The Company
Lisa was engaged on a major Executive Search project for one of the world’s largest LPG distributors, operating in 17 European countries in western and central Europe under seven distinct brands.
LPG is a good old-fashioned industry and the management team for Supply and Wholesales sits under Natural Gas & Power dealing with the physical Supply Chain: Trucks and Rail carts; buying and trading from either the North Sea or refineries. The function of the European teams is to ensure e2e delivery to the customer.
The challenge
The client’s mission was to identify a Paris based LPG Supply Operations Director, to provide leadership and oversight to the Supply Operations Teams across Europe. These teams (“Supply Ops”) consisted of 30 people located across 10 offices and 4 main hubs in France, UK, Sweden and Poland and were in charge of running the physical supply chain from supply points to delivery points – depots, filling plants and terminals.
They were not just looking for a candidate who had experience in supply chain. They were seeking a candidate from out of industry, a candidate who would bring innovation, and add value to operational excellence, optimisation, service delivery and business process transformation. It was also essential to understand cross cultural/European challenges, as well as keeping ahead of rapid environmental changes. Someone who could hit the ground running.
The solution
- 12-week turnaround
- Approached 127 global potential candidates.
- Throughout the process held weekly progress meetings with the client
- Summary profile and presented a longlist of 16 exceptionally strong candidates.
- Shortlisted 5 candidates who went forward to interview.
The result
Lisa successfully identified and placed a candidate from a diverse background in Automotive, Retail and ecommerce, who brought innovation to the role with a fresh pair of eyes in this very traditional industry.
Their ideal candidate stood out from the crowd, with 15 years’ experience in Supply Chain, continuous improvement, project management, planning, strategy, customer excellence and people management.
He had worked in a wide range of international businesses with a constant focus on customer satisfaction, profitability, and operational excellence.
His teams usually consisted of highly skilled professionals from the whole of Europe as well as significant contacts with stakeholders in USA, Asia and North Africa, working with both Executive and Operational teams to ensure buy-in and smooth and timely execution.
