CRN is reporting that Xerox Channels President, Pete Peterson is out at Xerox.
If true, the news is just the latest in a string of recent layoffs at Xerox, particularly at the executive level. Since CEO John Visentin took over, we’ve seen a fairly significant reduction in senior executives, including EVP and CCO Kevin Warren, GIS President Dan Cooper, CMO Toni Clayton-Hines and others.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Pete during the Xerox meeting in NYC this past fall. He’s a good guy and it’s a bummer that he’s the latest casualty.
It’s unfortunate, but Xerox finds themselves in a position where real changes need to be made. And say what you like about the current regime, they’re making them.
There was a time back in the day where it felt like everyone at Xerox was a vice president. I’m told there were actually over 300 of them worldwide at one point. That seems like an awful lot to me, especially when you look at how other companies were arguably doing more with significantly less.
While Xerox had been scaling this bloated executive level back over the past several years, Visentin and his crew are cutting much deeper and faster. And maybe that’s a good thing. No one likes to go through this and dragging it out just makes it worse. But, it needs to be done and frankly, should have been done a long time ago.
The face of Xerox is changing and the rightsizing they’re undergoing, while painful, will no doubt improve their chances of getting back to being competitive and profitable. ~Andy Slawetsky, Industry Analysts, Inc.
