Joanne Collins Smee joins Xerox from the US Federal Government, where she had spent the past year as leader of its Technology Transformation Service.

Prior to that, she worked at IBM for 12 years in various worldwide technology management positions.

Collins Smee becomes a member of Xerox’s executive committee in the newly-created role and will be responsible for “sales excellence, channel strategy, order to cash and technology, services, software, and future solutions offerings”.

Xerox president and chief operating officer Steve Bandrowczak said Xerox aimed to create a “frictionless system” to deliver products and services to its customers.

“Joanne’s global technology delivery experience will create stronger and more effective routes to market for our offerings,” he said.

Following a turbulent period at the business, fresh Xerox chief executive John Visentin spoke of the need for Xerox to focus on "relentless optimisation" when the group announced its Q2 results in July.

“First, we have an opportunity to drive improvement in our top line by addressing how we go to market. We need to take a strategic approach to customer engagement, to meet their evolving needs, both in how they choose to buy and the level of service necessary for their business,” he said.

“We're going to make sure that we have the right mix of direct, indirect and online or e-commerce channels to support our various clients. And we're going to work with our channel partners, whether they are agents, concessionaires, document technology partners, solution providers or velocity partners to create frictionless processes and quick response times.”