Tom Schlick has over 30 years of experience as a customer-focused business operations executive. He is known as a transformational leader, successfully leading organizations through high growth as well as difficult turnaround situations. Tom moves confidently from vision and strategy to tactical development and implementation. He also has the unique ability to build cohesive, high-performing teams that can work cross-functionally in alignment with common goals.
Tom has held COO, SVP, EVP, and VP positions with P&L responsibility at small, medium, and large corporations, both public and privately-held. These companies include Johnson & Johnson (Sterilmed, Inc.), Emerson Electric, ACCO Brands, XRS Corporation (now part of Qualcomm), and Entrust Datacard. Tom’s industry experience spans healthcare/medical devices, process control, transportation/trucking, secure ID/financial services, and office products and equipment.
In all his roles, Tom has excelled at training and developing both individuals and teams, increasing their business acumen and preparing them to drive change in the workplace. From a functional perspective, Tom is particularly adept at delivering results through operational execution, developing customer service and new revenue streams, and leading global multi-site ventures.
Delivering Results through Operational Execution
- Helped Emerson’s process automation group grow from $25 million to $3 billion —by introducing one of Fortune Magazine’s top 100 products of the century organizing back-end plant consolidations, overseeing mergers and acquisitions, and creating one-point-of-contact for customer service
- Won largest multi-million-dollar order in company’s history at both ACCO Brands and XRS Corporation
- Led marketing and new product development at a division of Johnson & Johnson (Sterilmed, Inc.), achieving five 510(k) clearances in one year – most in one year in the company’s history
Developing Customer Service and New Revenue Streams
- Established new Service Division at Emerson and grew revenues to over $90 million – while earning the industry’s #1 ranking for customer service for five years in a row
- Doubled the global service revenues at Datacard Group to $100 million primarily in Asia and Europe, while tripling pretax profit margins from 6% to 18%
- Significantly improved customer satisfaction and/or Net Promoter Score (NPS) ratings at Emerson, Datacard Group, ACCO Brands, XRS Corporation, and Sterilmed
Leading Global Multi-Site Ventures
- Consolidated three manufacturing plants (two in the US and one in Brazil) for a major product line at Emerson into one new facility in Chihuahua, Mexico, reducing costs by over 50% and improving product quality
- Established a joint venture in India to provide software development and integration on major government ID programs at Datacard Group
- Drove company-wide quality initiatives to improve hardware and software quality at XRS (now part of Qualcomm), identified multi-site reporting inefficiency, and created new process that reduced installation and start-up time by 80%.
Education/Certifications/Affiliations
Tom holds an MBA from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Green Belt. Tom has been a mentor with the MENTTIUM Corporation for over 15 years, mentoring high potential executives from many companies. He currently serves on the advisory boards of The Service Council and the Society for Service Executives. He was the past President of AFSMI (Association for Service Management International). In addition, Tom has been a guest speaker and panelist at several large national professional conferences focusing on transformational change. He shares a 7-step process he has developed to achieve faster growth and higher profitability—using Service as a strategic differentiator and by driving greater company value from industry Best Practices.