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.

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.

Barton's success did not go unrecognized by higher-ups. In 1985 he went to the company's Sramford, Conn., headquarters as executive assistant to Xerox Corp. President Paul Allaire. (Allaire has since become chairman and CEO.) It was under Allaire that he started to look at the president's pet project: Xerox's systems capabilities.

Continuing upwards, Barton was named vice president, marketing operations, for the former U.S. Marketing Group, now known as U.S. Customer Operations. Here he worked under Xerox's highest-ranking African-American, A. Barry Rand, who was president of the Marketing Group. "Rich is a risk-taker and an innovator," says Rand. "Right now, the U.S. market is moving from stand-alone products toward linking offices into networks. Rich's vision will help the company evolve and fulfill the emerging consumer needs. His focus on selling solutions, not just selling products, makes Rich an agent of change who can lead Xerox in the right direction."

In 1989, Barton undertook his first "change" job for Xerox, as vice president, North American systems sales, for the Xerox Integrated Systems Operations, headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. It was Barton's job to grow this fledgling division, which he did with flying colors. Under Barton, the division was profitable for the first time. That's when his name surfaced to head Xerox Canada, according to an interview with Allaire by Canada's Report on Business Magazine "We wanted somebody who was marketing-oriented with exposure to the systems business."

THE FIRST IN CANADA

In 1990, Barton became the first African-American CEO of a major Canadian company, Xerox Canada. There, he tried out many of the strategies for change he is now implementing in the United States. In charge of 5,000 employees, his mission was to make over the $ 1 billion (Canadian) subsidiary to be an inspirational model for how the rest of Xerox operations should be transformed. "Xerox has been making a number of false starts up here. They weren't all that well-positioned in the imaging industry [when Barton arrived]. They were at the periphery," says Michael O'Neil, vice president of consulting services at International Data Corp's office in Toronto.

Reinventing Xerox Canada proved to be a mirror of possibilities for the parent company. In just two short years under Barton, the subsidiary began to wean itself from the business of super-speed copiers and plunge into the high-growth business of total office integration. Rather than pushing costly hardware, Barton stressed "value-added" solutions for the office linking existing equipment and systems together. He emphasized custom software packages that could send documents from workstation to printer to fax--anywhere in the world. "Their professional services foray has not been a success, nor have they been successful in selling office integration systems. If they're getting the message out, I'm one of the people who should have heard it," adds O'Neil. Maybe O'Neil was not listening.

Two major successes allowed Barton to strut his stuff in a big way. His vision took form when Xerox installed a system in the Ottawa Attorney General's office that produced Canada's first paperless trial. And just last Fall, Xerox and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, unveiled an electronic publishing system (DocuTech) that prints books and course materials for students on demand. DocuTech allows professors to revise course materials up to the last minute and have them custom-bound and available for students within 24 hours. It beat out the U.S. version "Documents on Demand," the custom-tailored course packet announced last spring in conjunction with several Ivy League schools.

Not content with just pushing new technologies, Barton also looked to boost sales of existing equipment by using outside representatives for the first time and by putting Xerox products in retail stores. In the meantime, he also streamlined the subsidiary's bloated bureaucratic staff into a high-performance, high-response work team.

After 12 months, the grand experiment started paying off. Xerox Canada enjoyed a 40% increase in revenue in 1992, the same year Xerox U.S. lost $1 billion. (Xerox Canada received an internal award for highest percentage increase in return on assets.)

BONA FIDE AGENT OF CHANGE

Hopefully, the marriage of new high-tech products with the legendary old-fashioned high-touch sales techniques of Xerox reps will not only stem the tide of flat black-and-white copier sales, it will refuel the rapid growth of the company's new digital products. In its current collaborative mode, Xerox is working with several high-tech companies to make this happen.

Item: Xerox and Microsoft Corp. announced their intention to produce digital document products that combine Microsoft at Work architecture and Xerox document imaging technologies. A Xerox "Smart Fax" machine would create personalized cover sheets and automatically route documents directly to an individual's computer for faster access. An intelligent copier could extract designated portions of documents and reproduce only the highlighted sections.

Item: Xerox and Digital Equipment Corp. announced an alliance under which Digital's sales force will be able to jointly market Xerox Production Laser printers and link them to digital customers, computing environment. "These partnering agreements represent the best way for Xerox to retain its competitive edge," says Barton. "By partnering with the best players in the document, services and solutions business, Xerox stays a step ahead of its competitors."

There's no doubt about it, ready or not the buttoned-up world of Xerox U.S. is about to undergo major change. While in Canada Barton solidified his status as a bonafide change agent and polished his viewpoints on the dynamics of change and employee empowerment. Both are assets that could crystallize his success in his current post.

Perhaps it's appropriate to look at 1994 as the year of Rich Barton's Big Adventure: The task of slimming down the once-lethargic, overly bureaucratic Xerox, while simultaneously transforming the company, will not be easy.

Although the troops are a bit leery, at least Wall Street is on Xerox's side. The financial community reacted favorably when the company announced last year that it would reduce its worldwide staff of 97,000 by more than 10,000 people by 1996.

Bringing a sales force along to be part of such a massive change in thinking requires being more than a cheerleader. "Once you determine what you've got to do and how you've got to do it, you must change the fundamental core work processes and business processes," says Barton. You do not change work behaviors just by declaration. You change them by [addressing] the way that people actually do things.

"That's what we did in Canada and we're in the process of doing that right now in the U.S. I am putting a business plan in place that addresses [all the elements necessary for change]--the marketing strategy, the work processes, the business processes, the accountabilities and the skills and competencies."

"Rich is really one of the few people who have what it takes to [produce] change. Courage is a great part of it. He was firm about training, vision and who was promoted," says Mike Abransky, Delrina Technologies director of business development and a former colleague of Barton's from Xerox Canada."He's got a bigger and harder job [in the U.S.]. It's a bigger elephant to teach how to tap dance. If anybody can do it, he can. I have a lot of faith in him."

According to Barton, it is the skills and competencies level where the most meaningful transformation must begin. "About 40% of a staff readily recognizes the need for change, and are ready to make the change. The other 40% have a herd mentality. They wait until it's safe and they can see tangible examples before they move," he explains. "The remaining 20% are simply unwilling to change, and [it is these people who] usually become the victims of change. However, losing 20% of your force because they're not able to grasp something is not a good business decision."

To meet the transformation objectives of Customer Operations, Barton plans to implement a training and development plan modeled after his highly successful Canadian Xerox Development System. Under the plan, each job was profiled, identifying the skills and competencies that would be required over a set period of time. Employees conducted personal assessments, backdropped against those desired skills and competencies. Then employees and their managers collaborated on a training curriculum that included both formal and informal learning experiences.

The success of such a program resides in its extensive follow-up evaluation system. In Canada, employees that did not achieve their goals and objectives were recycled and put into the program again. Successful candidates went on to the next cycle. Barton explains: "It was review, assess, train, Review, assess, train. The important thing is that people felt good because we were making not only the financial investments, but the personal investments to see that they were successful." According to Barton, the success rate in Canada exceeded 90%.

PASTIME AS PROFESSION

Married and the father of two boys, a 14-year-old and a 6-year-old, Barton now claims that being a student of the impact of technology on society has become his pastime as well as his profession. This is a guy who once thought his kids shouldn't play Nintendo games because he thought it too much like watching television. "Now I encourage them to play because the varying skill levels teach children to think, and they can play at their own pace," he says.

Right now, sitting where Barton is, there are only a few more steps to the top. It appears that curiosity, not ambition alone, is driving him these days.

"The world is changing right before our eyes," Barton muses, "and it's all being led by information technology, so I don't have to look for adventure.

"My imagination is the only thing that can restrict me."