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October 13. 2006 - When Rebranding Involves Getting a New Name
| When Rebranding Involves Getting a New Name |
Xsomo is the new name for Moore Business Forms
Chances are that unless you purchase business forms, solutions or equipment directly from what used to be called Moore Business Forms Caribbean; you will be hard pressed to connect the dots to your everyday life. It may be even harder to make the leap to Xsomo International, its brand new name.
Yet, the 38 year-old pioneering company has been producing traditional business forms since 1968 at its Slipe Pen Road plant, the largest and decidedly number one in the Caribbean.
Annually, they produce over 20 million of the personalized cheque that we get from our banks. They design and print government documents such as immigration forms; purchase orders; restaurant cheques; as well as regular continuous computer forms, to name a few of our everyday interactions with the Company. Add to this their specialized supporting equipment, design services and information communication technology solutions.
Managing Director Desmond K. Valentine explains, “Faced with the tremendous pace of technology, we began transforming and reshaping in order to offer a complete and complementary suite of products and services that utilize rather than compete with technology.” Hence in 2000, the company placed itself firmly in the forefront of Jamaica’s print and digital technology market when it spun off part of its operation into a new division called Moore Tech. This division came out of alliances with specially selected software solution providers for which the company functions as value-added re-sellers and solution partners.
The name change is the first step in the company’s rebranding exercise to reposition itself in the marketplace and reflect its expanded range of products.
Jamaica Beat sat down with Marketing Manager Errol St. Elmo Anderson to talk about a company that impacts us daily, yet operates behind the scene supporting other businesses.
Who are your clients?
Our operation is business to business. Our customers are the government, corporate Jamaica and other private entities. But although we do not usually sell directly to the person on the street, our products and services touch them when they use the services of our customers.
How would you describe the nature of your business?
We are in information management and retrieval. One of our major access technology products is Citrix. The choice of a good portion of the Fortune 500 companies, it is a “middleware” that provides users with remote access to data or applications. We host the customer’s data on our server and they are able to access the data through the Internet using a web-based interface. This spares them the cost of investing in hardware, software and staff to manage the system. Xsomo is also responsible for maintenance of the system. This operation represents a fusion of communication and technology, moving information and transforming people in the process.
Jamaica’s economic situation makes it imperative to justify our technology investments to support national development and wealth creation for the person on the street. How does a product like Citrix affect the ordinary Jamaican?
Just think if the Ministry of Education took a decision to use Citrix throughout the school system. It could transform exponentially the whole –e-Learning project that the government is undertaking, and it would substantially reduce their operating expense in providing access to all students as the hardware costs would be slashed to a fraction.
Besides mastering the traditional three Rs, there's urgency for our people to be a part of the digital revolution. Does Xsomo have a role to play here?
Not directly. A good case study of how governments can direct technology development is the experience of Ireland. The government decided that technology was going to be the way forward. They made the necessary adjustments in the school system and elsewhere. They decided that they were going as a people into 21st h century communication technology and it became the common will of the country. Years ago, before the danger of the digital divide became a rallying cry, the ordinary Irish sheepherder out in the fields had cell phones before executives in many countries. Cell phones were not just a means of calling people; they have been using it to do everything. School children now get allowance from their parents to use as credits on the phones which they use to pay for such things as movie tickets. In many parts of Africa, people are catching up and using cell phones to talk to each other as well as making bank transactions, for example. Behind all of this is the business communication technology that makes it all possible, and this is where we play a role.
What are your other major technology products?
We offer ourselves as an applications service provider as it relates to document management.
What does this mean?
Meaning, that without spending a whole lot of capital on hardware, software and massive investment in training staff, you can engage our services to manage your document from start to finish. We send in a team to scan your documents so everything is electronically captured. We will then host your documents in our center, on our servers and your company will be connected to us electronically. Your customer service people, for example, will be looking at the document electronically not knowing that nothing resides within the company.
Is this secure?
Yes, yes. All of these things, our operations, are very secure. We use Citrix in this scenario to ensure the security and that only you can get into your documents. So for a monthly service fee you get to enjoy all the benefits of this digital world without having the enormous expense. You just don’t come in and plug in a computer and everything works like that. It’s a significant investment that many times, I think, is not considered fully.
Back to the digital divide, do some businesses have some catching up to do?
Yes. The more businesses that are run efficiently and have crossed this divide, the more they will take their customers along with them. Eventually, how a customer interfaces with a company is going to change. In banking, for example, customers want the convenience of being able to bank at any of their bank’s branches in Jamaica. Electronic scanning makes it possible for signatures to be retrieved at any branch, even in a case where the customer has an alternation on a document, say his driver’s license. Companies build a certain amount of information in their system, but when it comes to documents, you don’t have the full look and feel of every document that the customer has given you.
Was this further move into technology utilization a natural progression for the company?
Definitely. We have always said that we are in the information business, be it a manual or electronic business form. The form is just the instrument you use to manage information. As a result of putting our energies behind that core concept, we are the only full service company in Jamaica that can design the form, print it, capture the information on it electronically and provide the means, with say Citrix, to help you to manage the information at great cost savings. This is why sales people for some of our customers can use their cell phones or blackberries to log into their company’s system to retrieve information. What we’re doing is facilitating the management, handling and retrieval of information.
Same business, new tools?
Basically, although the face of the business has changed. At Xsomo, at the customer level, we are speaking now to an additional set of people. We’re now in the area of facilitating disaster recovery, for example, which means having an electronic version of your documents residing in a safe place.
How do you deal with the global issue of security at the level of business operations?
Take our mail print, what we call our print-to-post service, where we electronically send your data to our mailers and then to the post office. Years ago we would print the forms, send them to you, you input information on the form, resend them to us and we send them out. Now you just send the information electronically, we do everything and send it to the post office. It took a while to get over the security concerns. Jamaica is a very secretive society, plus we love to own things. The biggest drawback used to be that everybody wanted to buy their own set of printers, their own set of machines to stuff envelopes and all of that, when that is not their core business, and they have to set up a whole new structure around that business. That is changing as people recognize that we can do it much, much more efficiently.
And the last word?
We are changing. Even Xsomo, our new name, represents a new generation of company names. It’s not someone’s name, nor does it reflect what we do. I like to think it reflects a new business energy that is in keeping with the pioneering role we have always played in the Jamaican business community. |
| Article posted on: 13 Oct 2006 |
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