Lexmark CEO expects more growth of firm, Cebu branch

Paul Rooke, (left) chairman and chief executive officer of Lexmark International Inc., leads other company officials in introducing their new printing products in their office at the Cebu Business Park. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)

The growth of Lexmark International Inc.’s solutions business worldwide has fueled more growth for the company’s global operations including its Cebu branch.

Paul Rooke, chairman and chief executive officer of Lexmark International, Inc., said  in yesterday’s press briefing that the company’s software and managed solutions business is now 30 percent of the whole business which registered the fastest growth last year at 18 percent.

Rooke was in Cebu yesterday to launch the firm’s new printers at the Lexmark Research and Development Corp. Plaza 3 at the Cebu Business Park.

Rooke said Cebu has become a critical player in the thrust to continue to develop solutions that will enable companies in various industries to process unstructured information and use them to achieve efficiency and grow their profit.

“The explosion of unstructured content has left people disconnected from the information they needed to complete effective processes,” said Rooke.

He added that enterprise systems today are missing a lot of critical data content like photos, videos, audio and more that could not fall easily into the more structured information fueled by the growth in use of mobile devices around the world.

“Lexmark is uniquely focused on connecting the unstructured printed and digital information across the enterprise with the processes, applications and people that need it the most,” said Rooke.

Their Cebu global operations center work with people from their headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky for hardware development and with China where their hardware manufacturing is located.

Lexmark first came to Cebu in 1999 as a printers company with a manufacturing plant in Mactan Export Processing Zone until the company decided to evolve into a solutions company. It then slowly moved away from the inkjet business in 2012.

In 2001, Lexmark Research and Development Corp. was also established at Cebu Business Park and grew over the years.

Rooke said it was initially a support group for their operations in other locations.

The support group however turned out to eventually  become managers of their own solutions and products.

In 2004, the Cebu Shared Services Center was also opened and employs close to 1,500 people making up 80 percent of Lexmark’s total population under the Shared Services division. The 20 percent of left from this number  is in Argentina.