Vijay Bala Email and Phone Number

Catch of the Day, founded in 2006 with me as their first employee, is now Australia’s #1 online retailer, with projected annual revenue in excess of $100 million.My role in the company started as Operations Manager overseeing customer service, IT, logistics and fulfilment, and evolved in to a CTO role as the business experienced growth. During my time at Catch of the Day, I helped establish the business in its early days, managed the design and implementation of the website and ecommerce solution, recruited IT and customer service team, established a warehouse, developed customer service and inventory management processes.Key accomplishments:• Reduced the per order cost to one-fifth from that of using a 3rd party logistic provider by setting up an internal warehouse and establishing processes to suit the unique business model (one product a day). This required a complete process reengineering by dropping all traditional warehouse management concepts and starting from scratch.• Continuously improved ‘customer email enquiries per order’ ratio by implementing knowledge management and customer self-serve strategies, thus limiting the additional staffing cost to keep up with the growth.• Drive changes to IT strategy to keep up with the growth and competitors.• Identified that to sustain growth, migration to enterprise-level systems is required and initiated an internal technology overhaul program. This technology change, which is an integral part of the business’s future strategy to continue the growth in a competitive market, is currently underway with a new ERP and Payroll system already implemented and a new ecommerce platform (IBM Websphere Commerce) and Warehouse system currently under implementation.

Took over the day to day management of the company from the director in July, 2005 and successfully managed the operations during a period where the business experienced significant growth and became the second largest eBay seller in Australia specializing in the sale of CDs and DVDs throughout Australia and UK.Key achievements: • Managed a team of 15 staff with different roles in marketing, graphic design, IT, customer service, payroll and warehouse; • Negotiated contracts with new suppliers and managed contractual relationship with existing suppliers. • Completed business improvement initiative that included automating product listing, second chance offers, streamlining ebay product listing process and introducing variable pricing driven by sales data; resulting in a 10 fold increase in revenue from 500k to 5 mil. • Significantly reduced accounts receivable workload by implementing automated ebay order system. automating bank reconciliation and introducing Paypal as a payment option.• Improved warehouse systems and processes by introducing industry best practices which reduced the per-order handling charge by over 50%. • Launched the consulting arm of the business called Online Market Experts and worked as a principal consultant.

• Build and manage the IT team as the business experienced growth.• Oversee all facets of the software and hardware needs of the business. • Steered the implementation of a newly acquired automation software (Channel Advisor, formally known as Marketworks) to facilitate eBay sales process and automate business processes. The implementation was promoted world-wide by Marketworks as a case-study and won an international award. http://creative.marketworks.com/news/news_0510_landing.htm