When healthcare providers are asked if they want to stop sending and receiving faxed patient records– it is essentially a rhetorical question. So why hasn’t healthcare sacked the fax?

While most hospitals and doctor offices have switched from paper to Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, these platforms often lack a critical function: The ability to securely share patient information with other providers or other healthcare systems. Old habits prevail and fax remains the go-to method of sharing patient information. In many cases, this means printing records from the EHR and faxing the information.  On the receiving end, the provider faces the task of scanning and archiving records to their own system. Not only is this workflow counterproductive, it’s also error prone, and puts patient information at risk whenever documents are lost or get delayed during the exchange process.

Change doesn’t have to be difficult

While most providers wish for the day to stop using fax, physicians and specialists — especially at small clinics — are hesitant to change. Little time can be dedicated to learning something new, and providers fear a different solution will fall short of evolving industry requirements.

Enter the Xerox Healthcare MFP Solution – connected by Kno2®. The solution  connects the multifunction printer to a cloud network of millions of physicians and specialists via the Direct technical standard. This standard lets healthcare providers exchange health information safely, securely and easily.  Most importantly, the Healthcare MFP Solution delivers a path to interoperability – a practical way to transition away from fax workflows.

Are you ready to eliminate the hassle of fax workflows? Learn about the power of Kno2.  

The transition begins by offering a better way to fax.  Ironic?  Yes, but starting with fax is essential because it is ubiquitous.  Clear monthly reporting on fax usage allows providers to efficiently target community partners with whom they exchange the most, and migrate them to Direct Exchange.  Quickly, the majority of exchange is no longer fax-based.

Transform paper into electronic, shareable content

The healthcare MFP solution: Xerox provides a printer app from Kno2 that improves workflow, moves information efficiently to other providers. Best of all, the Healthcare MFP solution keeps you compliant with privacy regulations.

Why the Xerox Healthcare MFP?

• Save Time: Electronically process only the pages you need, not the pages received.
• Save Money: Kno2 guarantees the lowest per page in the industry.
• Mitigate Risk: Secure transmission meets federal privacy laws that protect health information.

Leslie Henry Wilson, owner of Personal Touch Health Care Services, saw the Xerox Healthcare MFP as an opportunity to improve the security and privacy of clinical documents. The digital paper trail, she says, reduces the risk of violating her patients’ privacy – a sigh of relief for this business owner.

The post App to the Fax Rescue appeared first on Xerox Connect.

It’s easy to chuckle at Clifford Stoll’s 1995 Newsweek article, “Why The Web Won’t Be Nirvana.” The internet, he asserted, was “oversold and trendy.” Telecommuting? Commerce shifting from malls and offices to networks and modems?

“Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet — which there isn’t,” he harrumphed, “the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.”

Fast forward 23 years. Brandingmag.com reports that 88 percent of executives purchase business products online. Part of the reason may be that salespeople continue to be a vital part of the equation. Human sales reps must take the high level responsibilities with customers, such as negotiate contracts or exercise judgement on difficult problems. But algorithms and bots can do the mind-numbingly repetitive tasks, such as present custom catalogs or process orders. Roll the technology into an online portal, and you see that they perform these tasks much more quickly, accurately and securely. And they do it all day long, every single day of the year. (Techradar.com reports that Amazon sold about $3.4 billion in goods during their 36-hour Prime Day 2018.)

That’s why a term like eCommerce, much like the internet, never went way. In fact, they got better. That’s why Xerox – which invented many of the technologies that made the internet possible — got on board early.

Your custom online shopping experience is here

For decades, the Xerox Elite eCommerce Storefront Solution has offered private and secure websites where your people can order equipment, supplies and services. In that time, B2B has become much more consumerized, and buyers’ expectations for the online ordering experience with suppliers have intensified. As a result, Xerox matches expectations with improved online capabilities. It’s exactly what you should expect when you do business with a technology company.

Your Xerox Elite eCommerce Consultant will help you learn how to set-up your Elite ecommerce Storefront Solution.

These customized portals allow your people to spend less time procuring Xerox equipment and supplies, and more time concentrating on their real jobs – delighting your customers.

Energy powerhouse Southern Company turned to Xerox to streamline print technology procurement across 10 affiliates. The move simplified purchases, eliminated redundancy and reduced print-related costs.

Five Ways the Xerox B2B E-Commerce Portal Makes Procurement Easier

Transparency: The prices you negotiated appear beside every item in your eCatalog. Optional approval functions can be added to control spending and eliminate unauthorized purchases.

Less Paper Work: The data and documents relevant to your partnership with Xerox can be stored in a centralized repository accessible from your portal.

Procurement on your terms:  Approved users can place their orders when it’s most convenient for them — no waiting for meetings or phone calls to be returned. The order history feature shows what was ordered and who ordered it. You and your team control the procurement process at every step. Moreover, Xerox can integrate with your ERP system, so you can keep your existing procurement process intact.

Streamlined: Intuitive navigation on the Xerox Elite e-Commerce portal makes it easy to find the products you need, checkout, and approve orders in fewer steps. The portal eliminates bottlenecks, reduces errors, and make procurement more efficient and cost-effective.

Global: Set up a portal anywhere in the world. Operate as many portals in as many currencies as you need. Each will be customized with your business’ approved catalog for equipment and supplies at your negotiated prices. Our online storefronts allow you to keep track of procurement costs around the world, while making it easier for every office to order in their local currency.

Commerce on a network

Your portal is typically up and running within 30 days. However, the support continues throughout the life of your contract, including an easy way to recycle the supplies you purchase from Xerox.

B2B eCommerce with Xerox

Xerox Elite E-Commerce solutions allow you to browse an online custom catalog of the Xerox equipment and supplies  on your contract—at your contracted prices, so you can shop and order electronically and efficiently.

The obvious problem with Clifford Stoll’s Newsweek article is that it took only the technology of the day into account. We know, however, that technology has never been static. In fact, the pace of technological change only gets faster.

Today, Clifford sells blown glass Klein bottles on the internet through his company, Acme Klein Bottles, which he runs out of his home. But his 1995 rant did correctly point out that social conventions would lag behind technology.

“Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen.”

We’re listening, Clifford. And we hear you.

The post Making B2B eCommerce Easier, One Order at a Time appeared first on Xerox Connect.

You walk into a room and you see a chair and a pen. The possibility of taking any of various actions on these objects is an affordance. For instance, you might try to write with the chair and sit on the pen; but you’re more likely to take an action that is readily perceivable – in this case, sit in the chair and write with the pen.

That’s how it goes with humans and machines. For the technology to succeed, the user must easily understand what to do with it. David Biegelsen is a research fellow and charter member of PARC. Biegelsen and PARC have been at the center of Silicon Valley since before it was called Silicon Valley.

When they asked if the paperless office was imminent, Biegelsen and his PARC cohorts spent the next 48 years redefining all forms of communication – person to person, people and machines as well as machine to machine. The ideas and inventions that came out of PARC redefined “the office” and how work gets done.

These days, Biegelsen still works part time in a PARC lab. He sees his primary role as helping fellow researchers “come up with good ideas and nudge research into useful, interesting, impactful areas.”

This interview with Biegelsen takes a look at the modern workplace from one of the men who shaped it.

Question: How do you describe your work?

David Biegelsen: I tend to be thinking and discussing work-related topics over lunch, in the shower, wherever. The fun of identifying and solving problems gives me great pleasure.

Q: Is the technology you use making you more or less productive?

DB: Technology is an amplifier of human and inter-human capabilities. Appropriate technology provides human prosthetics that are almost transparent, yet intensely extends our capabilities. As just one example, (the internet) allows easy, directed, just-in-time continuous learning that allows me to address problems at an expert level. It allows me to come up with new ideas and vet them rapidly. Just-in-time, self-directed, education that is tailored to the individual is likely the only way for humans to keep up with their evermore intelligent technologies, and to ensure that the future is a marriage of humans with technology — instead of humans becoming irrelevant.

Q: Name three things that are absolutely necessary for you to get your job done.

DB: Terrifically creative colleagues, a historically interdisciplinary environment, and corporate outlook that values and supports divergent thinking and “working in the white spaces.”

More articles like this
Read more about PARC.

Read more about Xerox Innovation.

Q: White spaces?

DB: White spaces are the regions between boundaries (the bounds of disciplines or views or beliefs.) It is frequently within the white spaces that the most important problems are found and world-enlarging breakthroughs are achieved. One relevant example: At one time, computer scientists were focused on designing more powerful individual computers. The notion of enabling inter-computer communication – and then enabling people to communicate and collaborate – unleashed capabilities that boggle the mind and were not approachable by researchers focusing within their perceived bounds. Bringing together people with diverse outlooks and areas of expertise and intentionally addressing the white spaces has proved to be a very powerful tool for revealing consequential areas for progress. 

Q: What do you think the “office” of the future will look like?

DB: That’s funny. That was the question we asked ourselves when PARC opened 48 years ago. For example, we wondered if a paperless office was imminent. We envisaged two possible futures that would provide the affordances of paper – including ease of interaction, low cost so that one could give the “document” away, throw it away, et cetera – but also provide the affordances of the digital world, including searchability, wide dissemination, reconfigurability, and more.

Q: How has technology fundamentally changed the workplace?

DB: I believe that technology evolution is pretty much co-evolution. In a humorous way, silicon and carbon (human) constructs are co-evolving. We design silicon devices and they modify our capabilities. We only feed the ones that seem compatible with our needs, and we strive to make them more capable. So we adapt to each other and evolve in a coupled manner.

(Subscribe to this blog so you won’t miss a thing, or retrieve your favorite Modern Workplace articles here.)

Q: Back to the “office.” Where does the future go from here?

DB: To predict the office of the future, I believe we have to focus on the affordances that we value now as well as the affordances that could be added. We should understand that there is not just one potential future. All futures are not only possible; they well may coexist for many years.

I believe we are on a fast path to achieving human prostheses — like augmented and virtual reality tools — that will allow us to be in a work place with global access to information and each other, no matter where we are. But we have to design the virtual space so that human interactions and all its affordances are well-supported. The invention of the future will depend as much on ethnographers and psychologists as engineers.

PARC, a Xerox company
PARC is in the business of breakthroughs. Learn more about the services and expertise at PARC.

Q: What are some of the positives and negatives of the modern working environment?

DB: Bringing together a rich diversity of people, and providing space and resources to create and try out products, are important affordances. Getting to know a relatively few colleagues well is pleasurable and facilitative. However, limiting the population watershed of work places to people who live within a reasonable commuting distance and time synchrony is a negative. For the time being, it’s the best solution we have.

Q: What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to communicating and connecting with your colleagues, clients or partners?

DB: Time.

The post Silicon Valley Changed Everything appeared first on Xerox Connect.

I had the good fortune of spending a few days in the UK with my Xerox colleagues and our customer, The Commercial Group, a fast growing channel partner and a Xerox champion

During my visit, I learned about how Xerox technology is a key enabler to The Commercial Group’s “No Limits” program, the centerpiece of their contribution to the improvement of society. It’s a tireless effort to reach young people who may not otherwise have a path to independence and economic success.

No Limits provides critical life skills to the economically disadvantaged, no matter what career or educational path the person chooses. It’s open, accessible and accommodating to even those young people with the most significant challenges — behavioral or economic. Thanks to Xerox, the program has now begun to break even, and is expected to even make a profit in the coming years.

Commercial Group uses Xerox’s Versant press to build a successful work environment where the program’s participants learn accountability and responsibility, as well as a professional skill. It even focuses on life skills, such as the importance of coming to work every day, and how to interact with people. The Versant press is being used to produce business cards, the Foundation’s most profitable offering. I met three program participants all from different backgrounds. Each valued the path the No Limits program created for them. It was a unique opportunity for me to see how Xerox technology can be used to further the societal good.

Xerox and CSR

The Global Citizenship Report shows how we continue to help people, communities and the planet grow and thrive.

The Xerox Digital Career Pathway Program is designed to help people — especially at-risk youth, the incarcerated and students — acquire the skills and knowledge they need to achieve success in digital printing.

Corporate social responsibility at Xerox: This blog reports on the Xerox programs and Xerox people who make positive impacts in the communities where we do business.

Careers in print production

It reminded me of the parallels to The Xerox Digital Career Pathway Program, an accredited certificate program aimed at student and adult learners in the United States. It’s designed to provide opportunities to acquire the skills and knowledge to help drive success in the industry of digital production printing and workflow. The program is a collaboration with our customers and is dedicated to training the print industry’s future workforce. The Bridgeport (Connecticut) Public Schools began using the Digital Career Pathway Program in 2012. Like The Commercial Group, they also focus on “life skills” and critical aspects of running a business, such as pricing, timing of jobs and customer service.

Back at The Commercial Group, which also hosted a CSR day, I met with suppliers, partners, and customers from across the U.K. We shared best practices, ideas and strategies to protect our planet, inspire our people, and drive our businesses forward in a sustainable and profitable way. I wrote more about this extraordinary meeting in “Building a Sustainable Business” on Edie.net. They provide practical information, insight and intelligence for energy, sustainability and resource efficiency professionals with the information they need to make their businesses more sustainable.

Xerox is proud to call The Commercial Group and its Foundation our customer. I was inspired and energized by the time I spent with them. It is a great example of how, together, Xerox and our customers create sustainable businesses and become a force for good.

The post Technology , Life Skills and Corporate Social Responsibility appeared first on Xerox Connect.

Welcome to the future. Here’s your smartphone, smart watch, connected house, and a printer that’s part of your automated, networked workflows. Also, it turns out that human nature changes more slowly than technology, so don’t forget to pick up your IT security solution.

Security breaches have always been top of mind. That’s why Xerox builds security into its hardware and services.

Learn more about security from Xerox

Insights on Data Protection on Xerox.com.

More articles about security on this blog.

Cisco ISE on Connect

State-of-the-Art Printer and Data Security on Xerox.com

Chief information officers (CISOs) flock to events like Black Hat in order stay up to date on information security research, development, and trends. Some of what you will hear there is available here. What follows are insights and advice from information security experts at Xerox, McAfee and Cisco.

Alissa Johnson: IOT security is a mission impossible

Xerox CISO Alissa Johnson (Dr. Jay) says that when you look for a particular problem, you will miss other things that you’re supposed to notice. The “adversary” — hackers and cyber thieves — know what you’re looking for, so they send things into your infrastructure that you’re not looking for. Or, at least, cleverly disguised as something you want.

The lesson of the moon-walking bear warns us that even security professionals will miss something they’re not looking for. At the two-minute mark in this video , Dr. Jay explains.

Dr. Jay, outlines three proactive security measures that you can do right now to spot the adversary.

1. Hunting: Assume you’re compromised; take the offense. Breaches are based on three things; a visible IP, an open port, and a vulnerable service. Focus your efforts there.
2. Zero Trust Model: Our innate nature is to trust and love. Think in terms of whitelisting instead of trusting. Whitelisting means someone asks permission to access before you grant the ability to access the network. The default can no longer be that if you’re in the network, then you are trusted. Trust must be earned.
3. Cognitive security. Allow products to do things for us. Also known as advanced automation, it’s the most disruptive part of proactive measure. Allow systems to think and do. Right now they think and learn to analyze for us, then wait for a human to react. Let the machine close ports and blocking IPs. Let your people use their intelligence and creativity to keep you ahead of the adversary.

Dov Yoran: Automation can simplify the complex

“The world is moving fast. The world is complicated … There are a tsunami of devices being lit, turned on, communicating back,” Dov Yoran, senior director of the Security Business Group at Cisco, explained at a recent security summit. “These things aren’t necessarily built with security in mind.”

Dov walks through the challenges and complexities of operating in today’s environment, and how it’s evolved through the years. What has changed? Why is it more difficult?

Dov walks us through the challenges and complexities of operating in today’s environment and how it’s evolved through the years. Watch his full presentation: https://youtu.be/arTFGcaJBqw

Inevitably, you will have a security breach, some sort of malware will bypass your company’s firewall or antivirus program. What can be done to mitigate the aftermath? In his talk titled “Changing the Security Equation,” he discusses how security teams can address these challenges to secure their corporate IT environments better.

“Can we take snippets of machine learning and big data and other analytics, platforms, to make us smarter?” he asks rhetorically. “Can we automate these things to bring the balance to our security teams that are protecting our infrastructure, and, of course, the people that are using it?”

Candace Worley: Get over the automation conundrum

Candace Worley, chief technical strategist for McAfee, says security professionals have traditionally been in a quandary over how and when to use automation in their security practice. Fifteen years ago, the majority of the workforce was confined to desks on premises. Today, with mobility, remote workers, and even employees’ desire to “bring your own device,” the technical environment is increasingly difficult to control. Automation seems to be the best way out.

In a digital world where threats change often and come faster than ever before, finding the right talent is increasingly difficult. Add to that the sheer volume of data that must be analyzed, and the limits of human capacity to sift through it.

Do we still have the luxury of seeing automation as a risk too great to employ on a broad scale? Candace identified three factors that play into the chief information security officer’s willingness to view automation as solution, rather than viewing it as a threat.

1. The ever present and global nature of the security threats against their organizations.
2. The overwhelming and increasing amount of data that needs to be tracked, processed and protected.
3. The complexity of the IT environment.

Candace says security organizations have typically limited their use of automation to the most mundane and least risky security activities. She asks if you still have the luxury of seeing automation as too big a risk. Watch her full presentation at https://youtu.be/7w9PsGPhigo

Information security professionals must look at automation as a medium through which some of their problems can be solved.

“Machines are extremely good at analyzing large groups of data in a rapid amount of time,” she said. “Humans can come in with strategic intellect, look at the context of the data, and interpret it.”

Steve Hoover: What children teach us about cyber security

Self-driving trucks are not programmed; they are taught. And so it goes, too, with drones, delivery robots, robotics, and the entire world of connected devices.

“Despite the history of security breaches, [organizations] are getting better at this,” Steve Hoover, chief technology officer at Xerox explains. “We are entering a big step forward in terms of the value, kinds of data, and amount of data that is at risk.”

Back to the truck example. The autonomous systems learn how to recognize safe and unsafe things in the world, and they make decisions on their own.

“When we think of cyber security,” Steve said, “we cannot think about systems that are static. We are dealing with systems that are changing their behavior in response to the world around them.”

So, how do you teach a machine? Your children serve as a metaphor. You teach them to make good choices, and how to learn the right behaviors that will keep them (and others) safe.

Xerox Chief Technology Officer, Steve Hoover, and Ersin Uzun from PARC, a Xerox Company, discuss the challenges we face in securing smart, connected and autonomous systems. Two metaphors: Our children, and mother nature: How they guide our thinking on machine learning. https://youtu.be/RB2rnZjTO9Q

“We have to take drastically different approached to security,” added Ersin Uzun, who joins Steve in the video, above. Ersin, director of the System Sciences Laboratory at PARC, points out that no system can have a predetermined response for every situation it might face in an unpredictable environment.

“Not only should systems be self-reconfiguring,” Ersin said, “they must also be able to detect problems and recover from them.”

Indeed, the future has arrived. But the necessity for data protection and security will never go away.

The post Cyber Security Insights from Four Experts You Can Trust appeared first on Xerox Connect.

Two things you must know about artificial intelligence (AI):

“AI Investment Is Healthy and Increasing: Investments in AI pilots and proofs of concept are beginning to yield results, fueling double-digit budget growth for AI.

“If You Approach AI as Traditional Tech, You Will Fail: The opportunity cost of AI aligns with its return on investment (ROI) when technology organizations use it to redesign business models and operations, not to optimize individual tasks.”[i]

No longer should you wonder why the artificial intelligence hype has reached fever pitch. That said, “hype” is the operative word. For this reason, leaders from all sectors are forgiven if they can’t distinguish between what is real and what is fiction. Failure to join the AI fray, however, will likely be unforgivable.

That’s why Xerox and Forrester invited Silicon Valley leaders to a lunch and networking event at PARC, the famed Xerox research lab.

The event focused on real-world applications of artificial intelligence. Hosts Lawrence Lee (Xerox Vice President of Incubation and Strategy) and Brandon Purcell (Principal Analyst at Forrester) highlighted emerging trends and questions from this nascent field, and a look at how AI can impact Xerox’s (and our clients’) business model.

We're putting artificial intelligence to work for the print industry right now. What are you waiting for?

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 4, 2018

Artificial intelligence examples

Lawrence Lee dialed the way-back machine 30 years to PARC’s early work in AI at a time when memory was expensive and computers were slow. Everything about computing was expensive. Despite these limitations, PARC researchers created pioneering technologies in natural language processing. They created symbolic representations of grammar as well as the computational algorithms that could parse language into semantic representations, and also reverse them to generate natural language text.

More recent examples are found in machine automation. PARC and Xerox researchers developed a model-based approach for an AI planner that controls the software for Xerox reconfigurable production printing presses. These presses can run with a number of different modules, and the planner understands how they fit together and creates a process plan to complete the print job using the modules in a given press. The planner, in essence, “programs” the control software for a particular print job so that print runs are much more reliable.

Resource: artificial intelligence

AI and Human-Machine Collaboration: PARC’s work in artificial intelligence and human-machine collaboration is at the forefront of a new, transformative era of machine intelligence.

A sneak peek at the future of #AI from @PARCinc. https://t.co/3ZH1KBNeYx pic.twitter.com/7iHZPi1PIx

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 31, 2018

“Many times,” Lawrence pointed out, “a human programmer cannot anticipate all the ways in which a machine will operate in the field, and problems occur when a machine’s programming can’t handle an unforeseen operation.”

In both cases, PARC developed a hybrid approach to AI that combines model-based reasoning and machine learning. This allows PARC to create robust AI systems even when training data is sparse, such as often is the case with highly engineered physical systems and unstructured enterprise applications.

For example, existing enterprise workflow automation solutions work well on repetitive processes that are predictable, but the next frontier will be in intelligent assistants that can help with more complex and variable knowledge work. Along these lines, Xerox is working on AI technologies that can help automate collaborative content authoring workflows based on its deep expertise in document understanding and natural language processing.

“A document,” Lawrence explained by way of example, “is defined by its intent, structure, and content. We can combine document models with training examples, and for specific document types, our system will be able to generate a first draft automatically.” From that point, humans review and edit the draft to add the creativity and judgment that is difficult for an AI system to understand.

To be sure, this is the type of automation that will disrupt some sectors, but Brandon says Forrester’s research points to the fact AI will not cause massive unemployment. “The term ‘augmented intelligence’ has taken root,” he said, “and the nature of people’s jobs will change.”

“I think about this type of automation in terms of human-machine collaboration where machines help people do their jobs better,” Lawrence responded. “This is the Xerox legacy of making technology so easy, that everyone can use it.”

“Augmented intelligence” describes the powerful combination of artificial and human intelligence. Such systems result in a modern centaur, so called after the half-human, half-horse creatures of Greek mythology. These human-machine teams, take advantage of each member’s strength: the computer’s speed and the human’s knowledge and perception.

Can you trust artificial intelligence?

No question, introducing AI into your organization is a formidable challenge. Given the primacy of accurate models, up-to-date information, and correcting for bias, Brandon pointed out that trust is critical. If a machine advises a certain action, the human must understand how the machine is modeled, as well as the predictors it uses.

“It’s a huge issue for doctors making a medical diagnosis where the consequences could be quite dire,” he explained. “Even the marketers I talk to won’t use a black box algorithm if they don’t at least understand the predictors.”

Lawrence agreed with Brandon’s assessment: “If humans cannot understand why a system makes a decision, or if the machine cannot demonstrate that it understands the broader context and explain why it made a specific recommendation, then AI will not realize its full potential.”

Trust is the crux of “Explainable AI (XAI),” a research initiative funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). PARC was selected as a participant in this program, working with collaborative partners to develop a framework to increase the transparency of machine learning through explanatory models.

The notion of collaboration and trust among humans and machines is the key. How can these teams of modern centaurs work in an enterprise? How do you create systems that figure out how to break down tasks among humans and machines? If you can answer these questions, then you have a leg up on AI.

The future of work revolves around digital natives, the 50% of the workforce who are under 35, who expect technology to help them get the job done. @HooverSteve @PARCInc #innovation

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 6, 2018

Resource: Innovation from Xerox

Xerox innovation at work – The future is underway with big, juicy ideas that solve today’s business challenges with an eye toward tomorrow.

Xerox Connect reports on innovation — News and ideas from or about executives and employees in the Xerox Research, Development and Engineering group.

What’s next for Xerox and artificial intelligence?

PARC’s work on the DARPA XAI program offers a good model for what could be next in Xerox’s future. By leveraging government research funding to solve important technical challenges in the world, PARC gains highly valuable insights that can be applied to solve similar problems for Xerox’s customers, such as creating intelligent assistants that collaborate with knowledge workers and turn information into action.

For example, PARC scientists are working on conversational interfaces that will offer humans both a higher degree of transparency and a more natural conversational interaction. Whether it’s better chatbot experiences or voice interactions, the solution must go beyond single-turn inquiries. The machine must be able to understand questions from people who don’t know how to use the structured vocabulary that the device expects, or who don’t have the expertise to express a perfect query. The system can’t simply say “I don’t understand,” or give you a list of search results for possible answers. It should engage in a conversation and create an evolving shared understanding between the human and machine to deliver the right information, or complete a collaborative task together.

As another example, The U.S. Department of Energy is funding research at PARC on printed sensors and electronics. Inexpensive sensors within buildings can provide high resolution thermal models that could optimize heating and air conditioning systems to improve efficiency. Lawrence pointed out that we’re only seeing the beginnings of what will be possible in terms of new low-cost sensors in the Internet of Things, which will generate new forms of data that will further drive the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

For Xerox, research in artificial intelligence and, more importantly, how it will deliver concrete business value, elevates conversations with our customers beyond print, and help them embrace the era of intelligent work.

We can't wait, so let's get started. @PARCinc #innovation https://t.co/JpgsuuaEHV

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 6, 2018

[i] Forrester report, AI Ushers In The Age Of Business Reinvention, by Michele Goetz, November 2017

The post Artificial Intelligence: Applications, Opportunity and Trust appeared first on Xerox Connect.

Long before “clean tech” entered the lexicon, Xerox committed itself to sustainability in our products and processes.

• We introduced the first recycled grade of paper for copiers some 50 years ago.
• We are a charter partner of the ENERGY STAR program for office equipment.
• We’re a leader in remanufacturing and the circular economy.

If you want a specific time frame, you could start with 1997, the year our major manufacturing operations around the world were third-party certified to ISO 14001. (And they still are.)

This is how I begin what can be a geeky conversation about the ISO 14001 standard, and how Xerox achieved certification for our environmental management systems. (For the purposes of this blog, I’ll limit the geek-speak.)

What ISO 14001 does for clean technology

The International Standardization Organization (ISO) is an independent, non-governmental organization that develops and publishes international standards, including those for environmental management systems which are covered by 14001. If you are a technology company, you want to be a clean technology company.

This voluntary, internationally agreed upon standard sets out the requirements for an environmental management system.ISO14001 helps organizations:

• Demonstrate a commitment to improving the environment.
• Improve the identification and management of environmental risks.
• Demonstrate compliance with individual countries environmental regulations.
• Provide a competitive and financial advantage through improved efficiencies and reduced costs.
• Encourage better environmental performance of suppliers by integrating them into the organization’s business systems.
• Increase leadership involvement and employee engagement.
• May provide an advantage over competitors when participating in Requests for Proposals (RFP) or bids and tenders.

Environmental protection at Xerox                 

Xerox Sustainable Roots: An infographic that shows how Xerox embraces its social and environmental responsibilities.

You and Xerox: Enabling a Circular Economy: Xerox has been a leader in the circular economy for over 30 years

Environmentally preferable practices at our reverse logistics facilities allows us to leave a gentler impact upon our planet, contribute to healthier communities, and deliver better results to our financial performance.

More articles from Xerox Connect: Learn how Xerox and Xerox people help protect our environment.

Plan-Do-Check-Act

The basic principles of IS0 14001 are based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, which helps a company achieve continual improvement:

• Plan: Establish environmental objectives and the processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with their environmental policy.
• Do: Implement the processes as planned.
• Check: Monitor and measure processes against the environmental policy, including commitments, environmental objectives and operating criteria, and report the results.
• Act: Take actions to continually improve.

 Certification is optional

Third-party certification – where an independent certification body audits a company’s practices against the requirements of the standard – is not a requirement. However, a third-party certification demonstrates and validates the standard has been implemented properly. Many of the benefits can be achieved from using the standard without going through the accredited certification process.

At Xerox, our major manufacturing operations have been third-party certified to ISO 14001 since 1997. Our major worldwide technology equipment distribution centers achieved certification in 2010. Each site has its own certificate, and its own process for achieving certification. Program oversight at Xerox is managed at the corporate level, which ensures all worldwide activities align with our environmental sustainability goals.

In September of 2015, ISO launched the ISO 14001:2015 standard, with new criteria and requirements. All certified sites under the prior version of the standard had a period of three years to transition to the new standard.

Seven steps to clean tech success  

In all, 10 Xerox locations worldwide successfully transitioned to the new ISO 14001:2015 certification. Our Webster, New York, site is our most complex, because it includes seven different manufacturing plants under one multi-site certificate. The transition process in Webster was more complex than the other sites.

Here’s how we did it:

 A kick-off meeting: All the major players came together to discuss key changes in the new standard. We established the cadence of team meetings that would allow us to transition to the new standard in the allocated timeframe. Our team decided on monthly meetings.

Performed a gap analysis: This helped us determine the actions needed to move from current state to the desired, future state. From here, we prioritized needs, allocated resources, and evaluated the activities and documents that we needed.

Made it hands-on: We used our meetings to delve into the priority areas identified through the gap analysis (Risk Assessment and Life Cycle considerations). We developed and updated templates, forms, procedures and manuals necessary to close the gaps.

Pre-audit: This provided an opportunity to ask the auditor questions, clarify our interpretation of new sections, and test our understanding of the different clauses in the standard. It also allowed us to highlight areas that required special attention during the transition and registration

Scheduled the audit: The culmination of 18 months of effort, the audit took four days to complete.

Gathered lessons learned: ISO updates their standards periodically, so lessons learned – both good and bad –  were discussed and documented. They’ll help us prepare better for the next time, and we shared them with our other sites. A couple examples:

• New and updated documents and procedures served as a foundation for other ISO management systems certifications such as ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management System) and the new ISO 45001 (Occupational health and safety management system) certification.
• Our risk assessment process improved and we learned how to effectively identify, document, prioritize and manage risks and opportunities linked to the environmental management system.

Celebrate: After the audit was complete, we held a team lunch to celebrate the journey and the accomplishment.

It might be impossible for any company’s operations to have zero impact on our earth. Metaphorically speaking, however, it is possible to walk upon the earth with a lighter footprint. ISO standards point the way.

The post The Road to Clean Technology appeared first on Xerox Connect.

In the age of digital disruption, every company needs to think differently about their business – both to grow beyond their core markets, and to head off competition from new entrants. But often the exact skills that helped companies succeed in the past prevent them from finding success in the future. At Xerox we have reinvented the company multiple times as technologies and markets change over time.

While today’s chapter in our history is still being written, we have found several ways to think differently about our business. These six insights may be helpful to other companies with a similar need to transform and grow beyond their core business.

1) Focus on what your customers want, not what you make

Your customers buy from you for a variety of reasons, the most important is that you help them achieve the outcomes they want. But it’s all too easy to lose sight of that, and focus only on improving your product or service to keep up with competitors. This tunnel vision can prevent you from helping your customers achieve their outcomes in new and better ways, and exposes you to new entrants that have figured this out.

Access and print documents anywhere, at any time, on any device. https://t.co/4TL49puNYX

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 3, 2018

With this mindset, you focus on how to deliver your core value to your customers in new ways. For instance, auto manufacturers will still be around in the future, but they are starting to define themselves as “mobility services companies.” They will increasingly deliver transportation as a service that meets the needs of young people who have little interest in car ownership.

When you think about Xerox, it’s not wrong to think “Xerox makes printers.” But Xerox is not just a printer company. Fundamentally Xerox has always helped customers with work – using or inventing the best technologies of each age. Printing, scanning, and managing documents are key components of work, but only a subset of all the activities that define work.

It is critical for us to understand how our customers define work. Our office customers don’t just want to print; they want to automate workflows, and accelerate decisions and revenue. So we created ConnectKey® apps and workflow automation solutions that help our customers do exactly that. Similarly, we realized that our print provider customers aren’t just print shops; they are actually in the business of delivering marketing and communications services. With the emergence of digital media, we realized that they wanted help to deliver cross-media campaigns, so we created FreeFlow® ,a digital workflow solution. We also added personalized multichannel marketing software from XMPie,® A Xerox Company.

Innovation that reinvents

TechRadarPro: Why AI could be the key to taking Xerox to the next level – Lawrence Lee discusses the latest innovations at Xerox, and the next big breakout technologies for Xerox.

Xerox innovation at work – The future is underway with big, juicy ideas that solve today’s business challenges with an eye toward tomorrow.

Xerox Connect reports on innovation — News and ideas from or about executives and employees in the Xerox Research, Development and Engineering group.

2) Innovate in business models, not just technologies

It’s also important to create business models that make it easier for your customers to adopt new products faster. The original growth story of Xerox with the plain paper copier was as much a business model innovation as it was a new technology. Xerox launched the product with a leasing model to make it easier for customers to buy an expensive piece of office equipment that was unknown at the time. This is an especially important consideration with new technologies, because they are often expensive to produce until they can gain economies of scale.

Someday your managed print service visit may include a technician using augmented reality. Imagine that! @PARCinc #AR https://t.co/Vskx1acm1J pic.twitter.com/z0qL4JBn60

— Xerox (@Xerox) June 25, 2018

In mature markets, a business model innovation can also change the value proposition, and competitive dynamics, in an industry that has shifted focus from features to outcomes. Xerox invented the managed print services business model that introduced printing as a service with pay-per-click pricing. It aligned Xerox’s incentives with our customers, and focused us on the outcomes our clients wanted while we managed the complexity for them.

Marketers like the pay-per-click models of digital media because they are more clearly tied to conversions and return on investment. For companies that produce physical goods, it is harder to track and close the conversion loop. But with QR codes, beacons, and new types of sensors, it will become easier in the future to understand when something has happened. Of course, you and your customer have to agree on what “an action” is, but it aligns your incentives on value creation, and changes the conversation from “cost-plus” to “value,” and from “products” to “services.”

3) Create a unifying vision of the future

All of your employees want your company to grow through innovation, and they all have ideas on how best to do it. It can be helpful to create a unifying and directional vision of the future to focus your employees’ ideas and energy.

Creating the future is what we do. Learn more about how our innovations shape modern technology.

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 12, 2018

At Xerox, our unifying vision is that we help our customers work better at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds. This high-level vision helps us unify the roadmaps for the two different market segments of our business – intelligent work solutions, and graphic communications and industrial printing. Now our employees can think creatively about new growth opportunities at the intersection of the physical and digital, such as augmented reality applications, digital printing on objects, and even the combination of the two.

This unifying vision is also credible and exciting because it ties so well to our history of reinvention. Xerox has always innovated in how the world communicates, connects, and works. We have created entirely new industries from laser printing to digital publishing to managed print services. Today, we offer a range of digital printing, personalized cross-media communications, workflow apps, and content management solutions.

By defining a high-level but actionable vision that is aligned to your strategy, you can harness the creative energy of your employees with greater productivity.

4) Look both “inside out” and “outside in” for new opportunities

There are always many potential directions for innovation, and it can be difficult to evaluate and prioritize a large opportunity space. We have found that one effective approach is to look both “inside out” to apply your core capabilities in new adjacent markets, and “outside in” to identify new digital disruption opportunities sparked by new technologies.

Are you ready to unwrap the benefits of digital printed packaging? https://t.co/KVG5DKeYrd pic.twitter.com/iC6fkIbKM7

— Xerox (@Xerox) April 20, 2018

For example, Xerox is known for printing. But our capabilities in printing are much broader. A better description would be that Xerox has deep expertise in precisely depositing a variety of materials on a variety of substrates at high speeds, and with high accuracy. By redefining Xerox’s core capabilities, our opportunity space is no longer limited to toner and ink on paper. It’s easier to see how we can apply these digital printing capabilities to address adjacent markets, such as digital packaging, printed electronics, and digital manufacturing.

Similarly, Xerox also has extensive experience in managing fleets of multi-function printers in our managed print services offering. We use predictive analytics to optimize device, parts, and supplies availability. If we redefine this core capability beyond printers, we can see new markets in managed services for connected workplaces.

Many companies stop here with this type of “inside out” analysis. But it’s also important to understand how the world is changing to identify emerging, non-obvious market opportunities from the “outside in.” In our analysis, we believe the next major technology revolution is the convergence of the physical and digital worlds. This creates massive opportunities to transform how work gets done.

Our world has reached a critical mass of connected devices, collectively known as “the Internet of Things (IoT).” Sensors and electronics allow machines to perceive the physical world. Now enter machine intelligence, or what some call “narrow AI”, in which machines can understand and make decisions in domains that we have modeled with a high level of fidelity. Now you have a feedback loop that enables real world, real-time optimization. Add to that loop the machine’s ability to work collaboratively with people in knowledge-intensive workflows and learn from us. This area will be a very fertile ground for innovation over the next decade.

5) Break traditional tradeoffs to deliver greater value

With the emergence of digitalization in the age of the Internet of Things and Machine Intelligence, our customers have grown accustomed to personalized experiences that are also low cost. Consider your experience with Amazon, Netflix, Uber or Lyft. Digital natives, who now make up a large percentage of our customers and employees, demand these types of experiences in their personal and work lives.

The future of work revolves around digital natives, the 50% of the workforce who are under 35, who expect technology to help them get the job done. @HooverSteve @PARCInc #innovation

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 6, 2018

At Xerox, we are expected to deliver high quality managed print services and help our customers save money at the same time. When we analyze the data from our customers’ devices, we can optimize their supply level and their work processes. And when we analyze our customers’ printing activities, we can help them distinguish between “good” and “bad” printing, leading to opportunities to convert paper-based processes to digital workflows.

In every industry, companies have to rethink competitive strategy. Formerly, we were forced to think in binary terms of either high quality or low cost. Digitalization means these tradeoffs no longer exist, because digitization adds the “and” to our strategies, i.e. high quality AND low production costs; personalization AND efficiency. Researchers (and marketers) have to rethink how we deliver on the “and” promise.

6) Adopt agile and open innovation

Inherent in the act of pursuing new markets is a lack of historical data to plan for the future. Innovation for new markets requires a human-centered, agile process that focuses on rapid learning and iteration, with explicit hypotheses and experiments to create new business options.

Creating the future is what we do. Learn more about how our innovations shape modern technology.

— Xerox (@Xerox) July 12, 2018

In addition, companies will likely not have all of the required technical expertise, so it’s important to look outside for innovation. However, when you pursue new markets, it’s a mistake to equate open innovation with technology sourcing. When there is high uncertainty, you can’t treat innovation partners like vendors. You need to share more information and manage intellectual property (IP) rights with a longer term strategic view. Focus on what you really need to protect. Allow your partners to have sufficient IP rights and opportunities that will generate the return they need. These focal points allow them to share the risk with you.

We are applying best practices in agile and open innovation within Xerox to write the next chapter of our history. We are defining and developing business experiments with commercial partners and lead customers in digital packaging, direct-to-object printing, and digital manufacturing to deliver a better customer experience and create operational efficiencies. In our research center at PARC, we are developing new technologies to improve knowledge worker productivity with artificial intelligence, such as collaborative content authoring, augmented reality, meeting analytics, and conversational assistants. And we are working in printed electronics that will give real-time data to optimize supply chains, retail operations, and smart packaging. In all of these areas, we are studying users and creating prototypes, both internally and with partners. This approach allows us to test solutions with users, and make iterative improvements that find the right product-market fit before we invest in commercialization to scale.

Conclusion

There is never a one-size-fits-all approach to growth, so these ideas are meant to be a starting point for you to think about ways you can mix and match to suit your specific situation and goals.

Expanding into new markets is hard because it requires investment trade-offs from your core business into new, uncertain opportunities. These practices can help you produce a greater volume of new growth opportunities that excite your employees, fit with your abilities to deliver them, and are aligned to important growth trends in the world.

The post Six Ways to Growth by Thinking Differently about Your Business appeared first on Xerox Connect.

Women in the new age of work. What does it mean? Research suggests that diverse talent, perspectives and backgrounds are crucial to innovation and new idea development. With companies vying to stay relevant and access new markets, it’s critical for women to be in leadership roles.

Consider some facts:

• More women than ever are choosing either freelance or entrepreneurship.
• Research into future of work shows a rise in freelancing and entrepreneurship in the U.S. More than 11.6 million firms are owned by women. These enterprises employ more than 9 million people and generate more than $1.7 trillion in sales.
• The World Economic Forum estimates that with retraining, 96 percent of the most immediately at-risk U.S. workers would find decent jobs that offer higher wages. What’s more, spending two years to retrain for a new position could to lead to an average annual salary increase of $15,000. This could benefit women most as it could lead to a bump in pay for 74 percent of all currently at-risk women, while offering the same for only 53 percent of men.

Meet the hosts

Rob and Toni discuss their takeaways from their gathering at PARC. Listen to their podcast on SoundCloud, or on Catalant’s iTunes channel, Radically Agile (Episode 6).

Rob Biederman, co-founder and CEO of Catalant. This market leader helps companies build an agile workforce, and reimagine the way work gets done. Catalant deploys technology and programs that enable companies to access the talent they need, when they need it, wherever it is.

Toni Clayton-Hine is the chief marketing officer for Xerox. She is responsible for overall marketing strategy, brand management, and increasing awareness, consideration, and demand for the company and its offerings to deliver profitable growth.

• More than 57.3 million people are freelancing in the U.S. The majority of workers will be freelance by 2027. (Upwork.com and Freelancers Union: “Freelancing in America 2017”)
• Technology enables people to work wherever, whenever they please.
• Millennials will make up 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025 (Ernst & Young: “Global Generations”)
• The Global Workspace Association reports a rise in co- working spaces.

Compelling as these facts are, how do you convince busy Silicon Valley executives to give up a precious evening? First, you keep the group small and intimate. Second, cocktails and dinner – ditch the PowerPoint and let the guests do the talking.

PARC: In the business of breakthroughs

PARC, a Xerox company: Learn how PARC creates new business options, accelerates time to market, augments internal capabilities, and reduces risk for their clients.

Innovation at Xerox: The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Here’s what the future looks like, and where it’s being invented.

Xerox Connect reports on innovation: Reports on the innovative Xerox people and the technologies they invent.

“The new age of work” means…

This was not a typical evening of monologues, PowerPoints and over-cooked chicken. Atypically, the attendees seated themselves family style at a single table, in order to facilitate uninterrupted conversations from the cocktail hour – which ran over. (No one complained.)

Information and ideas were shared through actual conversations led by Rob and Toni. Hot topics included:

• What the new age of work actually means to everyone.
• Diversity in the workplace (specifically focusing on age, race and gender.
• Unconscious bias.
• Millennials in the workforce.
• How to keep a workforce connected when work isn’t a physical location any more.
• Work-life balance.
• Flexibility versus mobility.

It’s all about finding good people, and making sure they know you appreciate their talent and contributions. In essence, how do you bring conversations among the heads of business to their employees? Turns out, it’s not difficult at all.

My own talents for this event required attention to a thousand details, any one if which could go sideways at a moment. As such, I planned to work through the event and grab a plate behind the scenes. Toni had other plans.

“Join us at the table,” she said. I could not, and did not, say no. I tossed my dinner plans aside, and work took care of itself. I enjoyed taking my seat at the table for a wonderful dinner with fascinating companions.

Feedback from the attendees shows the event was successful. The Xerox Client Briefing Center at PARC will host others events on various topics, and we will share those insights on this blog.

From the editor: Independent conversations happen around the world. From the United Kingdom, Xerox public relations manager Sonia Panchal posted her thoughts on LinkedIn about the latest Woke Lean In Circle meeting facilitated by worklife balance expert, Anna Meller.

They discussed the value of rewriting the script and your roles in the workplace and at home. “Women say they find it challenging managing home and worklife,” Sonia wrote. “They have concerns that moving into more senior roles will mean more work rather than better and smarter work. It’s time to think differently.”

Sonia is the founder of the Woke LeanIn Circle, bringing together an amazing collective of women who regularly meet to collaborate, learn, grow, and ensure their voices are heard in an evolving workplace. Follow Sonia on LinkedIn.

The post Women in the New Age of Work appeared first on Xerox Connect.

By Guy Williams

Just like the roots of an established tree, our history of sustainability runs deep. From two-sided printing, to the Green World Alliance program and the Xerox Print Awareness Tool, Xerox technology and software enables our customers to pursue sustainability in their operations. That means reducing environmental footprints, making workflows more efficient, and reducing printing costs.

Even with energy efficient technology and software, sustainability goals will be unmet without employee engagement. That’s why Xerox collaborates with partners like PrintReleaf — think of it as another branch to our sustainability tree, and one more tool to engage employees.

Managed print services that plants tree

Our partnership means that Xerox customers around the world can add PrintReleaf to their managed print services (MPS) contract. Based on the theme of “you print one, we’ll plant one,” PrintReleaf plants a precise number of trees that is equal to your paper consumption. Their software calculates the number of trees that produced the paper you used — that’s one tree for every 8,333 pages, based on a standard 20#, 8.5×11 sheet of paper.

Saving the world’s forests is pretty awesome. It’s even more awesome when you get to choose which forest you save. That’s why PrintReleaf asks you to choose your favorite from their network of global reforestation projects, shown in the map above.

It works! PrintReleaf plants trees for Xerox

We launched PrintReleaf internally in 52 Xerox facilities (62%) across the United States in January 2018. The 9.2 million pages we printed from January 1 to June 30 produced an estimated 117 metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To put that number into perspective, that is the same amount of GHGs from 23 passenger vehicles driven annually.

To offset these emissions, PrintReleaf planted 1,104 trees – distributed evenly in the U.S., Madagascar, Mexico, Ireland, India, Dominican Republic and Brazil.

Let’s be clear: Print Releaf isn’t a get out of jail free card. By no means does PrintReleaf give us permission to print indiscriminately. It’s important to print responsibly. But in those instances when you must print, you can let out a sigh of relief – and a proud smile — knowing your actions will be covered by PrintReleaf.

Learn how Xerox helps protect the environment.

The post Printers That Plant Trees, 8,333 Pages at a Time appeared first on Xerox Connect.