Using data for service innovation

SEEING BUSINESS THROUGH NEW EYES: Dave Ramsden, Atrion's chief strategy officer, saw patterns in the company's performance that have led it to focus its business and grow significantly in the last half-dozen years. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
SEEING BUSINESS THROUGH NEW EYES: Dave Ramsden, Atrion's chief strategy officer, saw patterns in the company's performance that have led it to focus its business and grow significantly in the last half-dozen years. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER

Dave Ramsden has special skills. Not only is he said to have an “uncanny ability to see into the future,” but he’s got a “knack for pattern recognition and market analysis,” according to Carrie Majewski, director of content marketing and brand strategy at Warwick-based IT services firm Atrion Inc.

Ramsden’s skills led company CEO Tim Hebert to create the chief strategy officer position specifically for him three years ago, more than a decade into Ramsden’s tenure at the 31-year-old company.

As operations director, Ramsden was asked to work on the $130 million company’s first strategic plan in 2009, which he said was the start of Atrion stepping into strategic and deliberate planning, instead of going by gut instinct. After the three-year plan succeeded, Ramsden became Atrion’s chief intelligence officer, focusing on IT and business intelligence as well as “competitive intelligence,” and analyzing the company’s performance.

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“I approached our CEO and said, ‘You know, from the patterns within our business, I can see some things we could do that would help us possibly even double our sales and do that while managing a smaller client base,’ “said Ramsden.

Ramsden’s analysis showed that 80 percent of Atrion’s business came from 20 percent of its clients. From there, Ramsden performed a study to find ideal clients with an appreciation for the firm’s services.

His work eventually helped the company create Atrion SMB, a joint venture with an existing small IT services company, RhodeOne Technology Solutions.

“Rather than say we aren’t going to work with smaller clients anymore we said no, we are going to, through this additional entity. A lot were smaller clients we grew up with in our evolution,” said Ramsden. But they had different needs. “It was good creating a company that really created a solution that was tailored to them.”

Atrion SMB recently split with Atrion Inc. Ramsden explained, “It was a separate company, which we invested in and worked closely with. But the leadership of that company are entrepreneurs, and we knew that at some point they would want to take ownership of their own future. This was all mutually agreeable, and we made a profit from our investment in the company. We will continue to work closely together in the future, but in the end, they serve a different segment of the market than we do.”

Focusing on their target segment of clients helped Atrion increase revenue by 62 percent over the next 18 months, from $45 million to $72 million.

“When we actually saw it increased levels of growth [we saw] this whole idea of being more data driven and more strategic in our approach to long-term planning can really reap rewards,” Ramsden said.

Atrion’s CEO rewarded Ramsden by making him chief strategy officer. Three years later, he has a team of three that focuses on external market intelligence, internal business intelligence and strategic development and execution.

Robert F. Johnson, Atrion’s senior director of strategic intelligence, has worked for Atrion for seven years and is a member of Ramsden’s team.

“Dave … is a good listener. He asks good questions. He is supportive, but he is not a micromanager,” Johnson said. “The three of us that report to him have all been working for 20-plus years. … There’s a lot of expertise that the group has collectively.”

Ramsden said many Fortune 500 companies have CSOs, but that it was “a neat step” for a company of Atrion’s size to implement such a strong focus on strategy. His team helps the 250-employee company plan for how to remain competitive over the next three to five years.

“There is a certain amount of reinventing yourself that you have to always be doing,” he said.

Johnson credits Ramsden with helping Atrion grow and evolve.

“We’ve grown at double-digit rates, which is also difficult considering the market and the services that we provide. … [The market] growing at a relatively slow rate – 2-5 percent a year – and we’re growing at a faster rate, which means we’re doing something well,” he said.

Part of what Ramsden, an American Mensa member, believes helps him excel at delving so deeply into data is that he has Asperger’s syndrome.

“When I first thought I saw something in the data all these years ago and thought, ‘Wow, I should really analyze this and show people we can do something differently,’ that was my passion, not my job,” Ramsden said, who is also an activist for autism awareness and education.

He said that while having Asperger’s helps with his work, it also makes the social aspects of it more difficult. But he is in a place where he’s known.

“The nice thing about being at Atrion so long is it’s a good company that gave me the ability to leverage my strengths and leverage them even more powerfully,” he said. “So that was really cool.” •

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