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His first real experience with Southern
Star was in college when he was a member of the company’s resource management
team. Upon graduation from college in 2004, Jeff joined SSI full time as the
resource management supervisor. In this role Jeff led and coordinated a team of
resource management clerks responsible for planning and allocating field
resource capacity. It was this initial role that allowed Jeff to understand the
inner workings of a multi-site in-home field service company and prepared him
for future roles.
In June of 2005 Jeff was promoted to Director of Projects and for the first time
reported to Jeremy Fields, our current CEO and President. As DOP Jeff was
responsible for testing and implementation of company-wide initiatives as
directed by an executive committee. Examples include launching a 2nd call center
with a 3rd-party vendor in Manila, Philippines resulting in a $500,000 per year
reduction in labor costs. This call center is no longer in operation after the
project that it was responsible for reached the end of its useful life. In this
role Jeff was also instrumental in creating a separate sales organization in
Birmingham, AL, along with another organization. This new sales firm earned over
$2M in sales its first year. |
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In August of 2007 Jeff was promoted to COO/EVP, a
role he continues in to this day. As COO, Jeff has total P&L responsibility for
the entire 650+ employee enterprise. His major accomplishments in this role
include the following:
Led the company through its most extended growth phase where, over the course of
18 months, total job count increased from 300,000 per year to 400,000 per year
Developed and implemented a management structure change that cut out an entire
layer of management. This change decreased expenses by $100k per year and
increased revenues by $2M per year
Created a company-wide continuous improvement process. Kaizen events are held
twice per month each targeting a specific process. Key accomplishments include
increasing quality and productivity, eliminating waste, and reducing inventory
levels, all resulting in increased profit.
Successfully led transition from a field technician-staffing model (which
included contractors and SSI employees) to a 100% SSI employee model. The
redesign increased the quality and customer satisfaction performance of the
company to the highest levels in its history and increased revenues by 3.5%.
Today Jeff has three direct reports:
Vice President of Operations – Responsible for Field Operations, Central
Operations (Call Center, Dispatch/Routing, & IT), and Human Resources
Vice President of Administration – Responsible for Accounting, Finance, and
Inventory Control
Josh Bhatia – Vice President of Sales & Marketing – Responsible for Retail
Sales, and Marketing
Jeff’s main focus is operational excellence initiatives, cost and efficiency
management, and new business development.
Jeff earned his BBA in Information Systems & Operations Management in 2004 from
the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, OK. In January 2013 he began work
on his MBA at The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in
Evanston, Illinois. He expects to graduate in December 2014.
Jeff is married to Brooke and they have three children. Jeff & Brooke live in
Cameron, OK. When Jeff is not working his hobbies include reading, landscape
design, traveling with family, building Lego’s with his son, and watching
movies. Jeff is also heavily involved in the community. He created ‘SSI Cares’ a
company-sponsored employee health and wellness and community outreach
organization, worked with Rails to Trails Conservancy to turn abandoned railroad
track into community trail and serves as a board member of local teen pregnancy
crisis center. |
