Innovative service

BOB BAUER’S APPOINTMENT in January 2002 as CTO of the new Xerox Global Services followed a tradition at Xerox of fostering the development of technology innovators who translate their vision into practical application in the corporate world.

Bauer spent 30 years as a top flight research scientist and then as a manager at the acclaimed Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). Through the years, Xerox PARC charted important new directions in technology, leading the development efforts of cutting-edge innovations such as GUI and lasers.

Now Bauer sees his move to Xerox Global Services as a natural progression in that Xerox tradition. The direction of the new division “is not technology for its own sake, but it’s taking technology to the next level to address how people work today and what technology can do to help them. We are offering solutions,” Bauer says.

When Xerox united its service operations under one roof, called Xerox Global Services, Bauer was brought in by Tom Dolan, the president of the new division. Bauer is an apt CTO to guide the company as it sets out to win business in consulting, industry experts say.

“I would describe him as a pragmatic visionary in the great tradition of Xerox, with a real clear view of the long term, grounded in understanding of the present and how to get from here to there,” says Paul Saffo, author and director of the Institute for the Future, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based nonprofit research organization specializing in long-term forecasting.

Bauer, who spent much time researching the role of technology in the workplace, is an expert in software engineering, user interfaces, intelligent information access, collaborative work, and knowledge-based productivity tools. He is a former adviser to the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

One of his goals is to use his high-level expertise and leverage Xerox products such as copying machines, scanners, faxes, printers, and the like to add value for customers. Tossing off words such as “anthropologically” when speaking of workplace behavior, Bauer says he is not a traditional CTO.

In fact, others in his organization are charged with making sure the IT operations are running smoothly. Bauer spends much of his time with customers or on sales calls. “The challenge is to allow customers to have our services any way they want,” he says.

As an example of how his workplace research turned into a business use, Bauer says he developed an initiative based on a weekly coffee break where Xerox engineers gathered to talk to each other. He leveraged their practice of sharing problem-solving tips and experiences to create an internal peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing portal called Eureka, which in turn led to improved customer service and savings of $15 million annually. Xerox has deployed this same solution at Telecom Italia, Italy’s largest telephone company, to help call-center operators provide faster service and accurate information to customers.

Bauer’s research background also can be leveraged to help other enterprises chart their course, Institute for the Future’s Saffo says. “He is exactly the kind of CTO that many companies need and want today,” Saffo added. “He can talk about the vision of where a company is headed and what is the pragmatic benefit of it.”

Bauer says vision also needs to translate into bottom line results. “[In the past] CTOs supported the business and got costs down,” he says. “To me, CTOs ought to be about value creation.”