PROFILE: John Gledhill - Intentia
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If
you don't know John Gledhill, then he wants to know you and your
business if it has a turnover of £30 million or more. As Global
Director of Food & Beverage Industry for Intentia the Swedish-
based ERP solutions company he focuses on the food industry and
its suppliers in the UK. That
puts him in the position of heading up the division and producing
IT solutions to rival SAP, JD Edwards, and Ross Systems for the
ready meals sector. That puts him in the big league. How did he
get there?
Vital
Statistics: JOB
TITLE: Global Director of Food & Beverage Industry Application
Centre Intentia Ltd COMPANY:
Intentia WHERE:
Leeds AGE: 48 FAMILY:
2 children a boy and a girl HOBBIES:
Watch football for my sinsand a bit of golf EDUCATION:
Honley Grammer School, Huddersfield; Huddersfield Poytechnic
CAREER
TO DATE: After
leaving Huddersfield Polytechnic, John worked for a couple of local
engineering firms for several, gathering experience in the business
processes. That
was followed by a 10 year stint in a bespoke software environment,
where he became involved in analysing the business process of a
wide range of companies and industries. Then
together with four other colleagues, he was part of a management
buy out, to take the company in the direction of packaged software
instead of bespoke software solutions. At that point he was more
on the design side of operations, but became increasingly involved
in the marketing and sales side of the business. Having
recognised that the industry was going in the direction of packaged
solutions, they then had to find the right product. That happened
when they discovered the Swedish company Intentia, and
their Movex product.
That
was in 1990, and Intentia was not the size it is now. John went
over and studied the product and examined Intentia, while being
scrutinised himself , and ended up as the distributors of Movex
for the UK and Ireland. Now the UK operation has over 200 customers,
of which 15-18% are food related. At
this point his role changed again. Most the employees were made
up of analyst and programmers, who had to be transformed into consultants.
In 1990 the company only employed 35 based in Elland, compared to
the 200 people now and three office: Elland headquarters, heathrow
and Scotland. Intentia now own the UK operations.
We
achieved the transition very, very well. Many of the employees we
employed then are still with us. I am very proud of what we did,
because bringing a new product into the market, especially one which
is dominated by SAP and American companies,
was a daunting prospect,John says of this milestone in Intentia's
presence in the UK Intentia's
product is an ERP system one of those ones that all aspects of a
company's business activities, from strategy to customer relationship
planning, prices, manufacturing, distribution, departmental systems
the lot. It is targeted at companies with a turnover of over £30
million.
Five
years ago John's role changed from running the consultancy, to concentrating
soley on the food and beverage related companies. One of the key
features of this is to watch what is going on in the industry, and
make sure that Intentia's product meets the needs
of the industry. I have a virtual team in all the major countries and they feed me with news of the needs of those particular countries,he says. That network of people collate information from the market information, from the customers, and then we use that to point our technical team in the development of the product. He
sees Intentia being able to carve out a good market share, by identifying
and concentrating on key markets, rather than trying to focus on
everything which seems to be the strategy for SAP and JD Edwards.
The markets they have chosen as their own are: Food and Beverage,
Distribution, and Fashion. One of the things I have learned is that it is a very regional industry. A big brand in Sweden is unlikely to be a big brand in any other country. There are very, very few global players. The industry is made up of a lot of medium sized companies and Movex suits that very well. CHALLENGES
FOR THE INDUSTRY: Working with the retailers, especially in tracking and tracing. John
sees the whole area of forecasting and demand planning has meant
that food companies have come to see IT in terms of adding positive
value, rather than being a necessary evil.
Usually
in a company there are 3 or 4 groups of people who will be formulating
decisions on what forward demand will be. They tend to be marketing
who are optimistic; sales who are pessimistic because they want
to hit easy targets; production who are conservative; and finance.
What
we deliver is that we enable people to work together. Everyone is
talking about collaboration' as a buzz word, but people have to
collaborate internally before they can collaborate externally. He
puts the demand planning as the most difficult task to achieve accurately,
and in food companies there is a lot of fire-fighting going on.
There is the initial standard replenishment issues before throwing
in the factors of: consumer whims, seasonality, weather and promotions. Companies
in the food sector need all the information to be able to maintain
the long term relationships with the four to five big retailers
who dominate the market. MAJOR
ISSUES FACING THE FOOD INDUSTRY: ·
Improvement of planning
process through internal and external collaboration ·
Tracking and tracability WHERE
DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS TIME: Lazing
on a beach,he laughs REASON
FOR YOUR SUCCESS: Because we develop our product, we sell our product and we implement our product,he says, but then adds the human element. I think it is because we have working for us a fantastic group of people. And we actually care about our workers, and they reward us for that. On
a personal level, it is down to hard work and long hours MANAGEMENT
STYLE: Being a Yorkshireman it is forthrightwhere he calls a spade a spade. But after a bit of reflection adds: But I like working with other people who have good active minds, and I like to be challenged as a manager.
Interviewed by Bill Lewis |
