Jim malcolm

Instituted Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to be compatible with Ricoh Company, Ltd. infrastructure by actually analyzing and managing global business requirements of automating the back office needs. Provided leadership to the arduous task of converting from SAP to Oracle in the United States and from FX to BAAN in Canada.

The new ERP systems transition required effective planning, coding, deployment, training in adopting the new infrastructure. The systems were integrated into Ricoh Company, Ltd. legacy systems streamlining forward and reverse logistics, financial reporting, sales reporting, and visibility to “Just in Time” inventory planning; all accomplished ahead of schedule and cost savings.

Competing company priorities combined with poorly defined roles and responsibilities limited productivity and negatively impacted profitability. Determined to design a measurable and traceable process improvement plan I built and branded the ACE 8 (Achieve Customer Excellence) model. ACE 8, codeveloped with my leadership team, identified and provides execution tactics to resolve eight of the most pressing performance gaps in the company.

The multi-phased Ace 8 program was architected in 60 days, framing long-term continual business improvement initiatives. This program identified and executed key business development projects complete with benchmarks, ROI objectives and customer excellence measures.

1. Customer Service: Order Management / Order Entry
2. Win the Customers Heart: Service, Repair, and Support
3. Supply Chain: Returns and Reverse Logistics
4. Win by Product: Product Lifecycle Management
5. Purchase, Sales and Inventory (PSI): Product Flow
6. P&L Management: Financial Reporting and Forecasting
7. Win at Web: Digital Experience

8. Win at Retail: Key product initiatives

This focused work effort, which reduced costs while improving operations, sales, customer engagement, marketing, supply chain, and financial expenses, increased revenue with significant market share gains.

Poorly conceived pricing and commission structures, lack of analytics, and dated inventory strategies resulted in overproduction, eroding revenue, margins, and profit. Despite multiple attempts by previous leaders to resolve the fundamentally flawed plan, their efforts were not successful. Therefore, I restructured the compensation model by shifting the KPIs from gross revenue on sales to profit contribution by SKU and by profitability by account.

Tying compensation to profit dollars, restructuring pricing, instituting analytics, and ensuring inventory improvements resulted in improved profit contribution; restoring profitability, exceeding budgeted Gross Profit contribution by 6.7%.

Fixed costs were high and eroded profit. The challenge was to reduce expenses without affecting sales performance or service. Built the strategy within the first 90 days and oversaw execution. Transitioned logistics process from a fixed to variable cost operating model. Engaged 3PL (Third Party Logistics), eliminated warehousing, and sold or disposed of obsolescent inventory. These efforts reduced costs 55% while improving customer response and satisfaction.