/ Off: (310) 393-2660, Cell: (310) 880-3673
SUMMARY
Strategistand Brand development executive with over 25 years’ experience in identifying market opportunities anddeveloping/executing high impact revenue strategies grounded on deep consumer insight; Considerable expertisecreating and evolving industry dominating brands recognized for premium growth, operating performance and customer loyalty; Extensive e-Commerce experience leading the digital transformation of a service business through innovative online retailing and revenue management; Industry-wide recognition for pioneering new markets for what were previously considered mature businesses through identifying unfulfilled demand, aligning to customer priorities and marketing mix optimization;Highly effective at building sustained marketing leverage through technology and customer engagement; Known forbuilding and motivating world class teams leadership talent; Strong analytical discipline including information management, consumer research, decision sciences and big data, and ability to translate ideas into action with speed; Well-developed persuasion and consensus building style that inspires confidence; Extensive experience in retail/travel/hospitality/gaming/service industrieswith varied organizations … Fortune 1 to startup.
EXPERIENCE
NUEDGE CONSULTING, INC. – Santa Monica, CA current
President
Strategy consulting with select clients – Retail, Hospitality, Gaming, Online Travel, Education
- Advisor to several start-ups (microfinance, health services), and non-profits (global literacy, girls’ education).
- Winning strategies steeped in customer understanding.
- Developing Operations Analytics & Supply Chain Management curriculum for University of Southern California (Marshall School)
Vice President, Global Customer Insights & Analytics
Built and led insights function in support of $60 billion warehouse club business (Sam’s Club). Also supported cross-banner integration and customer share opportunities across the Walmart portfolio.
- Optimized Marketing, Membership, Merchandizing, Operations, Procurement and e-Commerce strategy to profitably grow membership income and share of wallet from 40 million members.
- Architect of Member Lifecycle Strategy to drive acquisition, engagement/upgrade, and renewal income. Established Demand Forecasting and Merchandise Mix Optimization to maximize member renewal rates.
- Instituted multi-channel integration to support pre-ordering of merchandise and scheduled store pick-ups for members.
- Supported launch of 2 significant membership benefits to substantially improve member value proposition.
President
Consulting practice specializing in Brand management, Distribution sales & channel optimization, Customer relationship management, Technology integration, Competitive strategy, Marketing innovation, Revenue management, Market planning, Service recovery, Business processreengineering.
- Transforming customer transactions into profitable customer conversations.
- Leveraging technology, igniting customer relationships, building wealth by focusing on the ‘right’ marketing/operating metrics.
Bala Subramanian– Page 2 of 3 / Off: (310) 393-2660, Cell: (310) 880-3673
Hilton Hotels Corporation – Beverly Hills, CA / 2003 – 2009
Senior Vice President, Global Distribution Services
Overall responsibility for global distribution for 5000 hotels across 10 industry leading hotel brands. Managed all customer call center operations, travel intermediary marketing, and consumer website sales, delivering over $10 billion in annual revenues. Additionally, provided leadership to customer loyalty group, market research and business analytics, brand quality assurance, and several technology functions.
- Chief architect of channel optimization and cross-marketing strategy that resulted in 50% growth in customer share of wallet, significant brand share premiums, and 40% lower unit cost of sales over 5 years.
- Completely re-launched global retail website and segmented portals, achieving highest Internet penetration in the industry and online retail sales approaching $5 billion annually.
- Created 7-point Distribution Strategy to strengthen Hilton’s proprietary distribution channels, propelling hotel central delivery contribution from 50 to 70%, driving annual brand cost down at least 10% a year for 5 years.
- Repaired contentious relationships with major offline and online travel intermediaries and negotiated win-win agreements with performance-based incentives that restored share growth at a lower commission cost.
- Achieved lower unit costs in declining voice channel despite loss of scale through center consolidation, in-sourcing hotel reservation desks, work @home, and other call handling efficiencies.
- Reengineered guest & owner value proposition of $1 billion HHonors Loyalty Program, yielding 20% higher revenue per customer, 25% lower admin/marketing costs per customer, 40% growth in partner funding, and a substantially improved balance sheet.
- Led a team of 2000+ employees and administered expense budget of $700 million.
Hilton Hotels Corporation – Memphis, TN / 1999 – 2002
Senior Vice President, Customer and Brand Strategy
Chairman of Brand Integration Council with responsibility for aligning brand positioning, customer relationship management, loyalty marketing, sales and development strategy across 7 leading hotel brands with annual revenues exceeding $9 billion.
- Achieved cost synergy and exploited cross marketing/loyalty opportunities to grow share among top tier HHonors customers, and top national sales accounts. Cross-brand referral revenues topped $1.5 billion annually; 80% incremental.
- Implemented multi-brand CRM strategy resulting in unique service differentiation (guest recognition and personalization) for highest value customers across 3000 hotels, resulting in 8 successive years of JD Power awards and market share gains in a demand-constrained economy.
- Partnered with Information Technology to create unique branding for Hilton’s leading OnQ platform resulting in new, differentiated customer and owner value proposition of cross-brand guest recognition capabilities.
Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.– Memphis, TN / 1995– 1998
Corporate Vice President, Customer Marketing and Development Planning
Impacted positioning and competitive strategy for 19 casino resorts in 15 markets with annual revenues exceeding $5 billion. Directed development market planning efforts to identify new markets resulting in a 4-fold growth in the number of casinos operated by Harrah’s, and a tripling of revenues in 4 years to become the fastest growing casino business.
- Developed brand positioning and service strategy focused on Avid, Experienced players with 10 times the lifetime customer value.
- Created industry pioneering database marketing that generated 15% incremental win, and 20% lower customer reinvestment expense. Brand-wide application resulted in an impact of $250 million.
- Led strategic market planning for Harrah’s expansion into Riverboat and Indian gaming, and developed customer targeting and cross-market strategy to maximize synergy across Showboat and Rio acquisitions.
- Developed line employee incentive plan based on customer service and competitive assault goals that catapulted Harrah’s to #1 or #2 in every market, and funded payouts from gains in market share.
Bala Subramanian– Page 3 of 3 / Off: (310) 393-2660, Cell: (310) 880-3673
Promus Companies– Memphis, TN / 1987 – 1994
Corporate Director, Market Planning and Strategy
Responsible for critical customer listening posts to fine tune brand operations, development and marketing of 4 brands in hotel and casino industries.
- Identified opportunity for Harrah’s casinos to aggressively expand outside traditional markets of Nevada and New Jersey, launching the biggest expansion in the company’s history before competitors could react.
- Refined customer appeal and market positioning of 3 new hotel brands – Hampton Inn, Embassy Suites and Homewood Suites to exploit distinctive traveler segments.
- Development and testing of hospitality industry’s first unconditional satisfaction guarantee at Hampton Inn hotels; a unique service recovery, guest intimacyand employee ‘ownership’ culture that was extended to all other Promus brands, and is now emulated in many industries.
- Served on task force that created Homewood Suites concept targeting under-served extended stay market.
Holiday Corporation– Memphis, TN / 1981 – 1986
Director, Research and Analysis
Managed all market and customer tracking for competitive benchmarking, longitudinal behavior tracking, and service quality assessment.
- Task force work on valuation of Holiday Inn business leading to divestiture.
- Established balanced scorecard for performance management that is the industry standard even today.
- Developed optimization models for telecom planning and staffing of global toll-free reservations achieving $2 Million is annualized savings. Implemented labor standards for company managed hotels to replicate best practices (front desk, housekeeping, restaurants, sales/marketing).
Two-year international assignment based in London, developing customer direct reservation systems to pilot industry’s first self-service booking applications in Europe.
EDUCATIONUniversity Of Minnesota– Minneapolis, MN
MBA, Management Science
Instructor of Statistics for Business students (3 semesters)
Indian Institute of Technology– Kanpur, India
BTech, Electrical Engineering
PUBLICATIONS / REPORTSThesis: Computationally Efficient Algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem
Publication: Roland Rust, Bala Subramanian and Mark Wells. 1992. “Making Complaints a Management Tool.” Marketing Management 1(3):40-45
Case-studies: 2004. “Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.” Harvard Business School 9-502-011; 2008. “Hilton Hotels: Brand Differentiation through Customer Relationship Management.” Harvard Business School 9-809-029
OTHERNamed top strategist in hospitality/casino industry by Wall Street Transcript
Winner of several corporate excellence and leadership awards
Harvard Executive Development Programs … Excellence in Management & Excellence in Leadership (@Harrah’s)
Guest Lecturer for MBA students at various institutions (Vanderbilt, Cornell, Indiana, Memphis, UNLV, Houston)
Los Angeles Chapter Leaderfor various cancer research and youth education charities
Volunteer Tutor for Literacy Council