Malcolm Pope

Email: malcolm@loguru.co.uk

Introduction

I have a partner of 20 years and a stepson that I cherish as my own. My key driver is to accept and respect the great diversity of humanity around me. Most of all, I wish to be kind. Often the most challenging business environments can be better solved by encouraging everyone to engage and play to their strengths, undue haste and lack of inclusivity often lead to poor decisions.

I have often been described as a complex character, but I do seem to be able to engender loyalty from those around me. I retain friends and colleagues and I am extremely loyal to them, in fact LOGURU consists of both old and new friends and colleagues – I had the great fortune to assemble truly talented and dedicated people. I want to grow the opportunities within the business to bring more new talented friends into the business.

I have passions for solving and optimising complex problems, getting teams and businesses to collaborate to excel and I use a deep understanding of process to drive innovation.  I have a deep regard for the value of well applied technology has for business and the ability of it to improve the quality of life.

I like to challenge myself every day to be better, every day I move forward – some days it makes me grumpy but most of the time I get huge motivation from seeing the progress we make at Loguru.

My interests outside of work go to history, study of ancestry, cooking, fine wine and an eccentric interest in 80’s classic cars….one of them being an MG Metro. I dote on my miniature schnauzer, who always keeps me company through the many teleconferences.

Background

My career started as a chemist in the food industry. In truth I learned that whilst you may study a vast discipline, in practice you use a narrow band of knowledge. 

After a couple of years of being a “short-order cook chemist”, I got my first calling into supply chain and became manufacturing planner for a complex refinery and factory. Pre-ERP, pre-supply chain I built a BOM system and flexible production planning process that improved service to customer. I then moved to demand and inventory planning. To build great technology solutions you need to understand process, having to manually plan a complex production facility was a great grounding.

There followed 5 years working in the intermodal bulk logistics sector, before I joined a major 3PL with responsibility for 3 blue chip clients in a shared user and collaborative distribution centre.

Moving from poacher to gamekeeper, I was then appointed to initially UK logistics contract manager and more latterly European logistics contracts manager for HJ Heinz a learning period of my career that was a key shaper of me, it allowed me the latitude to innovate with supplier relationship management and move to first global use of complex logistics e-sourcing technology in the early 2000’s. It gave me the further opportunity to engage with collaboration in logistics, gave me leadership of a FMCG collaborative working group, advised UK Government through CILT on impact of the Kyoto Summit Agreement on climate change and lobbied the European Commission Transport & Energy Commissioner on benefits of logistics collaboration.

Following 7 years at HJ Heinz, I moved to RHM Plc as head of logistics supplier development, leading a team of solution design experts that proved invaluable to Premier Foods when they bought RHM. I then proceed to complete my 4 years with this group as head of logistics procurement with responsibility to build a team and achieve value improvement across the £350M pa logistics category. 

I concluded my employed career for a 7 year stint as global procurement category lead for logistics for Ideal Standard International BVBA, a private equity owned business, working a part of the supply chain executive we achieved a step change in logistics costs and improved the maturity of category management for logistics.

I had long had a desire to run my own business and late in 2017 I began to plan for a new concept to provide a step change in supply chain counsel with a key aim to teach our clients how to realise more value from the supply chain sustainably. I wanted to embrace technology in this new venture and build the support I needed when employed but could not find.

Current Aspirations

To ensure that those around me, both personal and in our business, remain safe and have rewarding work that stimulates the grey matter in the right way. I want to see the team having fun together, as not only are they an incredibly innovative and committed hardworking team, they are huge fun to be around. I want to ensure we retain the fantastic team we have and engage with more prospective Loguruists.

I want to get back to having the numerous stimulating conversations I have with clients and prospective clients.

I don’t want to get back to business as usual, I want to move to business as it should be. It is about always doing what is right and achieving the best result. If you design system and process correctly you will always get the best result.

I want to talk to people about our concept in giving businesses the best survive to thrive strategy by implementing our LOGURU Resilience model. I believe that by retaining talented people you give your business the best chance to thrive in the future, yes it costs, but the cost of taking the easy headcount reduction is far higher in the longer term – be efficient, keep your teams in place.

I am working intensively with the team on next generation supply chain technology, we have an ambition to level the playing field between SME and large corporations by providing cost effective ERP solutions that manage and most importantly optimise the total supply chain.

I seek to lay the foundations for a new normal of ethical and sustainable supply chains as simply we have only one planet to live on.

I have hope and a clear vision of a bright future, my aspiration is that we all lift our heads and begin to build that new bright future.