capston-white’s document strongmanagementstrong and production services.pdfVIP

no. 2-0017 Capston-White’s Document Management and Production Services (DMPS) In June 2002, Elizabeth Winters accepted a new position with Capston-White. CW had just merged with Microtech, nearly doubling its revenues to over $60B. Ms. Winters had been a general manager in Microtech’s information technology (IT) services division. Her new charter was managing the Document Management and Production Services (DMPS) venture at CW. The division provided imaging and printing related outsourcing and consulting services to corporations. Ms. Winters expected the position to challenge her like no previous position in her twenty-four year career in IT services, much of which she spent in Asia, rolling out services that had been developed elsewhere. DMPS had been struggling since inception in 1996. It had a staff of nearly 250 people, but had yet to turn a profit. Ms. Winters viewed the business as “something between a startup and a turnaround.” DMPS was a high priority for Ms. Winters’ superiors. Markets for printers, copiers, scanners, and fax machines, once distinct, were converging. Further, the new “multifunction devices” had to operate effectively as a part of large corporate networks. Given the complexities, effective service provision was viewed as an important part of the overall strategy for CW’s Document Production Group (DPG), a $16B giant that provided the bulk of CW’s pre-merger profits. DPG’s brand was strongest in the printers market, but because of the market convergence, that position no longer appeared secure. The transition to service-intensive, networked, multifunction devices had been anticipated for some time. It became real in 1999, when, for the first time, a major corporate client refused to renew their contract for CW printers because they considered CW’s service offering inadequate.