Strategic Skills

With boards being defined as a group of people making decisions in a concerted effort to manage corporates it is important to have a mix of experience and characters to reap the results of influencing, intellectual stimulation, motivation, and individual consideration in a harmonized but challenging way to obtain the bets results for the organizations managed. With individual board member adding strengths and skills to the team of board members, the following are my key strengths to bring to a mix of board requirements sought after.

Sustainability & ESG

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Managed a global competence centre holding all global accreditations and approvals for agricultural, horticultural, floricultural, organic produce, feed, and carbon-offset verification schemes. Instrumental with introducing various sustainable product schemes in Africa and Southern-America, protection indigenous people, introducing social chapters for third party protocols. Implementing corporate governance at startup companies. Introducing industry related CSR/ESG best practices for ethical sourcing, for PV, BESS, Electrolysers and WECS taking into account the polysilicon, Lithium and REE mining for component production through the supply chain.

Relevant projects and experiences:

  • Global rollout of schemes, standards, accredited systems
  • Scaling up second party social audits for brands/retails
  • Global study for IFC/WB for sustainable Photovoltaic supply chains
  • Due diligence framework for banks and infrastructure funds investing in PV/BESS/WECS
  • Proving industry wide solutions for geopolitical sensitive areas

Benefits:

  • Strategic thinking and implementation
  • Consultative approach to clients, stakeholders, industries and markets
  • Credentials, designations and experience related to ESG aspects and issues
  • Global and regional implementation experience and exposure
  • Various ESG, sustainability, corporate governance, designations and diploma’s
Case Study
1. Scaling up second party auditing schemes for retailers and brands related to social and labour aspects. A team of 70FTE grew to 700FTE in 3 years’ time. Training and calibration were key for consistency and subject matter expertise. The value-add and differentiator was the introduction of a compliance, governance scheme to prevent or resist bribery managing both the “giver” and “receiver” side of sellers and buyers.

2. A large global bank due to a recent acquisition asked for development of an ethical supply chain due diligence framework. Specifically supporting foreign LPs and foreign headquarters on protection of their brands through risk management of the infrastructure projects they would invest in through a newly established fund with the LP cornerstone investors. Building on the Equator Principles, using various ESG schemes and standards through a mapping table, building a unique solution for this bank, based on ESG practitioner skills supplemented with the vast renewable experience from company and staff. Providing for a global solution with adaptation to unique country characteristics to assure business and investment continuity.

Digital Transformation

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Implemented a mobile reporting system increasing utilization of auditors by 20%, reducing support staff by 50%, decreasing turn-around-time (TAT) by a week for clients and creating digital repository for data mining, continious improvement and benchmarking. Led development of a Knowledge Management (KM) and Key Account Management (KAM) system. Core member and Global Business Leader for global ERP implementation into 80% of Turnover generating countries. Key member of team redefining customer interfacing IT platforms for testing, inspection reporting and data mining.

Relevant projects and experiences:

  • Introduced mobile reporting systems for auditing globally
  • Implemented an accredited digital and global QA system
  • Business lead for largest ATIC ERP roll-out globally at planned schedule, within budgets and reaching 200M CHF cost reduction within 5 years
  • Introduced digital continious improvement supply chain auditing solutions based on a unique methodology
  • Core member for various continious improvement projects and a strategic organizational renewal team

Benefits:

  • Continious improvement implementation across various organisations
  • Introduction of digital systems for process improvements and data mining
  • Six Sigma certified black belt
  • Successful reductions of cost, TAT, support staff and increase of REV and client intimacy
Case Study
1. As a core team member representing a global business line in an order-to-invoice standard process definition for a global ERP roll out. 80% of global revenue to be managed through ERP, saving 225M US$ over a 5-year period. “Do things right once” and removing “check-the-checker” layers. Centralised service and customer creations supporting immediate invoicing and global KAM roll-up across legal entities. Global CRM and KAM adopted into ERP provider’s module based on teams’ definition. The post-definition implementation requiring change management and stakeholder management, was led by myself. With the critical role the process had, I was assigned to the global renewal team supporting the recently appointed CEO and his advisor with implementation of the ERP and structures.

2. Applying continious improvement thinking and methodologies for auditing supply chains across industry categories. Using digital checklists and algorithms on checklist sections and weighted questions, provides for benchmarking data and data mining. Utilization of execution staff increases with 20% while also adding value to customers with providing on site Corrective Action Reports. With digital processes automating reporting reducing errors. Using mobile devices to capture data digitally to support the methodology, decrease turnaround times (TAT) for customer report delivery (from 14 to 3-5 days), and reducing admin support capacity (50%) and review times.

Change Management

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Member of Executive Management Team restructuring organisation with 1600FTE. Key member of Global Renewal Team related to ERP implementation (60000FTE). Member of core team designing new processes leading to 200M CHF cost reduction (5 years) through ERP system for order-to-invoice. Assigned to EU team for restructuring Asia-Ops/EU sales performance. Restructured organization in China and South-Korea, merging organizations in South Korea, closing JV in China for legal reasons, and closing legal entity in Japan (performance).

Relevant projects and experiences:

  • Post Merger Integrations (FR, CN, JP, KR, DE, UK)
  • Global ERP implementation
  • Implementing digital only processes
  • Digitization providing for data mining and customer intimacy
  • Global, regional and country based restructuring

Benefits:

  • PMI, change management & restructuring
  • Six Sigma certified black belt
  • Stakeholder management
  • Compassionate change maker
Case Study
1. Global ERP rollout covering for 80% of Revenue required large regions and countries to be pro-actively involved in the systems and making old systems redundant. A rollout mapping and roll-out team created to prepare top management, HR, IT of receiving countries to organize project upfront and assigning super users for the various modules of the system in helping collection critical data and cleansing of data before uploading. The upfront roll-out team, its approach and processes were a success to the roll-out within budget and time. Once standardized I moved back to the business.

2. A company with 250FTE was acquired in the Far East 3 years prior to me onboarding. Former 3-headed Exec team was kept in place. No PMI performed during the period as company acted stand alone. Analysis showed 70% REV with 1 customer, of which the company was spun off, no proper sales and KAM, no strategic plan for synergies inside country or regions where many similar companies of its origin were successfully growing. Removed existing management, hired a country CEO, merged management of multiple entities under country CEO for synergies in cost and opportunities, approved changes an hiring by new CEO for sales and KAM roles. Successfully changed REV portfolio in healthier distribution, grew REV from <5% to >25% y-o-y, won multiple large-scale contracts through cross-region cooperation and applying market development with HQ support for service roll-out.

Innovation & Product Development

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Developed and implemented global market assessment and KAM procedure after a trial period in the EU, realizing 10% turnover growth. Conducted pilot testing of Knowledge Management and Key Account Management systems. Managed a multimillion-dollar new turnover stream for toy testing due to US regulatory changes. Covering geopolitical tension established an industry best practice for polysilicon Chain-of-Custody for multilateral and bilateral financial institutes. Develop an emerging market model for phased implementation covering quartzite to PV modules, as well as risk management for battery mining related ingredients.

Relevant projects and experiences:

  • Introduced a globally first sustainable product labelling scheme
  • Implemented mobile auditing and reporting systems under accredited circumstances
  • Created digital repositories allowing for data mining, data analysis, client portals
  • Created a service portfolio for PhotoVoltaic (PV), Batttery storage (BESS) facilitating for chain-of-custody solutions globally
  • Developed due diligence frameworks, ethical sourcing and traceability solutions for banks, financial institutes and funds

Benefits:

  • Managed global competence and innovation centre
  • Developed New Product Development teams to foster innovation
  • Developed numerous innovative sustainable, ESG and supply chain solutions
Case Study
1. Various projects won with multilateral and bilateral development banks using differentiating innovative solutions supporting ESG driven risk management and brand protection requests. Global renewable infrastructure projects financed through funds will touch geopolitical driven sensitive aspects of supply chains and its transparency of sourcing, segregation, and labour aspects. Applying to mining for battery raw materials and wiring used for transformers in wind turbines, or polysilicon used to create the final solar module product. The complexity of the supply chain or products requires an innovative approach to manoeuvre through sensitive areas, supporting the industry with compliance and transparency for export and import requirements which are exposed to media driven allegations of supply chain players. Due diligence frameworks developed for country specific project financing or global ethical sourcing frameworks with levels of maturity to support growth in compliance and categorize risk for engagement.

2. A globally applied New Product Development process using funnelling, prioritization and assessment for product/market applied focus on products with best opportunity for the company taking investment and lead time into account. Access to prior-to-market information on new standards applied in a jurisdiction in the upcoming year allowed us to prepare and make upfront investments to be ready when the law came into effect. This resulted in capturing 80MUS$ additional revenue across a multitude of global laboratory.
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“What got you here won’t get you there”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949 - present)