B2B Customer Acquisition at Fuji Xerox (China) Limited

I would like to share a few things from my personal experience with Fuji Xerox (China) Limited during last summer as an intern. Because my task was to create a strategic plan for expanding its office solution business line (an integration of software and hardware products, as well as services to help customers deal with documents more efficiently). I had to consider many ways to acquire customers under a B2B environment. Although obviously the proposed methods would all be conducted offline, I feel that the things I had to consider share some common characteristics with an online business.

1. Enterprise Deals. This is conducted through Fuji Xerox Global Service (FXGS) division. Because many of our customers are global companies, FXGS means that if they choose to expand into China, we will provide them the same standard of equipment and service in their home market, such as Japan. Since office solution has much more widespread application in Japan and U.S. than in China, most of these customers will make similar requests after coming to China. Although this method worked quite effectively in the past, and generated a decent amount of revenue as the customers expanded their branches in China, it really limited the scope of FX's business, since it can only cater to multinational corporations and unable to tap into the growing domestic market.

2. Reseller Agreement. FX sells its office equipment through direct sales foce in the big cities in China, where as for the more remote cities, it utilizes resellers or dealers. This model is quite unique in the industry, and has worked well in the past. However, from a office solution point of view, it is not the most ideal model. Because providing customers with a complete office solution is a high value adding activity, it usually requires the extensive system analysis by highly trained personnels. In the big metro cities where a direct sales force, supported by system analysts, could provide customers with such a value. However, resellers lack the capabilities to deliver similar value. As a result, the geographic scop of FX's solution business was seriously limited.

3. Strategic Partnership. This is one proposal I made in my final plan to solve the problem, and the target of such partnership would be with System Integrators (SI). The basic collaboration model would be that the SI will consider FX as the designated document/printing system provider. The office solution system we provide will then be integrated into any corporate IT infrastracture that the SI is responsible for. On the other hand, whenever we sold an office solution system to a customer, which usually will require some system integration work, we will refer the customer to our partner SI.