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David Tyler: Perhaps we can begin by clarifying the relationship between Xerox and Visioneer. How do the two businesses collaborate?
Erik Banis: We are part of the Xerox business of course, but as Visioneer we are solely responsible for the design and manufacture of our entire document scanner range, as well as bringing those products to market and managing the service business as well, including our international distribution channels. We operate more or less independent of Xerox, despite obviously sharing their branding. As a business we've made quite a lot of changes in Europe over the last year or so: I'd be the first to admit that we haven't always been as effective as we could be in getting our scanners out there in front of the market.

We decided to take a good look at the entire proposition, to see if we thought we needed to make some changes to make our product portfolio a better fit for our target vertical markets. Our business model is now organised in such a way that our products are sold direct via Xerox, of course, as well as their channel partners, and now also via other partners who are not necessarily Xerox partners. TechData for example are helping to bring our products to market in over 20 different European countries.

And importantly it's not just the scanner products but the entire service offering that is available via these routes. All our scanners obviously come with a warranty; if something happens, just send it back and we'll put it right - but we also now offer onsite service agreements which can be important if a customer's business is dependent on the equipment being up and running whenever it is needed. If you're a bank and you're trying to process loan applications, you can't do without that scanner for any length of time.

DT: How has the market responded to the changes you've been introducing?
EB: Our customers have so far responded very well to all the changes we've been making: it can take some time of course, particularly in the channel, for change to filter through to the end customers. We're seeing much more interest from lots of different vertical markets now, including some where we hadn't expected to, such as transportation. Businesses there are starting to deploy mobile scanners in trucks for their delivery drivers to use. The customer signs for the goods that have been delivered; the driver goes back to the truck and feeds the document into a scanner fitted to the dashboard. The image can be received back at their head office in minutes.

This was a whole new application area for us, and it's come about as a direct result of the creative ways that our partners have been able to bring product offerings to market. We knew that these markets existed, of course, but they weren't being properly addressed by us - or our competitors. Now we have the correct partners in place, in combination with the right service programmes to support them. We're still on the lookout for potential new partners of course, operating in all sorts of different market segments.

DT: How do you think the market generally has changed for scanning solution providers?
EB: The problem with scanners - and the same has been true also of printers - is that in the 'old days' people were just buying equipment. These days it's not so straightforward: businesses are buying a piece of kit - more properly a solution - because they want to do something specific with it. This is where it gets complicated: they are not looking for a scanner, they are looking for a tool that can help them with whatever business process or application they need to deal with. Increasingly it comes down the software as well as the scanner, to operate as a kind of on-ramp for the entire document process.

This requires a specific approach to partners, because we're not talking about the old 'speeds and feeds' arguments any more, we're talking about business integration. These requirements will vary from one vertical to another, of course. We work with a lot of UK police regions as well as health institutions, for instance, and their requirements are entirely different. This is where the partners' understanding of those specific markets becomes so important. We don't want to just sell a piece of equipment; we have to make sure that everything we sell becomes in effect a valuable business asset to the customer.

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