Richard J Vazzana
Experience
- Rich has over 30 years of leadership experience in IT organizations, ranging from serving as a board of director on startups to building and running a CRM outsourcing business of $2B in annual revenue. Starting out as a direct sales person and then building and running inside sales organizations, Rich has the experience and leadership in linking marketing, sales and support in customer relationship process that enables the success of enterprise, as well as maintaining high customer satisfaction. In each of his various assignments, Rich has lowered the cost of sales while increasing customer reach and increased revenue. He has consistently established and built successful business units and led high-growth sales organizations with a pragmatic mix of field, inside, channels and sales development strategies.
- His international experience extends across all continents; as he has managed sales centers in Europe, Japan, China, Australia, South America, as well as in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to product sales, his management experience includes consulting, training services sales and delivery. Rich holds 3 process patents in contact center operations.
Skills
As a result of his broad range of experience, Rich has developed the ability to rapidly adapt to new environments, analyze complex challenges and implement practical solutions that quickly generate positive results. His range of experience is with small startup companies of less than $10M in revenue to multibillion dollar fortune 500 companies. He has worked with centers of five agents to those across the globe totaling 38,000 agents.
He brings strong analytic, process, communications, and teaming skills to any assignment. He is equally comfortable at being a senior advisor or taking a direct leadership role. In being a senior executive, Rich has the ability to demonstrate the value of insides sales as well as its overall role in the sales coverage model.
As a consultant for Customer Relationship Management, Rich enables clients to improve lead management, sales coverage models, while improving customer support and renewal rates via the use of Inside Sales, Contact Center Operations, Tools and Technology. Using his technical experience, Rich utilizes technology to improve overall productivity when appropriate.
Accomplishments
- Rich restructured the inside sales operation for a $4B Technology company that enabled improved processes for lead management and tracking, coverage model of the SMB Customer Segment and improved process for renewal rates. Built the Roles and Responsibilities, Job Descriptions, Processes, Reporting Structure and outlined the Rep Desktop for improved productivity of greater than 20%.
- Worked with a small software company to build a lead management process utilizing the web and CRM processes to pass on leads to the direct sales force.
- As Global Vice President at Novell; organized, built and executed a World Wide inside sales channel and route to market that sold over 60% of Novell’s annual revenue. He lowered the cost of sales from double digit percent to 3.5% while increasing the customer renewal rate by 22%. The inside channel enabled Novell sales reps to access an across-the-board view of the customers, including information on past purchases and service histories, by streamlining the sales process from Web to Call Centers building a complete CRM system mapped to the life cycle of the customer. The group achieved over 100% of target each year. Developed and deployed a lead/opportunity management process for the company working with the indirect channel of Business Partners.
- At IBM as Vice President, Global Customer Relationship Management, Business Transformation Outsourcing Practice, established the end to end Practice for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Business Transformation Outsourcing (BTO) that enabled clients to transform and operate Marketing and Sales, Order to Fulfillment, Customer Care, and Order to Cash business processes that will drive profitable revenue and increase customer satisfaction. The Practice was rated # 1 CRM BTO Services Provider by IDC in 2004/2005, the first year of operation. Signed multi-year multi-billion dollar contracts and he built the organization of $4.1B in signings and $2B in revenue with 38,000 agents world-wide in the first 2.5 years, making IBM one of the largest BPO providers in the industry. The group served industries in Telco, Information Gathering, Government, and Banking. IDC in the WW Customer Care BPO 2005 Competitive Analysis report, ranked IBM in the leader quadrant in profiling against 27 customer care BPO providers.
- As Vice President, IBM.com – Contact Center Operations and Support & Service TeleWeb; he established the role within IBM.com, managing 200,000 web sites, tools and technology for the TeleWeb environment, 4000 Services Center Employees WW, Business Process deployment of CRM within the inside sales centers for 6,000 agents, and technical documentation for usage of IBM products and solutions. Was responsible for Sales to SMB and customer relationship operations. Provided a total cost avoidance to IBM of $1B and cost savings of $500M for web based customer inquiries. Has grown customer visits to the web by 50% to over 135M/year, customer goal achievement has grown by 20 points. Established the process and knowledge base tools to increase first access resolution by 20 points in answering the customers’ question on the first call. Increased technical document for usability on the web. WW industry leader in technical publication with 98% web downloaded (400,000 documents per month).
- As Vice President of Technical Sales and Technical Support Marketing for the IBM product line for all customers. Responsible for resources allocation and deployment of technical sales WW, face-to-face and tele, and process for skills planning. These resources included IT Specialists and IT Architects who have the responsibility of recommending, demonstration and proof-of-concept for the sale of IBM products and solutions based on customer needs and routes to market. Revenue target is IBM’s WW revenue targets. Established a structured process that incorporated the elements of technical support marketing during the development process of IBM’s product line, including technical documentation, education and skills requirements for installation and usage services.
- Established the position of Director of IBM Software Technical Support Marketing responsible for technical content generation, resource allocation and deployment mapped Marketing to routes-to-market of IBM Technical Software Sales Specialists and Architects WW. Designed the process and programs to implement TSM with IBM Software Group. Introduced and implemented the role of Software Architect to design a solution, based on unique customer needs using IBM’s Software.
- At IBM as Global Services Executive responsible for curriculum design, course development, course delivery for IBM Software Products for customers, Business Partners, and IBM employees WW. Overall business responsibility to drive revenue, profit as a services provider and achieve greater penetration and usage of IBM software products. Was selected number one employee of IBM Education.
- Regional Software Sales Manager responsible for the design and implementation of IBM software products for customers in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Developed the Trading Area concept for the deployment of Technical Support. Recognized with national awards for leadership and quota attainment.
BS Mathematics, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
MEd Mathematics, Duquesne University
Post Masters, Supervision, University of Pittsburgh
Management and Executive Training, Wharton School of Business and Harvard Business School
Member of the BOD for Xterprise Co. RFID company headquartered in Dallas Texas. On the compensation and audit committees
Board of Directors for Keeler Tavern Museum, Ridgefield CT. Chairman of the Marketing Committee.
Board of Directors for Ridgefield CT Chamber of Commerce