Michela: Good morning Fulvio, can you tell us about your professional path that brought you to IMESA?
Fulvio: I started my work experience forty years ago in the military environment, being a former officer of the Navy. I started professionally in the sector of electronic warfare systems, naval automation and, later, I extended my skills in the area of industrial automation and remote control. In the civil working world I entered a couple of multinational electromechanical companies where I was given the opportunity to become an application engineer and then training manager on DCS, PLC, drives, motors, generators and turbines. This experience, unique in its kind, has strengthened my skills on various applications and industrial fields in order to structure, propose and sell a complete offer of after-sales services.
Michela: How did you end up in IMESA?
Fulvio: I already knew Marco Achilli and Marco Nunnari because, in the 90s, we both studied and worked together in various companies of the ABB Group. In my “second life”, in ABB SACE, I had a global assignment for the after-sales services. Previously, from 2002 to 2006, I had an interesting experience, both personal and professionally, in the USA: I represented Italian SMEs based in Houston, Texas and, once I returned to Italy, Marco Achilli contacted me to manage the global service of LV circuit breakers. After a few years I was also given the task of following the part of the LV and MV electrical panels, creating, in just under ten years, about 80 after-sales assistance structures in the world. In 2016 I dedicated myself to an old passion: finance (Private Equity and Venture Capital) for investments and I moved to London UK. Shortly before COVID, I returned to Italy to structure and organize, on behalf of a French multinational, a company that produces BioGNL in four biorefineries, all in Italy. Since Marco Achilli, CEO of IMESA, was looking for a professional with experience in the service sector, he contacted me and entrusted me with the task of reorganizing the automation, technical assistance and spare parts activities with a new structure called BU (Business Unit).
Michela: What difficulties did you encounter in joining a company that is very different from multinationals, given your considerable experience abroad?
Fulvio: I felt comfortable right away. However, an experience of financial and organizational consultancy for a Treviso-based metalworking group, with four production plants and employing around 200 people, was helpful, which definitely helped me in appropriately declining the way a multinational operates in an SME. I adapted my skills by mainly relating to people in the various departments, speaking but above all listening, which is what I also did here at IMESA and here I started, time permitting, a training campaign both ethical and professional for my team.
Michela: Having to reorganize several departments in the company: Service, Automation and Spare Parts, what did you start with?
Fulvio: I tried, which is not easy, to dedicate the same attention to the three departments. I set up biweekly meetings for the three lines and, in the case of critical issues, even weekly. I believe it is essential to have a team that is aware of the activities to be done and that, above all, participates actively. I believe it is important to go and introduce myself to customers, to “build the added value” of after-sales, anticipating our availability and offering maintenance contracts with vertical skills that integrate, where possible, the skills of the three lines.
Michela: So you focused on the commercial part right from the start?
Fulvio: Customers want a quality experience all round, which includes, but is not limited to, the quality of the product itself! My goal is to involve them along the entire journey: from the supply and installation of our LV and MV electrical panels to the after-sales service. We do not always sell to the end customer and therefore it is essential to visit the user customers, building the solid basis of relationships that will allow us to operate proactively because today we work mainly on call. In addition to technical expertise, it is essential to know how to offer our availability; this will allow us to give “added value” to our commercial product offering.
Michela: You lead a large team. How did you approach them?
Fulvio: It is necessary, which is not easy, to manage people in the best way, interacting and ensuring that different individual characteristics integrate to create value. Each of us, even if we do the same job and have the same role, fortunately has our own way of thinking, relating and operating. We are all working on the technical training part but I will have to strengthen the relational part. However, I am very confident and I trust my team also because, as they were told when I met them individually, my door is always open and the phone is always operational. I must admit that I found a team that is always available even for last-minute emergencies. Just to give you an example: our maintenance technicians, for an intervention on our electrical panels installed on a ship, concluded an activity in Kuwait and then flied to Canada and Japan. This is a plus and not everyone can do it!
Michela: You are facing new challenges, can you consider yourself satisfied at the moment?
Fulvio: Quite a bit… my nature always leads me to do and ask for more. However, I feel in my environment and the experience I have gained over the years allows me to take immediate decisions; decisions that are sometimes not the best or the most welcome, but are necessary. What the customer expects, especially when he calls “the service people”, is the solution to his problems. I have started to propose prevention activities, but at the moment it is more important to focus on responding to the customer’s current needs. Whoever sows, reaps.
Michela: Our CEO Marco Achilli has implemented many new features in IMESA: in addition to the inclusion of new professional figures, like yours, he has recently introduced welfare. What do you think?
Fulvio: These new features are necessary to align us with the job market. They are new in IMESA and perhaps they have not yet been fully understood by the entire company population, but I am sure time will give us a hand.
Michela: Where do you think we can still improve?
Fulvio: The “multi-role” of field service engineers and software engineers who, while maintaining their specialization, could acquire basic transversal skills. From the beginning I have always said that the best sales people are the technicians who operate in the field, obviously with the support of the sales area that prepares the offer. But the value is given by the technician.
Michela: Thanks Fulvio and good work!