privacy, 4. Improving the healthcare system. This certainly sounds like a justification for "Meaningful Use", while positively affecting your Healthcare as a business. More good news lies in that many providers (e.g. Methodist Healthcare) are now doing so much more to build patient relationships, while cutting costs, and may unknowingly better-qualify for stimulus dollars as a result. Beyond EMR, what ideas or initiatives do you have beyond EMR? (Comments welcome!)

Kicking and screaming

Guest Blogger

You know I got dragged to the blogging world kicking and screaming…I was doing radio news in the days when I had the UPI and AP teletype machines clacking by my ears and I still have boxes that say teletype ribbon.. (you don’t know what a teletype ribbon is….?)

Anyway I digress… I was one of those PR people who said, give me a story in a daily newspaper that reaches half a million and I’m happy. But this blogging world is pretty cool and allows me to – heaven forbid… be my own publisher.

So on Information Overload…just like many of you, I start my morning coffee at home before 7, checking work email, personal email, Facebook updates, text messages, Twitter and typing my son’s daily chore list before I head to work.

So forgive me that I didn’t have time to check the (hardcopy, printers ink on your fingers version) Columbus Day Wall Street Journal ‘til noon when I read the cover story of the Technology Section on Why Email No Longer Rules.. and what that means for the way we communicate

In the lead story Jessica Vascellaro writes about a shift from e-mail to social media and about how it is contributing to information overload.

She says that email is so old world and “Twitter, Facebook and countless others” are more today, always on.

I can buy that…you can get instant response from IM, you can find out if someone is even logged on or left a status update, you can share so many more experiences through photos and Youtube.

What does amaze me… the growth. She quotes a Nielsen number that says in August 2009, 277 million people used email, up 21% year over year, but social networking users had climbed 31% to 301 million users.

And because the old ways don’t go away…she leads right into the thoughts that float on this site…too much information.

With so much more information coming at you, how do you determine what is important?

I have seen first hand some of the Xerox research projects (on a trip to Grenoble, France, but that is another story) on how we will be able to sort, prioritize and do more with this stream of information. Jessica mentions filtering programs, some even available on Twitter today.

But I love her closing comment…”you can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it.”

Amen.

- Bill McKee @xeroxprguy

Financial Firms and the New Diplomacy

karenmcdermott

I’m not naming names, but you gotta love the last 24 hours on Wall Street. The Dow breaks 10K yesterday and earnings week survives scrutiny with no really scary surprises, thus far. That said, in the last 10 years we’ve hit 10K fifteen times on the way up, so we shouldn’t necessarily get that excited. What am I excited about? Watching the financial CEO interviews and hearing how they sum up the past, as well as how they see the future. Many of the CEOs of the financial firms have become more media friendly in recent months in an attempt to build a more transparent and friendly face for the industry with shareholders, clients and the global public. To further build off that theme, today the McKinsey Quarterly released a video of public-relations expert Richard Edelman exploring the new landscape of corporate reputation and trust. He talks about mutual social responsibility and the value to the shareholder beyond the basic balance sheet approach Wall Street has taken to date. Brand and corporate reputation is going to have a greater impact on a company’s bottom line than it has in the past. The increasing need for transparency and communication will be key in successfully engaging with the public and fostering a trusted brand. He addresses a firm’s “rating” reflecting less about the dollar value of the deal it just won -- and more about what the deal does for the common good. The good news there is that banks, for instance, have been financing deals in the municipal finance realm for years which contribute to infrastructure items like bridges, tunnels, roads etc. All they have to do now is talk about what they do in a different way. He also speaks about how tech firms have pretty much stayed out of the fray and maintained good reputations through the recent crises (according to the Edelman Trust Barometer). To me, I see a natural partnership between technology and financial services companies in terms of tech enabling the future. Much of how we look at the world through our business at Xerox has always been about social responsibility and doing the right thing. In the future, I believe that many of the supplemental benefits that we provide to clients, like sustainability benefits, will be more prominent drivers of customer satisfaction and demand from both our clients, and their clients. Edelman defines the “credo” of the trusted few: “They have a set of principles that are quite clear. [It’s] the way that they behave. It’s not just about making the quarter, it’s about how they’re going to interact with society. It’s a really quite clear commitment to a stakeholder model as opposed to just for the shareholder.” Sounds good to me...should be interesting to see how it plays out in 2010 and beyond.

Welcome to the new blogs.xerox.com

admin

We've made a few changes by now having individual blogs for our Xerox bloggers. Each blogger now has their own URL. Please take a look at our growing list of blogs at blogs.xerox.com.

What Comes After Cash for Clunkers?

Bettina Engelmann

It has been interesting to watch the Automotive industry and how they are dealing with the economy. Clearly “Cash for Clunkers” provided a big boost for car dealers in July and August. Although speaking with a friend who manages automotive lending for a large bank, she saw the majority of sales were the class 2 economy cars, and dealers were not moving a lot of high end cars or trucks with their associated higher profit margins. Luckily for them, the government did come through with the rebate checks. However, now business is down again and many dealers are depending on manufacturer’s cash back programs, and some even resorting to their own rebate programs. And what about brand loyalty? One example, my brother, a loyal customer for one of the larger automotive brands for the past two decades was going to trade in his clunker truck for a new vehicle of the same brand. However the dealer switched the agreement at the last second – so my brother went to a different dealer and ended up with a better deal, a similar vehicle, but a completely different brand. Is this really the way to reach the consumer? Is a “trade-in” or rebate marketing approach going to be effective long term and can this kind of approach be sustained? Innovative companies are taking advantage of cross-media communications, and carefully engineering all the touch points with their clients – from email to personalized web-sites to direct mail, and even personalized videos. They are not only effecting brand loyalty, but also opening new opportunities for after market sales and cross-selling. Please comment and share with us if you have any ideas around this and how you are taking advantage of your customer data to improve your business. Click here for a short video about our perspective on communication engineering.

Hanging with Ponch at the MBA

judsonphillips

While at the MBA's 95th Annual Convention & Expo, I was waiting in line to get my picture snapped with Erik Estrada (seemed like the thing to do) and I could not help but think how the mortgage industry has changed since Mr. Estrada appeared on CHiPs in the late 1970's as officer Francis "Ponch" Poncherello. For those too young, CHiPs was a TV series that followed the lives of two motorcycle police officers of the California Highway Patrol. Now, back to the mortgage industry. With the "mortgage meltdown" having been front and center of all major news outlets over the last year, the MBA took a new angle with its theme for this year, "Winning Strategies for the New Age." During the course of the past year, most people in the US have been exposed to terms, such as Negative Amortization (NegAm), loan modifications, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), etc. However, think about where the industry was back in the days of CHiPs....

Savings and loans were the only institutions issuing residential mortgages
Interest rates for home loans were in double digits
Loan products consisted of a 30-year fixed rate mortgage
There was no private mortgage insurance (PMI) because at least 20% of the purchase price was typically required for a down payment
Securitization was in its infancy, having now grown from being non-existent in 1970 to a multi-trillion dollar industry today

Is it a contrast? Or, are times today becoming similar to the conditions in the 70's? In today's environment mortgage lenders are re-evaluating how to stay competitive. Mortgage lending has moved to a "flight to quality" with conforming loan products and most lenders are not offering the exotic loans of the past few years. Interest rates have remained historically low - even with the recent crisis - and homeownership has risen dramatically since Ponch cruised the California highways. Obviously, the technology used by mortgage lenders in the 70's would now be considered very archaic. At the show, mortgage technology was prevalent with systems for fraud, transparency, and electronic signature highlighted throughout the three day conference. Vendors and consultants offered, as stated by the conference prospectus, "strategic options to business challenges." At Xerox Mortgage Services, we offer a good strategic option for lenders. Our solution, BlitzDocs®, provides collaborative electronic loan folders and e-signature technology that enables lenders to streamline processes and be competitive. I am not a mortgage banker; I just help provide paperless and electronic signing technology to the industry. Let me know what you think...

Print 09 ~ What Xerox brings to the table...

Joseph Chillemi

See What Xerox is showing at Print 09 - September 11-17th. If you can't be there then register to join Xerox Virtual Print 09 ~ September 15th. Register: https://presentations.inxpo.com/Shows/Xerox/09-09/Registration/registration.htm @ P '09 Technology & Business Development Solutions ~ list below: 5 Minute demo links on right

Xerox FreeFlow - Full Complement ...digital workflow applications suite
Business Development / Profit Accelerator
XMPie
iGen4
iGen Automated Packaging Solutions
Concept Color 220
Xerox 700 Light Production Digital Color Press
Xerox 4127 Light Production Digital Mono Press
DC8000AP
Continuous Feed CF490
Continuous Feed CF1300
Nuvera 288
CocuColor 5000AP
Wide Format - Mono & Color
Off-Line Finishing
ColorQube
Xerox Supplies
Inkjet Display

PRINT 09 facts:

The largest, most comprehensive trade show held in the world for graphic design, digital prepress, printing, publishing, and converting technology.
Exposition takes place once every four years.

Intended Audience: estimating total of 100,000 printers, publishers, typographers, converters, bindery and finishing specialists and other buyers from the traditional graphic communications trades, prepress managers, desktop and electronic publishers, service bureaus and other users of evolving electronic products and services, graphic designers, art directors, advertising professionals, publication designers, catalogue and direct mail specials and others in the creative end of the business from 100 countries.