Costco Connection - June 2009

the transformation of the business—the ability to have changed the direction of the research-and-development pipeline, created a services business and developed an annuity business model based on customer relationships.

So as much as we focus on the financial turnaround, I think in many ways the strategic turnaround was a lot more important. It probably gets a little less attention but has been much more “ impactful” and relevant to our ongoing success than just getting the company financially sound.

CC: Xerox became pretty lean during the turnaround. How are you handling the current economy?

AM: If there’s any positive to a time like this, it’s this window of opportunity to get fit, take out the waste and really deal with whatever is not best in class in your business.

For example, we’ve looked at ways to integrate some of our product development into more platform approaches. We’ve done a lot with shared services in areas such as marketing and human resources, where we believe we can serve multiple divisions or groups with more of an integrated services concept than dedicated resources. We’ve definitely made our supply chain more efficient.

All of this is the culmination of having better technology, better processes, better frameworks for optimization than we had before. I think there’s a natural curve to technology productivity that you have to follow, and then there’s a business productivity curve that’s equally aggressive in terms of making sure you never think you’re done.

CC: What are some of Xerox’s green initiatives? AM: A lot of people are talking about [being green] now, but we’ve been at it for a very, very long time. Decades literally. It was the rationale behind … two-sided copying. We were focused on waste-free factories and environmental impact long before it was legislated or in vogue.

We think about it in three different ways. We think about it in terms of our own environment:

whether it’s setting standards for ourselves in terms of greenhouse reductions or ensuring that every operation in our world looks at carbon footprint and ways to improve it.

Second, a big part of our services initiative now is to help our customers use less energy, be more effective, focus on waste reduction and print less. It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s absolutely what we’re helping our customers do these days with things like solid ink, which yields 90 percent less waste than color laser printers, or high-yield paper, which uses 90 percent of the tree.

Third, we’ve partnered with The Nature Conservancy on forestry methods. We were one of the founding members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which is looking to create some environmental policies. On all of those fronts we have a long history and a lot more substance than show.

CC: Since you were named CEO, there’s been a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that you’re a woman. Should it mean anything different than what it means to be a male CEO?

AM: It’s interesting. I used to sort of wish that question didn’t come up because it came up so much. I kind of have a different perspective on it now. I feel very fortunate to be the CEO of Xerox, and I think part of that responsibility is to provide some visibility to the advancement of women.

It would be one thing if we’d reached the point where the numbers spoke for themselves and there was the kind of parity, or at least proved representation, but that’s not the case. You look at the handful of women who are CEOs in the Fortune 500 and you recognize that it’s still not a level playing field and that it’s important to talk about.

I think it would be inappropriate if I didn’t use the opportunity I have as a CEO to talk about the need for business, public and private sectors to do a better job in ensuring that women get the right jobs, that they’re developed and that they have opportunities to fulfill whatever career desires they have. C

supplier profile

Name: Anne Mulcahy, CEO

Company: Xerox Corporation

Employees: 55,600

Address: 45 Glover Ave. Norwalk, CT 06850

Phone: 1-800-477-6474

Web site: www.xerox.com

Products at Costco: Xerox paper is available in most warehouses. Xerox printers, toner cartridges, ink sticks and paper are available at Costco.com.

Comments about Costco: “A lot of what Costco believes in I’d like to think are core attributes of Xerox: the customer experience and the longevity and loyalty of its people. I think Costco never loses sight of the customer being the center of everything they do. That experience is so extraordinarily important that I think it’s something we aspire to as well.”—Anne Mulcahy

1961 Haloid Xerox Inc. changes name to Xerox Corporation, April 18.

2002 Anne Mulcahy becomes Xerox chairman.

1973

Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) invents prototype of the world’s first personal computer, the Alto, with innovations

including the first what-you-see-

The Xerox Alto

is-what-you-get editor, first commercial use of a mouse, graphical user interface, and bit-mapped display. Its commercial descendant was the 8010 Star.