As part of an early career program I have 'shadowed' Phillipe Sauer during the week of 20-24th of March. Philippe is the Country President of Greece and the Cluster president of South Eastern Europe. During this week I've attended the meetings which he had planned during the week, to gain experience on the responsibilities of a country and cluster manager
The region South Eastern Europe is a diverse region. Much different countries, cultures and currencies. The region can be characterized by upcoming knowledge economies (a lot of highly educated people), but there is also expected that a big part of the inhabitants will leave to other parts of the world.
- 14 countries
- 955.592 KM2
- 76 million inhabitants
- 6 countries EU members & 3 countries Euro zone members
- 10 different currencies
The country and cluster organization is organized in a way that the clusters are divided into several subsidiaries with a country General Manager who is responsible for the sales and margin in their area. The VP's of the business units are on cluster level and responsible for marketing in the complete cluster.
- 14 countries & 10 legal entities
- 230 Meur Sales
- 6 factories
- 1 regional Distribution Center
- 1 mutualized Customer Care Center
- 1 Global R&D Center (Telvent)
- CNPS = 81.6%
- ENPS = 65%
During the week I shadowed Phillipe on his agenda and learnt a lot about his responsibilities as a cluster and country president. A couple of topics were covered during the week:
- Customer meeting with the largest distributor
- Opportunity review meeting (SOC)
- Credit committee
- Digitization topics (including MySE, website and digital tools)
- Conference calls to cover topics on cluster level
- Pricing (because of the increase of Raw materials (RMI))
- Face 2 face meetings with management team to discuss the challenges in the country (economical) and their way of leadership in the organization.