Jacques van Vessem

Currently Jacques is coach, facilitator and consultant in strategy, leadership, sales and change projects. 2004-2013: BT Global Services, COO Global Contracts Delivery. For this Telecom and ICT services company, based in London, Jacques managed an operational budget of €150M in labour costs across 60 countries to deliver managed services contracts to customers across banking, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. He led virtual teams on transformation programs delivering 15% reduction in Opex through outsourcing and restructuring. In prior positions he led on vision, mission and strategy formulation, aligning the Capex investment portfolio and leadership training and development to align with new strategy. He started in BT as Sales Transformation Director, leading a team of 54, overseeing the global integration of 15 acquired sales organizations, by harmonizing the ‘win new business’ process, rolling out CRM to 6000 people and improving sales forecasting accuracy. 2000-2004: Cisco Systems, Director, Service Sales Operations. Within the service unit, Jacques streamlined sales by implementing uniform processes, systems and rewarding. He owned the rollout of an e-commerce channel strategy as well as outsourcing desk-based sales, leading to incremental €20M margin. Besides these transformations, his EMEA team of ca. 60 supported the €600M service sales and order management operations. In 2003, he moved to California HQ, as he was asked to rollout his best practices on a global scale, while assisting with strategy implementation and change management. He also trained management on new behaviours and facilitated leadership in various programs. 1998-2000: Baan Company (now part of Infor), VP of Professional Services. Baan supplied world-class business applications covering ERP, CRM, Financials and Supply Chain. Jacques defined the strategy for BeLux & South Europe, followed by the implementation. He integrated the services of three merged companies, transforming them into a profit centre with P&L with revenues doubled by expanding his services team to +200 business consultants. Market focus was on manufacturing, transport and financial sectors. In Belgium he worked out the multi channel structure for service delivery and was actively involved in value selling and key account management. From 1989-1998, Jacques held managerial positions, including Board Member, for both a port (Antwerp) and an airport (Brussels) operator. His focus was on financial turnaround, business development, strategy, restructuring and IT management. He started his career as a consultant with Accenture for 2 years, building a corporate finance function for a large brewer and implementing MRP for a paper factory.

Education and qualifications Jacques holds a Master in Bioscience Engineering from the University of Ghent and an MBA from the Vlerick Business School, both in Belgium. He earned several post graduate certificates including process reengineering, change management, balanced scorecard (Vlerick), Solution Selling, PMP, Six Sigma (intra-company programs) and Leadership Development (Oliver Wyman for BT, London).