Bénédict Stalder
Mechanical and Aerodynamic Engineering graduate from Engineering School of Geneva, with 20+ years of work experience. Last worked at Electronic Engineering Solutions as Interim Chief Executive Officer.
| Headline: | Entrepreneur |
| Skills: | Business, Engineering, English, Entrepreneurship, French, German, Languages, Management, Marketing, Sales, Spanish |
| Interested in: | Brainstorming, Finding business partners, Finding cofounders, Finding team mates, Meeting new people, Professional opportunities, Promoting my startups, Recruiting for my startup |
| Schools: | Universidad de Navarra |
WORK EXPERIENCE
| Employer: | Macintelligence SA |
| Position: | Founder/Chief Executive Officer |
| Description: | MACINTELLIGENCE SA (company became the most advanced high-end VAR specializing in integrating Apple Macintosh in large accounts – e.g., banks, chemical industry companies – in the Geneva area). Built, sold, and maintained complete solutions to prestigious customers in high-tech situations (e.g., IBM mainframe connectivity, 3D Architecture, photo retouching for photolithography, data acquisition for laboratories, etc.). |
| Employer: | Seven Image & Production SA |
| Position: | Founder/Member of the Board |
| Description: | Audio-visual production and photographic studio. |
| Employer: | Bamboo Communications SA |
| Position: | Founder / Member of the Board |
| Description: | Advertising agency. |
| Employer: | Electronic Engineering Solutions, Barcelona and Madrid, Spain |
| Position: | Interim Chief Executive Officer |
| Time period: | December 2006 - November 2008 |
| Description: | Successfully turned around this company that started as an engineering consultancy and moved up to designing, manufacturing, and selling its own products; company’s 2 main product lines are a car park guidance system (http://www.parkhelp.com) and Internet audio streaming devices (www.lanmusic.com) for shopping stores and hotel rooms. Served under a consulting contract to lead and prepare the company for the entry of VC or private equity – challenged to revitalize the nearly bankrupt company, which had been experiencing accumulated losses and debt over the years, and position it as an attractive business to investors. Managed up to 9 direct reports; full P&L responsibility. Earned the respect of team, suppliers, and stakeholders.
• Turnaround Leadership. Immediately drafted an emergency plan and orchestrated aggressive turnaround effort (under an extremely tight cash situation) that delivered strong financial and operational results, and put the company on the right track to succeed in attracting investment. – Shut down all loss-making projects and aligned focus on two profitable product lines. – Grew sales from 80% revenue in home country to 80% revenue international for Parkhelp. – Reduced majority shareholder’s share to 25% by restructuring capital, debt, and accumulated losses. – Nearly doubled margins by moving production from Spain to China. – Improved cash flow from up to 720 days for debt collection to having all customers pay 90% before delivery; also managed to have a major customer pay large portion of outstanding (litigious) debt that had accumulated. – Reduced customer portfolio risk from one single customer to several customers for both product lines. – Reduced inventory by obtaining monthly production and delivery from suppliers based on real-time sales pipeline forecasts. – Conducted cleanup of balance sheet and accounting to prepare for due diligence process. – Introduced management by objectives and on-target earning variable pay for all employees. – Implemented modern productivity tools such as Salesforce.com, Skype, Webex, and a new budgeting method. – Performed cost analysis and sourcing to reduce manufacturing/transportation costs. – Defined cutting-edge, next-generation products for both product lines and initiated design/prototyping. |
| Employer: | Sourcingparts.com (now part of MFG.com), Geneva, Switzerland |
| Position: | Vice President – Sales & Development |
| Time period: | December 2000 - November 2006 |
| Description: | Brought on board by the company to build up the business; Sourcingparts.com was born during the Internet bubble, and owns/operates the leading European e-Procurement marketplace specific to the manufacturing industry. Joined company when it was a 1-year startup and served in an entrepreneurial capacity – actively participated in building its structure and processes, and remained involved in core business functions. Instrumental in the company’s survival and year-over-year growth during challenging situations.
• Global Revenues. Accelerated global revenues by building and managing a sales organization capable of selling Software as a Service (SaaS) to both high-end and small/medium businesses in the manufacturing purchasing community, and developing new markets and new offerings. – Assembled team, built offering, started formal sales training program, developed the sales pipeline, and accelerated global revenues despite complexities with the dot.com crash and events of 9/11. – Acquired and managed large and strategic accounts – overcoming challenges with complex sales cycles based on promoting a new, revolutionary product in the market. – Established strong credibility with the sales team in the field by championing a “lead by example” style. – Clients acquired included Alstom, ABB, Thales, Dassault, Snecma, Mettler-Toledo, SKF, Rieter, Knorr-Bremse, Saurer Group, Schneider-Electric, Cartier and Rossignol. – Successfully built up the German-speaking area from nearly 0 to 50% of global revenues; also started markets in Italy and grew presence to China, Czech Republic, and the USA. – Generated recurrent revenues and advanced from pilot contracts to revolving 1-year contracts, followed by 3 and 5-year contracts. – Achieved great level of credibility both in purchasing know-how and industrial process skills, spent a lot of “shop floor” face time with clients visiting their factories. – Created the concept of a new software development environment (SIS - supplier information system) that allowed clients to program their own supplier data management application within the SouringParts platform. |
| Employer: | Temenos SA, Geneva, Switzerland |
| Position: | Director of Strategic Alliances |
| Time period: | December 1999 - November 2001 |
| Description: | Member of a completely new senior management team (COO, CFO, VP Sales, CTO) that was assembled in preparation for this software company’s IPO. As an employee with IBM, signed strategic alliance contract with Temenos SA and subsequently joined the company to execute contract – a huge multimillion-dollar effort from both IBM and Temenos in terms of application porting work on various IBM platforms and IBM software architecture, joint services (design authority, project office, channel developments, solutions integration,
implementation, technical services, quality assurance, client BPR services), joint marketing, and joint sales. In charge of driving the alliances strategy and execution, building organization to manage relationship with IBM worldwide, and cultivating other potential alliances with companies in the banking software industry. Reported to the CEO. • Multimillion-Dollar Contract. Built team of Alliance Managers that coordinated efforts between various IBM and Temenos development, services, marketing, and sales teams for the strategic alliance contract involved that was to deliver an additional USD$450MM in revenues for IBM and an additional US$250MM in revenues for Temenos over 3-years. Met with IBM sales teams in each country to gain awareness/acceptance, built joint opportunity pipeline, and provided field sales support. |
| Employer: | IBM Europe |
| Position: | Manager of Developer Relationships Business Unit – Central Europe Region |
| Time period: | December 1998 - November 2000 |
| Description: | Quickly moved up the ladder with the company based on continual achievements and successes. Advanced to become Strategic Alliance Manager for Europe with responsibility for driving global negotiations with selected large independent software vendors (ISVs);
concurrently, managed the Developer Relationships Business Unit in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Managed a 40-person team of primarily Alliance Executives who managed relationships with ISVs (large companies in the software business with emphasis on ERP and banking applications). Focused on assisting companies use IBM products in their solutions (software, hardware, services) and ensuring that they would promote and jointly engage customers with IBM. • Strategic Alliances. Drove over US$1.3B in additional revenues over a 3-year period by negotiating and signing 6 strategic alliances in Europe, including Intentia (Sweden; 5000 employees); IBS (Sweden; 3000 employees), and Temenos (Switzerland; 900 employees); these strategic alliances are still active to date. Generated huge wins for IBM through having well-known ISVs commit to port their applications on IBM’s environments. |
| Employer: | IBM Europe |
| Position: | IBM Solutions Sales Manager, High End Solutions – Central Europe Region |
| Time period: | December 1998 - November 1999 |
| Description: | Built and managed the Server Consolidation Unit within IBM’s Mainframe Division. Initiated consulting projects to consolidate thousands of UNIX server workloads on large mainframe servers – effectively managing complex technical and strategic aspects of these projects (e.g. UBS, Alcatel, Reuters) that lasted typically 2 to 5 years, and allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings. Played a key role in pioneering the move from aging mainframe (insurance/banking) applications to luring the growing and modern workloads that would normally go on modern UNIX servers onto mainframe revamped as a “super UNIX server”. |
| Employer: | IBM Europe |
| Position: | IBM Sales Manager, High End Systems Sales – Switzerland |
| Time period: | December 1997 - November 1999 |
| Description: | Managed 2 sales teams covering large accounts in Switzerland for mainframes and associated high-end products (e.g., large storage systems and networking), built up and managed a new reseller channel for mainframes and associated storage products, and managed Swiss-German and Swiss-French speaking sales/technical teams; essentially, cumulated 3 jobs and reported to 3 separate Divisions in Europe – Mainframe Sales, Mainframe Storage Sales, and Channel Sales for Mainframe. Led 11-person sales/engineering team in achieving US$90MM of revenues in Switzerland while creating and growing reseller channel from 0 to 5 Certified Mainframe Resellers. |
| Employer: | IBM Europe |
| Position: | IBM Sales Manager – Small & Medium Business |
| Time period: | December 1995 - November 1997 |
| Employer: | IBM Europe |
| Position: | IBM Advisory Client Representative – Insurance Industry Unit |
| Time period: | December 1992 - November 1996 |
| Description: | Promoted to manage sales teams covering 1200 small/medium customers and 60 large customers in the manufacturing, process, distribution, health, and government industries. Migrated small/medium client coverage from face-to-face to centralized Tele-coverage
center in Zurich and then to Ireland within 1 year while managing team of face-to-face sales people for large accounts – achieved targets of over US$40MM with staff of 6 sales professionals and 3 tele-coverage sales professionals. Previously, achieved 120% of personal target (US$10MM) as IBM Advisory Client Representative. |
| Employer: | Datafox SA - Geneva |
| Position: | Regional Manager |
| Time period: | December 1991 - November 1993 |
| Description: | Appointed as Regional Manager of this Apple products reseller after it acquired MacIntelligence (entrepreneurial venture founded in 1985). Led former employees in advancing the sale of Apple products in the Geneva region. |
EDUCATION
| University: | Universidad de Navarra |
| Time period: | 2005 - 2007 |
| Degree: | Executive Management Education |
