CRO Association Our mission is to accelerate the profession of corporate responsibility.
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/100674
Thought Leader Paul Rooke is chairman and chief executive officer of Lexmark International, Inc. He became chairman of the Lexmark board of directors in April 2011 after being named president and CEO and elected to the board in October 2010. Previously, Rooke was an executive vice president of Lexmark and served as president of the former imaging solutions division (ISD) from July 2007 to October 2010. In that role, he was responsible for meeting the needs of Lexmark���s worldwide customers for inkjet printers, all-in-one products, and related supplies and support, including development, manufacturing, marketing, and sales. From December 1999 to July 2007, Rooke was president of Lexmark���s former printing solutions and services division (PS&SD). In that role, he was responsible for providing Lexmark���s worldwide business customers with products, supplies, software, solutions, and services. Rooke joined Lexmark at the company���s inception in 1991 and has held various management assignments, including president of Lexmark���s division responsible for worldwide supplies distribution, and vice president of worldwide marketing and U.S. sales in ISD. Rooke began his career with IBM in 1980 as a manufacturing engineer. In 1984, he came to IBM���s Lexington, Ky., facility as manager of Wheelprinter automation. He holds a bachelor���s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and a master���s degree in business administration from the University of Kentucky. A recipient of CR Magazine���s 2011 CEO of the Year Award, Rooke has been leading a transformation of his business that is driven by economics and environmental impacts in equal measure. And, as anyone at HP can tell you, the industry challenges are formidable. In late 2012, Lexmark announced restructuring actions, including the exiting of the development and manufacturing of the company���s remaining inkjet hardware, which are expected to result in annualized savings of $95 million once fully implemented. Lexmark will continue to provide service, support, and aftermarket supplies for its inkjet installed base, but the restructuring resulted in some 1700 layoffs. ���Today���s announcement represents difficult decisions, which are necessary to drive improved profitability and significant savings,��� said Rooke. ���Our investments are focused on higher value imaging and software solutions, and we believe the synergies between imaging and the emerging software elements of our business will continue to drive growth across the organization.��� On the eve of those moves, Rooke shared his insights on everything from paper to leadership. Lexmark has been migrating of late���from consumer toward BtoB and from product to service. What are the implications of that? We���re moving from a hardware-centric printing business to a solutions business. Printers are still a large part of what we do, but we���re no longer ���Printers R Us.��� We���re simply adding software and service components to what we bring with hardware to offer a broader array of solutions to the customer. And of course, you have all these pressures on the printing industry and its customers on how to figure out more with less���less print, less paper. Which is ironic, because I remember the early ���80s, hearing about the paperless office, and here we are with at least as much, if not more, than then. So the pressures are clearly there, and our challenge is to turn a headwind into a tailwind. You can���t assume everything will be rosy forever. So we need to align with customer sentiment and interest. For five to seven years, our campaign has been ���print less, save more.��� Which catches them off guard, because here we���re a printing company. But then we start talking them through it. A lot of companies are not particularly efficient in this area. First, we get them more efficient with what they already do���getting them printing on both sides of the paper or printing multiple pages on one page. But then, we work on strategic thinking for a world that���s both paper and digital. I think there will be a vast time period with people in both worlds���where you���ll need seamless interaction of getting a hard copy onto a mobile device, for example. Or opening a bank account or benefits form���I need to scrape that information and be able to store it and move it and maybe collaborate on it electronically. So there will be a lot of going back and forth, which is where our focus is, especially using software. But what do your shareholders think of a marketing strategy that says ���use less of our product than you used to���? We���re a challenger in many respects. We were born from IBM. We���ve grown the printing business. We have much larger competitors��� Hewlett, Xerox���and one of our opportunities is to take pieces of their share in managed services or take footprints in devices away WINTER 2012 | www.thecro.com [5]