The Suit Magazine

As president of HSM of America, a company specializing in destruction products for office product resellers and wholesale/industrial distributors, Robert Ouellette emphasizes the importance of leverage and strong business relationships.

His words of wisdom for those running a small business are simple: “Minimize your risk, maximize whatever you have, leverage any and all relationships and control what you’re doing that allows you to continue to expand and grow.”

With 24 years in the contracted office products marketplace and the manufacturing industry, Ouellette joined HSM in 2006 with the goal of using his experiences to help businesses evolve from a convoluted mass of ineffective distribution models to strategic, well-oiled machines.

Once he took full responsibility of the North American branch in 2009, Ouellette realized that the tactical model small businesses were functioning on was becoming obsolete. Now the German-owned company runs on a strategic distribution model focusing on assigning employees to the right jobs – including trimming 13 positions that were deemed unnecessary – and analyzing multiple perspectives, including financial, customer, employee and the overall process.

“We are able to make strategic decisions based on those outputs of measures and methods of analysis as opposed to a gut reaction,” he said.

Ouellette has reduced operation costs by 40 percent and tripled business in less than five years, even during what he called a “very difficult time” in 2009 in the wake of the economic downturn. During this rough patch, Ouellette further embraced the core ideals of his strategic business model, including one addition: asking how the company can create an exceptional customer experience.

According to Ouellette, this idea has been the foundation for the development of all the company’s programs and added value beyond the product itself. “Our product became a vehicle to address an inherent deficiency in the business needs of our reseller community,” he said. “And by doing that, we were able to add value to those relationships that transcends just the product.”

In the future, the company will continue working within existing distribution channels with even more innovative products and services available. Leveraging environmental technology has been a particular interest of Ouellette’s as conservation awareness has become much more relevant in the United States in recent years.

He advises that other businesses embrace this new American ideal and view it as a valuable tool for earnings. “At the end of the day when this is all done, you have a commodity that’s worth something in the market and you’ve added additional revenue to your business,” he said.

www.us.hsm.eu

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