At January 2005 Senior Leadership Conference, many commented that the various business units had little knowledge of products and services offered across the company, making cross-sell opportunities limited. Recruited by President and COO to lead effort to educate and build product awareness company-wide. 15,000+ personnel needed to be educated in a short period of time.

Produced full-line catalog including products from all business units. Created two weeklong training courses focused on mail and print product suites to offer a hands-on approach to recognizing cross-sell opportunities and engaging the right people in the sales process. Selected a training facility and training commenced in April 2005. For nearly six months, a class was conducted at the facility every week.

Cross-sell performance boosted 133% from 2004 because of more than 1,700 “man days” of training conducted in 2005. Full-line catalog had never been produced before and was immediately sent to most of the employee base. Training was a huge success with all attendees, and was featured in second-quarter senior managers’ meeting among financial results and major initiatives.

Facility managers in general are loyal to certain suppliers that they have used and had success with in the past. Suppliers also typically had lists of frequently purchased items for each facility manager, which made it easy to buy their products and difficult to switch from one supplier to another without a lot of work. Needed to understand the behavior and preferences of customers and connect with them in order to boost customer base of startup.

Consulted and subsequently hired a long-time sales manager who had been selling to facilities managers for 20+ years. Objective was to map buying process and build a natural and familiar workflow into website. Utilized this information to build in easy cross-referencing tools and stored buying lists for quick repeat ordering into the website, which allowed easy conversion of any existing supplier’s order list into the site.

Investigated whether other preferences could be exploited from a marketing perspective to generate interest and find customers willing to convert. Determined large portion of target customer base were fans of NASCAR and their average age was over 45. Using this information, decided to bring a legendary NASCAR driver into booth at a national show during launch. Cale Yarborough flew in and spent a day in the booth taking pictures with customers, talking to them about racing, and endorsing company’s website. Booth was the buzz of the show with a line reaching outside, while competitors had a visible lack of traffic.

Generated 300 qualified leads from the show, 15% of which converted to customers over next two months. Cross-reference feature of the website and stored lists were the most frequently cited by customers as differentiators in company’s service.

Assumed leadership of a cross-business team to define company's growth strategy for a standalone professional services business. There was a great deal of misinformation regarding what a professional services business was and the commitment required to be world-class.

Formulated a business model that simulated professional services business, showing the level of resources required, engagements, management structure, and financial profile. Presented model to the Executive Leadership Council along with recommendations for modifying the strategy to be led by software (through acquisition) and supported by professional services.

Recommendations were adopted and company moved forward with an acquisition of Hasler, Inc., adding $130M revenue in 2004. Subsequently, this successful model has been used to understand implications of other investment decisions in the company.

Unable to get funding due to lawsuit from competitor, company had to be shut down. Brought the team together and delivered the news that decision had been made and the company would not be able to pay them. Also reported intention to call all customers and suppliers over next few days to do it right.

Shutdown was on Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday every employee reported to work despite the fact that they would not be paid. This was an unbelievable show of loyalty, pride and dedication that was overwhelming and illustrated the value of personal commitment to building loyalty and demonstrating a pride of ownership.

A division of the company was being divested, and during final negotiation, facility based in Knoxville, TN, was added to the deal. As Manager of Payroll Systems within Knoxville facility, began preparing to become an employee of the purchasing company.

Company executives examined the transaction and realized that in the 11th hour addition of the Knoxville shared-services facility, they had given away their entire expertise in payroll and benefits technology. Executive team approached purchasing company with a request to select a small core team to pull out of the facility to remain with the company. Subsequently, recruited to relocate to Nashville, TN to lead effort to reconstitute payroll systems team.

Allowed to hand-pick up to 10 people from existing Knoxville team to move to Nashville. Selected seven high-potential employees and began process of building shared-service center in new location. Spent next two years building a team and developing processes to support entire payroll and benefits operations using outsourced and offshore providers as well as a core group of internal IT professionals. Small operation in Nashville subsequently became the hub for all shared-service operations.

All IT application development was performed in the US and UK. Lack of outsourcing and offshore development affected cost competitiveness, but company culture was very averse to offshore development.

Initiated work with several India-based IT service companies, creating an onshore/offshore model for development and support. Worked as catalyst for change across IT organization. Though initially unpopular, it allowed higher productivity and quality for the same or lower cost, and spurred other organizations to outsource activities offshore.

Efforts culminated in a $35M IT-wide award for application development and support to an Indian firm. Reduced 22% of US- and UK-based headcount and realized cost savings across the company with increased application availability and software quality. Indian companies have also evolved over time to become key partners rather than simply a cost play.

Company needed to reduce support costs for its legacy IT applications and support the corporate 70/70/70 initiative to use outsourced, offshore software development providers. Using outsourced providers, particularly offshore providers, was relatively new to the business, so processes to source work and manage its execution did not exist.

Based on prior experience working with Indian firms, assumed leadership of global IT team for the AI (Asian Indian) Outsourcing Initiative. Created qualification and engagement processes, managed providers through creation of a scorecard, and directed flow of skilled consultants to and from the US and India. Leveraged cross-cultural and negotiation skills to ensure successful execution of initiatives.

By end of tenure with the company, more than 40 positions had been moved to outsource providers, generating $1.3M annualized savings in development and support costs.

Product development and launch on digital mail solution had been stalled for two years. Senior manager was leading the project ineffectively without a coherent operating strategy. Conflicting priorities within product development team ensured that nothing was completed on time. Marketing approach had not been developed and confidence in its delivery was very low.

Senior manager was well-respected, long-service employee of another organization within the company. He advocated an external software integration company as the development resource for the future product. These combined elements undermined the product development effort. As VP of Solutions Management, needed to gain influence over him in order to redirect the product. Convinced President and CMO to place full marketing and sales responsibilities with personal team in addition to technology development and product management, bringing the senior manager under personal supervision. Facilitated a retirement for him that left him appreciative of the efforts.

Redirected outside provider focus to internal sales and marketing efforts and protected company’s intellectual property. Met with potential pilot customer in Nortel and identified from them a list of desired features that were then prioritized into the product development calendar. Created go-to-market approach that consisted of pilot engagements, trade show presentations, speaking engagements at the World Outsourcing Summit, and online demonstration sites for sales and customers.

Nortel converted from pilot to full engagement of up to 10 executives, including the CEO. US House of Representatives signed on as a customer to complement its secure mail processing facility and provide digitally delivered content to 100 congressmen. Company also employed “dMail” internally within CEO's office. This delicate employee situation demanded great tact and diplomacy, and the product effort demanded detailed project management capability as well as prioritization of development activities.

USPS postal rate change was pending, which always generated huge increases in web traffic for Neopost as new rate took effect. Previous rate hikes resulted in company website crashing and leaving customers without the ability to get necessary information without contacting the call center, which was also swamped.

Barely a month into new position as VP of eBusiness, decided to transform web infrastructure to increase capability of handling enormous load for rate changes, having surveyed some customers and conducted a traffic study of the website. Quickly assimilated information, formulated action plan, and directed implementation of necessary changes.

The day of the rate change, the website stayed up and traffic increased 500% over any previous event. Effect of reduced calls to the call centers also freed up time for agents to spend with customers.

Company was just entering Internet age and needed to show progress against corporate initiative. Executive team had little understanding of the web’s impact on business or how to innovate around it without getting caught up in existing business model.

Formed a skunkworks team, relocated members to new office space, and created an environment similar to those the team was hearing and reading about in Silicon Valley. Team was more relaxed and creative, and produced several new ideas on how an industrial parts manufacturing and distribution business could expand its business on the web.

One idea brought to fruition was www.refurbishedturbines.com, which produced $6.5M in sales in the first month of launch and was featured in a story on MoneyLine. Team received a lot of positive feedback from across the corporation for having moved so quickly into the Internet arena.

Company’s medical systems division was having a great deal of difficulty managing their inventory of rotable board stock. This is inventory that is typically kept in service technicians’ van or trunk of the car. Without the visibility to the inventory, many new boards were being ordered when a suitable board may have been available in another technician’s inventory.

Service-level agreements with hospitals and labs required tight turnaround times for getting equipment serviced and back into operation. These did not allow for searching rotable inventory and shipping parts from one technician to another.

Centralized rotable inventory for infrequent use and high-value parts based on a detailed analysis of past part usage and failure rates. This minimized trunk stock but also required establishing a series of hubs to quickly supply needed parts from centralized stock and perform diagnostic testing on any returning stock.

Realized immediate benefit of $1M+ in reduced inventory and reduction in order rate for new parts. Additionally, opened up new market opportunities in the area of electronic components that had not been previously pursued.

Recommended that Neopost purchase Hasler, Inc. Five days prior to announcement of the deal, the Hasler stock price jumped just after noon, and a leak was suspected within one of the companies, which would constitute a major SEC violation and subject one or more individuals to prosecution for insider trading.

Unconvinced that there had been a leak of information, began an online search of chat boards for Hasler and Neopost to see if there were other potential triggers that would cause a jump in the stock price. Eventually found a reference to a newsletter that was released online at noon that day to a select group of subscribers to The Motley Fool. Immediately subscribed to the newsletter and found that they had indeed given a buy rating to the Hasler stock. Analyzed all other stocks mentioned in that and past newsletters and found a statistical correlation to the stock price increases and newsletter releases.

Provided this information to the President of Neopost Document Messaging Technologies business unit and Chairman, and the panic was quickly diffused. The $321M transaction was announced on schedule and transaction price was not altered.