Following hot on the heels of Capita’s acquisition of Right Document Solutions last month (see here), Xerox has announced the purchase of Twickenham-based print consultancy and software provider NewField IT for an undisclosed amount. The deal adds to Xerox’s March 2011 acquisition of Scotland-based distributor Concept Corporation focused on the UK SME market, which gave it an additional 50 salespeople and 3,000 customer accounts.
However Newfield is more than just a channel play. Through the deal, Xerox will take ownership of Asset DB, NewField’s software platform that provides visual maps of an office floor to show how printer and copier assets are being used, with a database that tracks usage patterns. This is all aimed at speeding up the implementation process of a managed print services roll out, and of course reducing the costs of doing so. The deal gives Xerox access to clients such as Mellon Bank, South Lakeland District Council, and other unnamed accounts in the legal and financial services sector.
Co-founders Robert Newry and James Duckenfield will continue to jointly run Newfield as an independent unit within Xerox, with Newry reporting up to Stephen Cronin, Xerox’s president of global document outsourcing. A quick scan on Companies House does not provide any illumination on NewField’s revenues or profitability. However it is clearly a fast-growing outfit. In its full year ended 31 April 2011, it grew 62%, and more than doubled revenue in the US where it opened an office in 2009. NewField expects growth of 60% in the current year too. So even if the numbers are small, Xerox is buying into a high growth space.
Xerox is playing to its strengths with NewField as a leading document services provider. But as we have pointed out before in Xerox image masks opportunities, Xerox needs to show how it can better exploit the broader capabilities of the entire group that now also spans ITO and business process services through the ACS business. How it squares this circle will be a key test of its ability to move up a level and become a more strategic full services player over the coming years.