EVOLUTION AT THE CORE Ragni Mehta Drives Xerox’s innovation in high-end production.
For Ragni Mehta, vice president and general manager of Xerox’s cut-sheet business, evolution is more than a buzzword for her nearly three-decade career at the company. Evolution is her key to succeeding in today’s competitive print market.
Mehta’s current role at Xerox illustrates the power of a continued commitment to learning, acquiring new skills, and shifting one’s career path to create a successful future. Since joining Xerox after a co-op opportunity during her undergraduate years with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Mehta has moved throughout the company in various roles, all while bolstering her career with added educational opportunities. With the support of the company, Mehta earned her master’s in business administration from the University of Rochester Simon School of Business, as well as a Master BlackBelt designation from 6 Sigma. She also was able to augment her technology expertise as an engineer with business operational experience, including learning about sales distribution, capacity, compensation and quota planning, as well as short-term position in the U.K. as a financial analyst.
“Xerox does a great job of creating an environment that encourages people to go outside their comfort zones, meet new people, learn about different area of the business,” said Mehta. “It’s really helped me to stay relevant and identify new opportunities.”
Today, Mehta focuses on the high-end production space, managing the overall lifecycle of cut-sheet products. She and her team work to identify product strategy, opportunities in the market, setting goals and objectives to identify what those offerings should be. In essence, she is enabling product lifecycles and development processes, considering when Xerox needs to add and remove products from the market ““ from cradle to grave ““ as well as supporting global markets to launch and manage performance of products, provide training and market intelligence, and helping partners be successful in bringing products to market and supporting them in the market.
With a No. 1 market share in the placement of units in cut-sheet, Mehta is particularly focused on uncovering new areas for growth, building off this position of power.
“In a mature market, over time in order to be successful, we really need to be thinking beyond the box itself to really help customers solve problems,” said Mehta. “We need to think about things from an end-to-end application perspective.”
In line with this thinking, Mehta is looking to add more value to the applications Xerox offers. One example she offers is with Xerox’s efforts to go beyond the four-color process, also known as CMYK-plus. Xerox has developed innovative technology to allow users incorporate digital embellishments having extended the gamut, which includes white dry ink and metallics through its iGen and Iridesse platforms. According to Mehta, these capabilities enable Xerox’s customers to have conversations with their end-customers to drive value.
“Their end-customers are willing to pay a premium for these options so it’s a win-win,” said Mehta. “We’re able to create offerings in our portfolio to help our print service providers and they’re able to command more of a premium from their end-customers as a result. We’re looking for growth opportunities not only from the sheer number of pages printed, but also from the value of those pages over time.”
Inkjet is another area of focus. In the production space, inkjet is allowing customers to deliver transactional, business color, accommodating higher volumes at cost-effective prices. As Xerox looks to invest in the future of inkjet””especially as estimates indicate over 50% of pages will be printed with inkjet by 2020″”the company is looking to commercialize its technology in a variety of ways. Xerox is looking far beyond the document to consider applications for a multitude of uses, including folding cartons, packaging labels, and printed electronics by embedding a level of intelligence, which allows customers to collect data.
“When we think about print, we often think about paper,” said Mehta. “But when we think about future generations, they’re picking up things and we can use printing technology to put some type of communication directly on an object. We can extend the relationship by potentially putting a QR code on it so they can go to a personalized website and continue that relationship.
The beauty of digital print is that there is some level of variable print on it, and personalization has become a key component of Xerox’s value proposition, especially as the number of jobs printers are printing has increased but the run length of those jobs are shrinking. Digital print continues to grow and leveraging hyper-personalization tools such as Xerox’s marketing platform XMPie and its FreeFlow software suite are helping the company’s customers drive more value in the print.
“It’s about extending that customer experience, becoming part of our customers’ lives, and thinking about how we can go beyond just the document and become an integral part of the day-to-day lives of our clients and customers and use our technology to help them improve their day-to-day experiences with a level of personalization and unique experience, leveraging our innovation and technology,” added Mehta.
While product development remains at the forefront of Xerox’s business strategy, the company fully recognizes the power of its distribution partners. Even though Xerox has had much success through its direct channel, it is actively expanding its indirect sales channels worldwide.
“We are seeing more momentum in the indirect channel in the production space with some of our entry-production color products,” said Mehta. “Our Versant platform has all of the elements of our automation, productivity, and color management capabilities of our larger devices, but it’s designed for customers looking to enter the production print environment.”
As Mehta looks to the future of print, she has confidence Xerox is in the right place and the right time to leverage the innovation of its employees to benefit the company’s customers.
“It’s all about leveraging the core knowledge we have with print and apply it to different applications,” said Mehta. “Think about drawing concentric circles from where we are today.”
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