The newest C-suite occupant at Norwalk’s Xerox Holdings Corp. is Deena LaMarque Piquion, who was named chief marketing officer in September. She had been senior vice president and general manager of Xerox”™s Latin America Operations since 2019.
In this edition of Suite Talk, Piquion speaks about her new job and Xerox”™s evolution within the high-tech space.
What do you see as your priorities in this position?
In terms of priorities, the first one is probably not very different from any other CMO in our industry and in any industry, which is we have to be very closely aligned to our business stakeholders. Unfortunately, we’ve been really good at keeping secrets up until now, so it’s about amplifying out in the marketplace. There are very cool and disruptive things that Xerox is engaged in right now.
And then it’s about helping Xerox stand up to its new businesses. Earlier this year, Xerox announced organizational changes to support plans to create three new businesses — Software, Financing and Innovation — aimed at delivering long-term growth. Xerox is also standing up CareAR, which consolidates the CareAR Inc., DocuShare and XMPie businesses under a single holding entity.
We have such a diverse set of new businesses, with each of them in different maturity phases with different needs, so I am focused on helping them stand up to be successful.
As chief marketing officer, what do you want your stakeholders to think of when they hear the word “Xerox”?
I want them to think about a technology powerhouse — an innovative forum for technology. We have over 100 years of innovation experience, but now we are investing in such cool technologies like IoT, cleantech and 3D. We’re able to help in advanced manufacturing, When everybody’s supply chain is corrupted, it’s important to be able to add value in these types of supply chain technologies.
You were previously working with Xerox”™s operations in Latin America before taking this job. What is the Latin American market like for Xerox?
The Latin American market is always complex for any manufacturer. It’s a great environment to learn as a business leader because agility has to be part of how you lead and how you set your business plans.
Based on my Latin America experiences, I always look at everything from a global perspective on where we can scale effectively, whether it’s in marketing or in business plans. I always have that lens to make sure that we can scale affordably and effectively to secondary or tertiary markets that are not as large as the U.S., Canada or the U.K., which are typically mature markets for any tech company.
Coming into this role, I’ve already dealt with having to balance priority decisions, and I know what that’s like from a business and a P&L perspective. Now I can transition to a CMO perspective and understand my business stakeholders even more.
You were recently recognized by DiversityFIRST as one of the Top 50 Women in Tech for 2021. What is Xerox doing to encourage more diversity within its ranks?
That’s one of the things that really drew me to Xerox after a 19-year career at another company. It wasn’t an easy decision to leave and join a new company, but I saw that diversity was such an important part of the company’s values.
We have stated goals and intentions in terms of diversity on our board that we’ve published publicly. And internally, we have our own metrics that we’re tracking. We have the Women’s Alliance, we have the Black Women’s Leadership Council, and so many different rich and diverse groups for people to take advantage of. That really promotes inclusion and bringing your whole self to work.
For a lot of people of a certain age, the first thing they think about when someone says “Xerox” is photocopiers. What is the company’s role within today’s photocopying sector?
It’s so funny because it’s so outdated — but it’s stuck, right? I’m going to use a funny analogy: my family is from Haiti, and in Haiti if you’re going to eat cereal you’re going to eat “corn flakes,” regardless of what the brand is.
I think that that’s how dominant Xerox was in the photocopy business way back when, that it became a verb to photocopy. Xerox was dominant at the time with photocopiers, but we’ve come so far from that, and we’ve transformed so much in our brands and all of the services around print.
The digital services to automate workflows are still a huge part of our business, but photocopying per se is not the core part of our business. It just speaks to the dominance we had at that time.
Where do you see Xerox a year from now?
I see our new and diverse businesses as even more mature and even more well-known in the industry. You will see a lot of the younger generation of technologists — the millennials and Gen Z — recognizing the innovation that comes out of Xerox and wanting to join and be part of that trajectory as well.
