With over 17 years’ experience working for TotalEnergies including roles as Project Manager for European Motorway Toll Services and Project Manager for Electric Vehicle Services across Europe, Caroline Gaillard has recently joined the Lubmarine team as Northern Europe Director. Caroline shares her hopes and ambitions for her role and how she is bringing her wider experience gained across different areas of the transport world to the Lubmarine team.
Q) You have worked for over 17 years within TotalEnergies in roles that have focussed around road transportation, car fleet services and infrastructure. Are you able to bring those experiences to benefit into the Marine sector?
It’s an exciting opportunity to join the Lubmarine team and a lot of my time has been spent really understanding the range of products and services we offer and the benefits these bring to our customers.
What has been interesting through that process is to be able to start to identify synergies between some of the technologies and solutions we brought to other transport markets globally and how those approaches could have a positive impact in the marine sector and our customers.
One example is fleet management tools and the opportunity to develop specific ones dedicated to the marine sector. There is an opportunity for us to explore and take a lot of the learning and experience from other sectors and see how we can develop marine specific tools to support shipping operators.
Another area is digitization, capitalizing on the growing availability of rich data sets to help vessel operators and owners make even more informed decisions around their lubrication management.
I’m interested to see how technology-driven processes that have had positive impacts in other sectors could be developed and applied to the marine lubricant sector and power generation plants to have a positive impact for our customers.
Q) What Does Your Role as Northern Europe Director involve?
Based in Paris, my role fundamentally is to manage and support the sales team across our Northern European region. It’s a geographically large region, stretching from the UK, France, Benelux and Germany across the Nordics to Russia and the Baltics.
I am working closely with a team of 6 key account managers around Europe – supporting them and the relationships they have with their customers. Working closely with the team is critical and it has been great to start to meet with all of them as I really value that aspect of how we work.
My background is also able to support the wider team and I am working to see how we can further improve our current technical services, helping customers right across the purchasing, logistics, lubrication management services and customer services supply chain.
We will also be active at leading trade shows in Europe and looking to engage with our customers and further build the positive relationships we have with them.
Q) You highlight the importance of customer service – can you share more insights into this?
If you want to have a long-term relationship and develop business with customers, you have to listen to their feedback and anticipate their needs. A sales contract is not just about price.
Our goal is to make our services more and more customer focused – bringing real, measurable benefits to them – supplementing the high-quality lubrication products we have -both those in the market and those in development.
I’m really interested in looking at how we can further harmonize products and services together for the benefit of our customers.
This is a key differentiator within the market and the close attention to customer service and building long lasting, valuable relationships with customers has really stood out to me.
If we can build on that and create a wider suite of tools that further supports our customers in their operations then that can be really valuable.
Q) What has been interesting for you in terms of getting to know the Lubmarine business?
I have really been struck by the expertise of the logistics process within the business and the way we deal with complex global logistics in such a professional, experienced way, not only in the main ports but the wide global network of ports we operate in.
The customers want products in the packaging they need, in the quantity they need it, when and where they need it. It’s a complex process and the logistics cannot be handled properly without having a very close, experienced team working to answer the needs of our customers no matter where they are in the world.
The focus on customer service is also really visible. We strive to help our customers and support them on the day to day and being by their side
The technical expertise supporting customers to make better lubrication decisions is key and it’s been great to see just how much our customers value this aspect of our business.
The role of our labs in analyzing and our engineers in reviewing oil samples and interpreting the results to offer advice and insight clearly adds value to our customer experience.
Q) Do you think the growing awareness on the climate and environment will impact the roles of the sales team and if so how?
For me, without a doubt. Our customers are increasingly asking us how we can help them reach their climate ambitions. This is particularly true with our Nordic customers who are very focused on this. And this is, I feel, something that is going to be increasingly asked of us.
They actively want us to help them reach their goals on climate and we are co-constructing and developing services with this in mind. This underlines the close relationships we have with our customers.
Among the energy companies, I feel we are one of the most integrated in the market. This differentiator can really help us accelerate our climate ambition roadmap.
We are already active in addressing important topics related to emissions reductions but we are also looking at packaging, drum recycling and waste management with our customers as well.
TotalEnergies supplies worldwide to many different transportation sectors: there are common grounds on which we are capitalizing.
We have a unique opportunity to share our technical expertise across the TotalEnergies business units and bring knowledge, insight and experience to help our customers across the shipping industry.
One of the key questions for our customers today in shipping is what tomorrow’s fuel propulsion will be. The stakes are high when you are investing massively in new vessel building.
I will be very curious to see what new energies will be the winners in the future shipping energy market.
Depending on which fuels pop up on the new podium, it can reshuffle the lubricants market in terms of types of grades, technologies, volumes and key ports for delivery.
Q) When you are not in work mode – what do you like to do in your spare time?
I have a real passion for horse trekking. For 15 years I’ve loved to pick countries I didn’t know and meet people there who shared the same passion for horses and incredible environments
The Canadian Rockies were amazing!
Today, I am discovering new parts of France on horseback – most recently in the Loire Valley and the next up will be Champagne region.