Due to various acquisitions/mergers, there had been little focus on “right sizing” of sales teams and earnings did not justify staff costs. Sales teams were organized by Line of Business and did not focus on earnings per customer.

Organized and sponsored teams: created banding of customers; defined roles and responsibilities to ensure proper servicing of customers by most appropriate service provider; created and defined processes to enable customer profitability analysis; and transformed each respective sales team to “right size.”

Sales staff reductions of approximately $17M or 30% are in process. Additional growth of $4.3M identified due to time liberated by servicing customers with most appropriate service provider. In addition, learned respective sales teams did not implement price changes effectively for products they did not own, and identified further $10M opportunity.

Organizational performance measurements have been created and will be part of each respective team leader’s scorecard moving forward. Customer Profitability Analysis must become engrained in the business.

Newly formed startup needed to reduce operating costs. Several key agreements created by interim management were draining reserves.

Interviewed IT Development group to understand needs. Then defined strategy and process to reduce operating expenses.

Reduced operating costs by approximately $3M by negotiating favorable webMethods license agreement and mitigating existing costs with Commerce One, i2 Technologies and Accenture.

webMethods agreement created the greatest value and ensured connectivity with customers.

As a blender and marketer of fuel oil, competitive supply agreements for Fuel & Marine Marketing were necessary. Agreements had to be negotiated so company could resell blended products for a fair margin while ensuring suppliers did not feel cheated and lose business.

Leveraged extensive experience in refinery operations and economic planning to develop fellow traders and establish seamless teams with operations/blending group. In addition, defined and executed key supplier negotiation strategies.

Established several agreements that improved earnings by $8.7M during tenure with the organization. For the term of agreements, value had potential greater than $23M. Collaboration created win-win situation and ensured long relationship.

Shell acquired Pennzoil-Quaker State Company in 2002, creating confusion and overlap in the Distributor and Direct Sales Operation channels. Revenue via the channels was approximately $1 billion. There were three lines of business (Consumer, Commercial, Industrial), and working with internal consultants made little progress, leaving customers confused. In addition, multiple distributor agreements existed and none with performance requirements.

Each Line of Business (LoB) had different objectives, which made it difficult to achieve consensus in a respective market. Organized Steering Team with Senior Leader from each LoB and defined terms of reference with big rules. Obtained full responsibility to represent all LoBs: responsible for strategy; commercial negotiation, including sale and divesture of assets; implementation; and customer relationship management. Recruited and hired staff from each respective LoB. Led effort to create one distributor agreement with performance metrics defined. Divided U.S. into eighty (80) markets, led negotiations on market-by-market basis, and implemented negotiated actions. Defined value proposition and hired channel performance team to ensure future control and sustainability.

Leveraged market intelligence of over 300 sales personnel in eighty markets to improve channel visibility, management and control. Earnings potential was improved by $65M (5 year NPV), by negotiating increased volume commitment of 16% while reducing distributors by 39%. Go-forward distributors were assigned geographic areas, which added value to brands and provided clarity to customers. In addition, optimized operating expense and improved margin by selling non-strategic direct sales operations. Facilities reduced by approximately 25% while improving earnings by $16M, 5 year NPV.

Significant earnings were obtained by focusing on channel management and creating proper process and measurement. Key to future success is implemented Channel Performance Team.

Large retail customers were not satisfied with supply of products. Company did not understand where failures were occurring.

Initiated "Root Cause" process and organized Customer Supply Management team to analyze large retail account inventories, in order to either recommend needed product orders or, in the case of Wal-Mart, order products for their system.

Identified causes of failures throughout supply chain and customers, which enabled corrective action. Customer satisfaction improved tremendously. Target Stores cut dollars were reduced by 61% while in-stocks increased to 95.5%. Wal-Mart Distribution Centers’ in-stocks were near 100%. AutoZone awarded Shell their “Extra Miler” award in 2005.

Working to understand root cause of issues and establishing collaborative partnerships achieved great value for all parties.

Fuel oil and distillate economics were not optimized and crude selection of non-Arabian was very limited. Gasoline was the largest moneymaker and management did not understand value of optimizing lower-valued streams.

Built new blending and tracking programs of distillates, fuel oil, feedstocks and all crude. Became LP modeler to demonstrate nontraditional earnings opportunities.

Created integrated production forecasting of more than 7 million barrels of product per month by coordinating and managing efforts of multiple groups. Improved margins by $10.2M by optimizing operations. At today’s price of crude, value created would be approximately $30M.

Centralized Supply Chain Management group that was suppose to manage Operations Supply Planning, Project Management (which included New Product launch), Transportation, Customer Supply Management and Special Projects was not providing the support Operations required nor proper service to customers. Organization lacked effective executive leadership to define expectations and create collaborative working environment.

Interviewed internal and external customers to clearly understand their needs and expectations. Utilized feedback to define vision/mission/strategy that was consistent with company and rest of supply chain. Implemented comprehensive communication program with open-door policy. To ensure effective alignment and optimize costs, reorganized departments and released under-performers within first two months of taking executive role.

Leadership, high energy, coaching, counseling, and communication revitalized this underperforming organization: Significantly improved relationships with internal and external customers. Achieved revenue shipped and on-time of 99.8% and 93.5% respectively while reducing inventory below 39 days for complex consumer-products SKU mix. In addition, took over sponsorship of SAP SCM Suite implementation and built Planning & Analysis group, which enabled working capital to be reduced by $26M and airfreight by 70%. Lastly, implemented transportation strategy that enabled reduction in carriers from 564 to 31 while delivering cost savings of $ 8M.

Within Supply Chain Management, created Product Supply organization to manage business planning process, to meet/exceed customer expectations by planning forecast, production, procurement and distribution requirements of the business centrally to allow local/regional production facilities to focus on execution. It takes a team with effective leadership to deliver “game changing” results.

Refinery Tank repair was significantly delayed due to contracting process. Maintenance to refinery tanks required competitive bids for each job as the costs for repairs was approximately $20M annually.

Investigated all potential bidders and defined selection process. Executed agreements with top three companies and created evergreen format, whereby pre-approved contractors would bid on each respective project.

Since all terms and insurance were handled in advance, approved contractors would utilize a scope-of-work addendum to bid on each job, which reduced project time on average by four weeks.

Mechanical integrity of refinery fixed equipment was inconsistent, varying greatly by inspector. There was no documented program, procedures or regular training.

Developed annual training calendar for inspectors to be trained against industry standards. Then created sub-team of experienced inspectors and collaborated with sister refineries to define on-stream inspection program. In the process, created more than 30 procedures to ensure best practice and consistency.

Equipment mechanical integrity improved, which helped to maintain on-stream time above 97%. Several of the procedures created are still in use today and helped greatly when Process Safety Management was implemented.

Shell, Texaco, and Saudi Aramco downstream alliance had $5.1 billion that it could leverage to build a procurement exchange or negotiate equity into newly forming exchanges, but did not have skill set required to investigate and manage the opportunity.

Leveraged business experience to define opportunities and screen concepts, create value proposition, business case, define negotiation strategy, obtain funding for equity investment, plan and execute.

Delivered negotiated equity of 3.5% in Trade–Ranger, leading global procurement exchange in the energy industry with 14 equity partners. Obtained approval for funds and concept from Senior Executives Glenn Tilton (CEO) of Texaco and Rob Routs (CEO) of Shell. Designed Trade–Ranger charter as initial startup Board Member and was then recruited by Trade–Ranger interim CEOs as first VP of Sales: managed staff of 14 professionals to define organizational needs; oversaw Customer Relationship Management and Sales recruitment; and improved development of business plan, marketing and sales strategies. Represented Trade–Ranger globally at various conferences.

Team learned that critical in future startups, CEO and other key executives must be named prior to launch, as consultants will eat up all capital.

Newly formed startup company needed to leverage critical mass of investors by creating revenue-sharing arrangements. Executive team was using consultants and loaned resources to define strategy and execute negotiations.

Hired staff and led effort to define strategy with Executive Team and customers; then developed negotiation process to establish revenue-sharing arrangements.

Executed due diligence, negotiations and definitive agreements with Wellogix and NetworkOil. Revenue sharing arrangements took revenues from zero to positive.

In the future, it is important to create agreements that will sustain all parties. In addition, proper skills are needed to execute on a run and maintain basis.