Experienced Customer Operations and Training Professional

Chris O’Connell

SUMMARY

A proven leader with business management experience in a variety of manufacturing, technology, and educational organizations. Excellent planning, customer relationship, collaboration, decision-making, strategic thinking and hands on implementation capabilities. Areas of experience include:

•Technical and Manufacturing Operations •Customer Support and Service

•Customer and Vendor Relations •Contract and Subscription Programs

•Process Development and Implementation •Employee and Team Development

•Resource and Project Management •Instructional Assessment, Design, and Training

Professional Experience

Bottomline Technologies, Portsmouth, NH

2000– 2009

Manager, Customer Operations

Developed and managed a multifunctional operations team for the support and service of over 6000 North American customers, partners, and resellers. Progressive leadership opportunities in this role resulted from the rapid business growth due to several acquired companies. As a result the operations role has continually grown to include many diverse and ever changing functions.

The specific functions that were supported within the Customer Operations team included:

•Order Fulfillment

•Customer Support and Services

•Product Licensing and Support

•Digital Encryption Services

•Software and Hardware Contract and Subscription Programs

•Contract and Permanent Resource Recruiting

•Employee Development and Customer Product Training Services

•Customer Data Management

•Several Administrative Support roles.

Key to this role was the management and development of the employees that provided a customer focused service commitment critical to the financial, operational, and customer service success.

Management responsibilities included:

•Supervision, development, and evaluation of team members

•Primary escalation point for internal and external customers

•All software licensing, media production, inventory and order fulfillment for 70+ financial software products.

•All software, hardware, and subscription renewal service programs representing over 23M in annual revenue.

•Productivity and performance metric reporting

•Employee and customer facing product training

•Budgeting, resource management, and forecasting

•Contract and permanent resource recruiting

New Hampshire Community Technical College, Manchester, NH

1999 - 2000

Assistant Director

Responsible for the development and design of customized, industry specific, training courses for business and community workforce development projects. Projects included developing credit and non-credit courses, community to work initiatives, and corporate universities. Division wide accountability of operational management and business development plans to support a profit center within a public education institution. Responsibilities included instructor selection and management of internal support staff and project managers in the areas of scope development, priority management, cost containment, and profit margin maximization.

General Electric Company, Somersworth, NH

1989 - 1999

North America Customer Service (Western Region)

Six Sigma Green Belt certified professional responsible for leading the North America Customer Service initiative along with field sales toward accurate and timely sales acquisition, order administration, and service. The customers segmented included GE Energy’s major utility customers and distributor accounts that install or resell GE meters and transformers for the purpose of electricity management with their residential and non-residential customers. Success in this role depended heavily on relationship building not only with customers but with all levels of management, manufacturing personnel, and engineering to provide superior customer satisfaction and effective sales, service, and shipment execution.

Adjunct Faculty (Contract Training) Experience

Granite State College, Rochester and Portsmouth, NH

2002-Present

Courses I teach include: Principles of Management, Organizational Behavior, Managing Conflict, Operations Management, Marketing, HR Management

EDUCATION

New England College Henniker, NH

Masters Degree Major: Organizational Management

Bachelors Degree Major: Business Management

William Bridges Transition Management Certification 2008

Transcripts and references available upon request

Selected Professional Accomplishments

Successfully integrated the key revenue generating, operational, and training functions from three acquired companies within the forecasted time period and under budget.

Increased hardware renewal services margin from 11% to 23% within the first two years of acquiring this position within the Operations group.

Maintained a 96% software renewal program retention rate for all active North America customers.

Developed a “Quick Response” program that reduced order to ship times from an average of 8 weeks to 2 weeks with a 20 percent increase in profit margin.

Implemented two homegrown 120 day from new hire certification programs for two product lines that established a company-wide benchmark for employee and contractor training. These programs also include an assessment and evaluation model associated with each position requirement.

Implemented several cross-training and active assistant programs to ensure steady production cycles and quick recovery from temporary capacity shortfalls as well as employee illness, vacations, and turnover.

Led the initiative to combine three customer database systems into a single system of reference.

Developed standards for recruit to hire which resulted in an additional contractor “on demand” process that dramatically shortened the time from recruitment to revenue generation in 2 weeks

Developed a manager and individual transition program to reduce the time required to assimilate new or reassigned managers and individual contributors during times of change

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