Xerox has long been one of the most recognized and trusted names in office printing. For many businesses, it was the default choice — a company associated with reliable equipment, established service infrastructure and a consistent customer experience.
But many Xerox customers across Southern California are now conveying a different story. They tell us service has become slower and less consistent, issues often require multiple visits to resolve, and technician turnover has led to less experienced support teams and growing frustration.
For many businesses, this isn’t about corporate headlines or Wall Street performance. It’s about what happens when devices go down, workflows stop or support doesn’t respond quickly enough.
And increasingly, customers find themselves asking the same question: What changed?
The Xerox Customers Knew Is Not the Xerox of Today
Xerox is in the middle of an existential crises, driving a major transformation.
Publicly, the company describes this as reinvention. But industry analysts increasingly describe Xerox as a company trying to reinvent itself while managing the long-term decline of its traditional print business. A recent market analysis described Xerox’s core print business as being in a “decade-long secular decline,” driven by digitization, declining print volumes, and changing workplace needs.¹⁴
The numbers reinforce the pressure the business is under. Year over year, Xerox has seen its revenue decline substantially, with core segments down by as much as 9% annually. Post-sale print revenue, that income generated by parts, toner and service labor, has fallen more than 11%. As a whole, the company has recorded a nearly 10% year-over-year decline in its overall revenue, helping to drive a stock decline of more than 90% from its historic high point.⁸ All of this has driven debt levels to near $4 billion⁵, and a credit level decimated from CCC+, to CCC⁹.
Simultaneously, Xerox completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of Lexmark in 2025, positioning the deal as a way to expand managed print leadership and workplace technology capabilities globally. ¹⁴ But, spending to climb out of debt is akin to digging oneself out of a hole.
At the same time, Xerox is actively changing its overall business strategy away from printing. Rather than fight to regain the business lost, acquisitions aside, they’ve pivoted themselves to invest more heavily in new sectors such as IT services, cybersecurity solutions, AI-driven automation and software and cloud offerings.
Perhaps most significantly, Xerox's historic Fuji-Xerox joint venture ended in 2021 when FUJIFILM acquired Xerox's remaining ownership stake. The joint venture had played a major role in product development, manufacturing, and print innovation. ¹¹ ¹²
And why should all of this matter to their customers? Because it changes the foundation behind the products and service model they’ve relied on for years. They have abandoned their expertise and knowledge base, assuming the weight of their name alone will drive trust and confidence in partnering with them.
New Pressures for Xerox and New Risks for Customers
While Xerox is no longer operating as the company many customers originally signed with, they’ve also added pressure to their teams to battle multiple fires simultaneously. With equal urgency, Xerox needs to quickly see progress in integrating the Lexmark acquisition, rebuilding technology partnerships following the Fuji separation, expand into new sectors such as IT services and software, find a way to managing declining print revenues and all while restructuring operations and reducing costs.¹⁴
Questions naturally start to emerge: What does the long-term product roadmap look like? How much investment is still going into print? Will support quality remain consistent during this transition? What happens as platforms and partnerships change and evolve?
For organizations signing multi-year print agreements, those are no longer small questions. And for an organization struggling to regain its foothold, there are no simple answers.
For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on one key question to encompass many: What does the future look like for Xerox in the print and copy marketplace? For decades, the foundation behind many Xerox devices came through its long-standing partnership with Fujifilm. That relationship shaped the hardware platforms, engineering, product development, print technology and user experience that customers became familiar with over time.¹¹ ¹²
That partnership is now over. And that matters because the next generation of Xerox products will not be built on the same foundation customers have historically used.
Instead, Xerox is now assembling a new technology ecosystem through new partnerships with manufacturers like Kyocera, the recently acquired Lexmark brand, new overall product and platform strategies and a broader shift away from a single, long-established technology foundation
For customers, this creates a level of uncertainty that didn’t previously exist. New partners, new brands, new products… this is all uncharted territory for both Xerox and their established customer base.
This is no longer a simple product refresh that organizations have become accustomed to. It represents a fundamental platform disruption which can affect device architecture, user experience and interface consistency, fleet standardization, driver compatibility, workflow integrations, security frameworks and the long-term product roadmap and support that an organization relies on to keep their business running. And for organizations with large fleets deployed across multiple offices, even small platform inconsistencies can create operational complexity over time. Most businesses assume their next Xerox refresh will feel similar to the environment they already know. But it is increasingly clear that this is no longer the case.
The Hidden Cost of Poor Print Service
As Xerox continues to restructure its business and transition technology platforms, we can readily expect that customers will feel the operational impact most heavily through services. When service quality declines businesses experience lost employee productivity, delayed workflows, increased IT involvement, frustrated users, more downtime across departments and greater overall operational disruption. And disruption of one’s business translates directly to their ability to grow and thrive.
Additionally, security has increasingly become a part of the conversation as well. Outdated devices, inconsistent support, delayed firmware updates and aging print infrastructure can create vulnerabilities that many organizations simply don’t see until there’s a problem. That’s why evaluating a print partner today requires looking beyond equipment specifications and monthly lease rates. It also requires more than looking at where the partner has been, but where they are now and where they are going from here.
Renewal Isn’t Just About Hardware Anymore
Most organizations renew their print agreements every 3–5 years, and many assume renewal is the safest option because it avoids disruption. But today, renewal decisions involve much more than replacing devices. Businesses also need to consider whether their vendor’s priorities are changing, whether print remains a core focus, whether service levels are improving or declining, whether their current environment is secure and whether their technology strategy still aligns with operational needs
And once businesses commit to another long-term agreement, those decisions become much harder to reverse.
The Questions Every Business Should Be Asking Right Now
So, before signing another long-term agreement, businesses should be asking themselves: Are we getting the level of service we should expect? Is our vendor still heavily invested in print? Are we confident in the long-term direction of the platform? Are there opportunities to improve efficiency and productivity? Are there security risks within our current print environment? Is IT spending too much time dealing with print-related issues?
An independent print environment audit can help answer those questions.
Don’t Wait Until Renewal to Reassess Your Environment
We’ve touched on a lot in a relatively short period, but while the changes we’ve described will ultimately affect every customer, that doesn’t automatically mean every business should rush out and leave Xerox. But it does mean this is the right time to reassess, ask tough questions and fully understand what you’re committing to before signing another long-term agreement.
If your organization hasn’t taken a serious look at its print environment recently, now is the perfect time. At Advanced Office, we offer state-of-the-art assessments to evaluate product strategy and long-term fit, workflow productivity and operational efficiency, service performance and support gaps, print security and infrastructure risks and opportunities to reduce unnecessary costs.
For almost 50 years, Advanced Office has supported businesses across Southern California with a service-first approach built around responsiveness, reliability, and long-term customer relationships. We know that “fixing it right the first time” matters. Our technicians are manufacturer-trained and certified, and we invest heavily in keeping them equipped and prepared in the field. Moreover, we believe that local support matters. Our sales and service teams are based right here in Southern California – not offshore call centers or disconnected supply chains. And unlike others, we are always looking to the future to ensure our decisions and efforts and creating a secure relationship for that our partners can count on to keep their operations running smoothly.
For our team at Advanced Office, being a local business means more than serving customers. It means supporting the communities where we live and work. For decades, we've partnered with local nonprofits and community organizations throughout Southern California, contributing our time, resources, and expertise to causes that make a meaningful difference. We also encourage our employees to give back by providing opportunities and time to volunteer in the communities they care about.
That commitment to service extends beyond our customers. It's part of who we are as a company and how we measure success.
The goal isn’t simply to replace devices. It’s to ensure your print environment supports your business effectively, securely and reliably over the long term.
Contact Advanced Office for a comprehensive print environment audit focused on strategy, productivity, efficiency, and security.
Footnotes