John Denney Email and Phone Number

I was hired for this role at a semi-early-stage startup with the goal of establishing operations for the next three to five years, including processes and talent to meet sales forecast growth and controls around audits, compliance and quality control.  Implemented performance measurement, established throughput and forecasted a need for staffing and a larger warehouse based on analytics.  Created full real estate assessment, presented to CEO and got buy in to execute, including finding the location, negotiating contracts and project managing the buildout. Lead oversight and execution of staffing and talent development strategy including hiring and onboarding.  Spearheaded shipping cost savings initiative resulting in $371K in annual savings by renegotiating contracts and reducing box sizes to eliminate additional handling and peak charges.

Here, I was hired to run outbound fulfillment center operations as well as apply team building experience to increase processes, resources and training to collaborate in hiring and developing leaders. I managed a team of six to eight area managers and over 400 indirect reports.  Collaborated with cross-functional teams to create an operations playbook to demonstrate what systems were available and how to effectively execute on them including data and metrics, what to monitor during a shift and general operations procedures. This enabled a 50% decrease in ramp up time for new operations managers.  Consistently received top effectiveness scores resulting in being one of the top two managers out of over 25 for employee engagement.  Set record for shift volume of 496K units in a 10-hour shift (typical shift is around 200K units). Led and resolved complex, political and susceptible employee relations issues, while employee engagement and manager effectiveness scores increased by 12% and 18%, respectively.

In this role, I was a key leader in startup operations of joint venture health plans with Anthem and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. Responsible for execution and oversight leadership for cross-functional service delivery for Minnesota and Arkansas health plan operations with revenues exceeding $1.3 billion and impacting 375,000 lives. Led and facilitated executive-level cross-functional meetings, identifying and explaining complex problems impacting the organization, along with solutions, timelines, costs and subsequent implementation delivery oversight while providing regular progress updates to stakeholders at all levels.  Oversaw two workstreams: a data workstream with internal and external data connections and a 60-days to go live initiative to build a mail and routing center. Point person for state corrective action plan (CAP) for Arkansas Medicaid, including oversight of claims re-processing, system reconfiguration and creating interim payments and recovery process to providers in need during reprocessing.  Organized and hosted executive-level joint venture status meetings to communicate the remediation efforts, reducing provider abrasion and improving public relations.

I began my tenure here as Supervisor of Medicare and Medicaid claims before earning degree and was promoted to roles of increasing responsibility.  Global multi-facility leadership of multi-line (Commercial, Individual, Medicare, and Medicaid) Dental and Vision claims operation. Claim Review and Adjustment Operations, supporting twenty million lives with a team of 185+ FTEs, and responsibility for the development, implementation, and execution of ground-up rebuild of operations over five years resulting in aggregate savings of over $5M over the period. Tasked with piloting a program with on and offshore leaders to align work efforts and share best practices as Global Liaison.  Modernized inventory management infrastructure, spearheaded productivity management program and optimized reporting and communication channels, which led to improved SLA performance, reducing penalty payments by $250K annually. Led teams through five enterprise-level reorganizations while improving annual employee engagement results from 65% to 90% engagement over four years. Central oversight and coordination of work process movement to offshore sites and implemented process automation opportunities and best practice sharing, resulting in annual savings of $2.3M.

 Lead production team of over 50 employees with oversight of manufacturing custom wire and cable assemblies.  Responsible for safety, quality and production of shift employees and products. Spearheaded production, scheduling and delivery of large government defense project which  came in on time and 10% under budget.  Optimized scheduling to pull in 15% more revenue through cross-training and additional organization, job management and machine utilization.