Reinventing Xerox: as president of U.S. Customer Operations, Richard Barton is putting his much-heralded turnaround skills to the test in Xerox's biggest market

Black Enterprise, June, 1994 by Richard Price

IN A CITY WITH HARDLY ANY other skyscrapers, the panoramic view of Rochester, N.Y., from Richard Barton's 22nd floor office is breathtaking. It's the kind of mesmerizing vista that draws you into daydreams of power and endless possibilities.

At the hub of this domain is Xerox Corp.'s president of U.S. Customer Operations, a change agent who's part of the senior management team charged with overhauling the world's leading copier company. His challenge: to help transform the $17.4 billion corporation into the document company of the 21st century.

At 45 years old, Rich Barton is the 23-year Xerox veteran responsible for 29,000 sales and service employees, administrators and suppliers. In order to anchor Xerox's position of dominance in the office of the future, Barton must reposition 29,000 ways of thinking. His timetable? ASAP.

As the senior officer overseeing customer service, the largest segment of Xerox's U.S. workforce, Barton's tasks are to preach, teach and deliver. It's a job he's been preparing for all of his life. A results-oriented salesman turned computer systems junkie, Barton speaks with confident assurance when describing his vision for Xerox. "We no longer want to be thought of as a company that sells products in boxes," he explains. "We are in the process of transformation. We're getting away from training sales reps to |see a box' as an opportunity to |sell a better box.' Our goal is for sales reps to now look for an opportunity to help customers craft better results for their businesses."

Today, Xerox is moving way beyond copiers, reasserting itself in the fast-changing world of information technology. Commenting to the Canadian publication, The Computer Post, Barton notes that desktop computers have more power than mainframes did just a decade ago. "We are in a fast-forward decade, driven by technological advances that seem almost like science fiction."

Like many sci-fi "offices of the future," Xerox's goal is to connect its printers, software, service, training and imaging capabilities (digitizing information by scanning documents and visuals into computers) with other vendors, computer systems. The new Xerox sees itself as a systems and service company that integrates technologies designed to improve the efficiencies of offices. After all, what business isn't propelled by the movement of documents?

Although document processing equipment and supplies accounted for $14.G billion of Xerox's $17.4 billion in revenues last year, the company is quick to admit that stand-alone copiers are going the way of carbon paper. Nevertheless, despite flattened sales due to intense competition from lower-priced Japanese competitors, black-and-white copiers still represent about two-thirds of the company's document processing revenues.

That's why Barton is a man very much in a hurry. He, like many of the company's top brass, is no longer content to sell peripherals to the information industry. Xerox is hungry to be part of the main event.

A longtime leader in the art of selling, Xerox is now looking to retool its legendary sales force to serve as consultants, banking on their intellectual capital as well as their sales prowess. "If the equipment the customer needs isn't made by Xerox, so be it," says Barton. Under the new thinking, he adds, the company no longer sees a marketplace full of competitors. Instead, everyone in the information industry is to be viewed as potential collaborators to improve Xerox customers' business.

In short, as Barton, then president and CEO of Xerox Canada Ltd., told his 5,000 employees twO years ago, "We need to reinvent Xerox."

Sounds idealistic? He's done it before.

HIS WORLD ON PAPER

Sitting in his clean, crisp contemporary office, the trim, 6'5", 215 lb. Richard S. Barton looks like a man in control. Still, you can feel his enthusiasm for change, as he leans forward to expound on his action plan, point by point. His polished desk is free of memos or scraps of paper, a confirmation of his excitement about the possibilities of the paperless office.

Barton grew up in Roosevelt, Long Island, a one-square mile slice of working-class real estate just outside New York City that also produced Julius Erving, Eddie Murphy, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Public Enemy.

Barton graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1967, then put himself through Adelphi University in nearby Garden City. Before getting his degree, he left to become a salesman at The Procter & Gamble Co.. pitching Crisco Oil and Pringles potato chips to supermarkets. Excelling, he rose up the ranks quickly to become the second-ranked Procter & Gamble salesman in New York State. Barton was recruited by Xerox in 1971 at a business luncheon where he was speaking at the behest of P&G. His topic? "Why other companies should follow P&G's example of progressive hiring."

By 1982, Barton had become U.S. product manager for mid-high volume machines, which put him in the midst of one of Xerox's most successful product launches, the 10 Series copiers. In three years, his group sold 750,000 copiers, 88% of all Xerox copiers in use worldwide.