Jeff Jacobson will be the next CEO of Xerox when the company divides into a business services company and a print technology company. Jacobson will head the print technology arm which retains the Xerox name. The software services arm changes its name to Conduent. Ursula Burns, who is current CEO will become chairman of the document production business.
Jacobson joined Xerox four years ago as president of Global Graphic Communications Operations and two years later was named president of the Xerox Technology business. Burns says: “During his four years at Xerox, Jeff has driven significant productivity and cost efficiency efforts while maintaining our commitment to innovation, quality and leading technology.”
Under his watch, Xerox acquired Impika and has since developed the Trivor and Brenva inkjet presses launched at Drupa this year. He has also steered Xerox away from its insistence on using its own inkjet technology for document printing, which had resulted in the CiPress. The phase change ink used in that press has been deployed in the direct to shape printer that Xerox previewed at the same show.
Xerox also announced a partnership with KBA at the show, something it had never previously done. The project which will use Xerox inkjet technology in a B1 sheetfed press began two years ago. Previous partnerships, that with EFI and before that Scitex on digital front ends, have been focused on enhancing Xerox products, rather that providing technology to outside companies.
Electrophotographic remains core to Xerox, having introduced new models for the entry level Versant press and a five-colour iGen5, during the last year. But inkjet represents the future of the business. During Drupa, Burns had described her role on the engineering team of the iGen project and then as group president at its launch.
The expansion into inkjet for Xerox she said “serves as a metaphor for how things are changing. The print shop today looks like it did ten or 20 years ago from the outside, but there has been fundamental change behind the scenes.
“Traditional offset is declining, while high quality digital especially inkjet is growing and has generating new types of work.”
Jacobson joined Xerox from Presstek where he had been CEO and president. There he had moved the focus from developing DI presses to its plate business, partly because this had a been a business he knew well from five years as CEO at Kodak Polychrome Graphics and then as chief operating officer of the Kodak Graphic Communications business.
His appointment came after a thorough search among external and internal candidates for “the right talent”.
Jacobson himself declares in the official release: “I am confident that we will build a bright future for Xerox on the foundation of disciplined management, operational excellence and customer focus that is in place today.
“With the benefit of the strategic transformation we are aggressively implementing, we will capture the many opportunities available to us to strengthen core businesses and pursue select growth opportunities.”
Jeff Jacobson has been CEO of Kodak Polychrome Graphics and then Presstek. Now he is getting the change to lead Xerox into a new dawn following the split in the company between the traditional print based business which remains Xerox and the business services operation which becomes Corduent.
