Analysis of Xerox Corporation
Xerox was founded in 1906 as the Haloid Company, a photographic supply house that developed the world’s first xerographic copier. They had a positive people oriented culture and dedicated employees, who were the desire of the corporate world.
With the passage of time many things become a hurdle in the success of the company. The biggest factor was that they couldn’t move beyond copiers to sustain growth in the market, they only focused on the copier because they were getting 70 percent profit from the copiers. The Japanese rivals also came into the market and they were selling at low cost as compared to Xerox. The company was not copping with the changing demands of the market and they were not able to develop new products to fulfill the market needs. The CEO Kearns moved the company to insurance and financial services which really turned worse for the company. The overall culture was slow to adapt the change.
Due to the problems faced by the company, Xerox had billions of dollars insurance liabilities on them; their market share declined from 95 percent to 13 percent.
Allaire made plans for the removal of Xerox from the insurance and financial business. At the same time he developed mixed strategies for cost cutting and introducing new products in the market. This helped the company to gain its position again, but a little mistake which they made was they underestimated the threat of inkjet printer which afterwards had a bad impact on the company. Another mistake made was of hiring the outside man as CEO. This developed politics in the organization as the employees were not accepting an outsider to give them orders and direct them.
After this bitter experience Allaire selected an insider for the CEO’s job, who could understand the feelings of the employees and can make them work in an effective manner. Anne Mulchay was a saleswoman at Xerox and worked her way up the hierarchy. She was a strong decision maker who gave hope and vision to its people.
With the passage of time many things become a hurdle in the success of the company. The biggest factor was that they couldn’t move beyond copiers to sustain growth in the market, they only focused on the copier because they were getting 70 percent profit from the copiers. The Japanese rivals also came into the market and they were selling at low cost as compared to Xerox. The company was not copping with the changing demands of the market and they were not able to develop new products to fulfill the market needs. The CEO Kearns moved the company to insurance and financial services which really turned worse for the company. The overall culture was slow to adapt the change.
Due to the problems faced by the company, Xerox had billions of dollars insurance liabilities on them; their market share declined from 95 percent to 13 percent.
Allaire made plans for the removal of Xerox from the insurance and financial business. At the same time he developed mixed strategies for cost cutting and introducing new products in the market. This helped the company to gain its position again, but a little mistake which they made was they underestimated the threat of inkjet printer which afterwards had a bad impact on the company. Another mistake made was of hiring the outside man as CEO. This developed politics in the organization as the employees were not accepting an outsider to give them orders and direct them.
After this bitter experience Allaire selected an insider for the CEO’s job, who could understand the feelings of the employees and can make them work in an effective manner. Anne Mulchay was a saleswoman at Xerox and worked her way up the hierarchy. She was a strong decision maker who gave hope and vision to its people.