As an ambitious 16-year-old, Louann G. Siebert made more money than her mother. As a telephone operator, she discovered that she was competitive and a fast learner. (She handled the maximum number of calls with the least number of errors, she says.) Committed to her work, Siebert says she realized that money guarantees a "tremendous" amount of independence. At Boise Paper Solutions, an international distributor of office supplies and paper and an integrated manufacturer and distributor of paper, packaging and building materials, Siebert has taken supply-chain management to a new level.
Siebert joined Boise's customer service department 25 years ago. Having learned about sales and business operations at the company, Siebert felt a need for a change and joined the supplier's marketing division 10 years ago. For suppliers to remain successful, she thought, they needed to play a more visible, significant role in the supply chain. "There was a time in the industry when we could be independent of the chain and still be successful," she says. "But now it has changed so much, we cannot be successful without understanding" the role and importance of all players in the chain.
Siebert began with a simple premise: "Boise is a raw products supplier. If I can't understand what's important to end users, how can I help manufacturers and distributors?" She studied the roles of distributors, manufacturers and suppliers to determine how Boise could add value and better serve its customers. "It became incredibly apparent that we had to be a part of supply-chain management," she says.
Siebert says she's driven by a continuous desire to understand what customers want. "This is followed by a curiosity and urge to understand what's coming as far as technology goes, and how those dynamics affect the business," she says. But Siebert realized that it's difficult to initiate change and solve problems on her own. So each time she ran into a problem, she would meet with key people. Together, they would dissect the problem and find a solution. "You get a team of stakeholders in the room and tackle the problem," Siebert says. "That allows you to move faster on the challenge than anything else."
Siebert says she's excited about a new supply-chain management business model that she has been working on. She says it's too early to discuss its details, but explains what drives her to be innovative. "The industry is a continuous jigsaw puzzle," she says. "I'm excited enough and curious enough to know what's happening and how I can use that to better serve customers."
Louann G. Siebert, security papers market manager at Vancouver, Wash-based supplier Boise Paper Solutions, helped the company understand its role in supply-chain management.
When he was 20 years old, Michael Del Chiaro juggled three jobs. He waited tables during the day, worked the night shift at his local UPS facility, and spent his other waking hours running a car business. Seven years ago, when he joined Ward/Kraft Inc., Del Chiaro channeled his energy into restructuring the manufacturer's marketing strategy and its sales, marketing and service departments. No wonder he's better known as "Spark Plug."
Del Chiaro recalls being a fourth-grader with asthma. He would watch a fellow asthmatic stand alone on a hilltop after school. Most children would run down the hill, but the schoolmate would say, "I can't run because I have asthma," Del Chiaro says. Looking at the schoolmate, Del Chiaro decided that he would never give up. In spite of his asthma, Del Chiaro became involved in sports. Today, he snow skis (double diamond black hills), water skis and runs races.
Del Chiaro's never-say-die attitude has translated into his simple mantra at work: Bring it on, bring it on, and bring it on. In 1999, Del Chiaro led a re-engineering/sales program called the Customer Astonishment program. He studied Ward/Kraft's successful programs during the last 30 years and devised a plan for more successful programs for the next 30. He also researched 100 other companies to study their successes, and analyzed the roles of Ward/Kraft's managers, sales and marketing personnel, and production staff. He redefined the company's core purpose (to be the "ultimate provider of innovative business and document solutions"), rewrote all job descriptions, retrained management on how to coach employees and recommitted employees to core ideals such as never letting customers run out of products.
As his responsibilities grew, Del Chiaro began wondering how the company could reach out to its customers. He solicited feedback from them and devised Ward/Kraft's Document Solutions University (DSU) program. The comprehensive 3-day program, held four times a year in Fort Scott and four times in Fredericktown, Ohio, helps distributors learn about the manufacturer's latest products and services and ways to sell them. "DSU meets the needs of distributors to understand the crazy market out there," Del Chiaro says. "We're presently working on 50 new products. So if you have all that going, then you also have to educate customers on what's hot." The program has succeeded: Approximately 500 distributors have attended it, and many more are on a waiting list.
Del Chiaro's latest brainchild is an e-store called MyEsolutions.com. He grappled with the question, "How do you get thousands of products together, integrate their marketing and come up with one software solution?" Then, he developed the retail web application, which Ward/Kraft will launch this month. It will allow distributors to create or add to their web sites a complete e-store that includes office products, business cards, letterhead, stationery and labels.
Michael Del Chiaro, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ward/Kraft Inc., Fort Scott, Kan., created the Document Solutions University program to help distributors learn about the manufacturer's
latest products.
