Lubmarine’s Services Product Manager Olivier Suming, has spent much of his time focused on designing and creating a revamped and digitalized range of services helping customers optimize their lubrication management strategies.
Olivier explains how he has called upon his 18 years of experience working within TotalEnergies, to help shape and develop the enhanced customer-centric range of digital-focused services.
How Long Have You Worked for TotalEnergies?
I started my career with TotalEnergies back in 2004, as a Project Manager initially within the digital division.
Since then I have been extremely fortunate to have been able to build up a strong body of experience across a range of roles within different divisions, such as the fuel cards division in 2009.
In terms of my time within Lubmarine, I joined the team in 2017 working in the marketing department initially in charge of the customer experience.
It was a really interesting position as the goal was to manage the global experience for all aspects of the customer journey. We also wanted to have a global overview of our customers and how they engage with the business.
I was in charge of digital development aspect of this across the whole digital experience, from e marketing, lead nurturing, website and all of the digital channels that helped improve our visibility as a business to our customers.
Our goal was to create greater customer synergy, combining the digital and physical experience to give customers the level of service and access to information, people and products as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I was also in charge of the social media of Lubmarine (namely LinkedIn and Twitter) – maintaining these sites and developing the relationship between all digital platforms.
What Is Your Current Role?
I am the Services Product Manager – a position Lubmarine created after a period of reviewing and recognizing the benefits of putting even greater emphasis on our customer-centricity, delivering enhanced value to our customers through a suite of dedicated services, delivering measurable benefits in tandem with our products.
This is a really exciting opportunity for me that calls upon all of my experience gained across my previous roles within TotalEnergies bringing together:
- Customer experience and services
- Marketing
- Sales
- Project and Partners Management
- IT and Digital
The challenge has been to create a revamped customer experience combining a product/service approach built around the customers specific needs.
Can You Provide Some Insight Into What This New Model Looks Like?
We are helping customers get the most effective services and products based on the feedback from various surveys and interviews we have extensively conducted.
By understanding and defining the customer’s specific needs and priorities for their vessels and their operations, we can identify the range of services that will add the most value to them.
We have also looked to eradicate traditional paper, pen and manual processes where human error can be a factor.
The goal is to support the engineers on board through the development of a series of digital services – from data gathering to test scheduling, testing and report filing, with all data stored in a central customer portal where everyone who needs access to this data can get it at any time and from any location – whether they are directly on board or thousands of miles away.
This is a really exciting time where we are able to marry more than ever the physical and digital aspects of Lubmarine’s expertise, from the Lubmarine engineers’ engagement to the most user-friendly digital platforms.
Our customers are operating 24/7 365 days a year. Our goal is to help them optimize their maintenance operations, focus on what is important and to concentrate on supporting them and making their life easier.
The new services approach calls upon a number of enhanced features including:
- Digital Sampling for onboard test and lab analysis
- Next Generation Digital Onboard Test Kits
- Global Customer portal
- Local support from our team of Marine Lubrication Engineers
We will be able to provide a unique onboard testing kit that tests and provides results for water, BN and Iron simultaneously, thus saving time.
The onboard kit can also be upgraded with a dedicated X-ray analyzer kit.
By enabling the customer and our own team to have more access to real-time data we are positively placed to make a significant difference to their lubrication management programmes.
By implementing these services, we will strengthen and deepen our knowledge of the customer, their vessels and their operations, which means we can continue to build effective solutions and provide tailored recommendations.
How Have You Tested the New Range of Digital Services?
Collaboration with our customers has been a crucial part of the development stages culminating in us carrying out an extensive series of test pilots.
We have done this with over 10 customers in different scenarios and operating areas. This has been really invaluable in helping us developing, shaping and learning.
We have come across vessel issues (middle aged vessels with very little digital) and also powerplants and infrastructure issues – such as Internet issues in some areas in the world. All of these areas we needed to experience and test so that we understood and covered all possible working challenges for these services.
The onboard kits are lubricant generic. So we can provide operators with the services even if they are not going to use our lubricant products yet.
This Has Obviously Been A Busy Time For You. What Do You Do Away From Work?
I am a football fan, so whenever I can I like to watch my team Paris St Germain. I also like to keep fit and active in particular by going to the gym, swimming and playing golf.
I also really enjoy spending time with my family.