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ince his appointment as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Enesis Group in January 2009 Bambang W. Soendoro has stepped on the gas in reorganizing or revamping the consumer goods company. The results are clear: Enesis’ sales rose rapidly making it a pioneer and benchmark in its category.

Even before Bambang’s appointment as the company’s number one executive, Enesis was already known as an innovative company. Its products have created a new category of their own, such as Adem Sari, Vegeta, Soffel, Kispray and Antis.

Bambang’s presence has given Enesis new energy, because the 46 year old executive has held various top positions in a number of companies here and abroad before joining Enesis.

Bambang, who received his master’s degree in management from J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, United States, has long experience in the mining and automotive industry as well as consumer goods and had also been a consultant for a multinational company.

Bambang acknowledges that before he joined the company although it consistently launched innovative products its growth was below expectations and sales figures were below target.

“The organization was not unified, it was too fat, each process was disconnected,” said Bambang, who plays tennis and enjoys scuba diving.

To find the right solution Bambang applied a strategy for which he coined a slogan: Better, Smarter, Faster. Better in products, smarter in strategy and faster in implementation.

“This strategy came up because we had a lot of ideas, but they were not implemented fast enough,” explained the alumnus of Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). Using the new strategy he targets a threefold company growth by 2013.

The implementation of the strategy involved a number of stages: strategy review, reorganization and strengthening of the infrastructure of the company that has 3,000 employees.

The first stage was strategy review. Enesis consists of three companies: PT Herlina Indah that produces non-food items, such as Soffel (anti mosquito cream), Kispray (ironing spray), Antis (hand sanitizer) and Force Magic (mosquito spray); PT Sari Enesis Indah which produces food products, such as Adem Sari, Vegeta and its latest product, Coolant; and PT Marketama Indah, the distribution company of Enesis.

According to him, the structure of ownership in the three companies was separate, meaning there was no parent company and as a result it was difficult to take corporate actions and to move fast. So, Bambang restructured the companies in relation to the ownership and made them ‘slimmer.’

Next he strengthened the business base of the companies. He said the manufacturing was solid enough, but not distribution, so he revamped PT Marketama Indah.

The second stage was reorganization. For that he developed the Research and Development (R& D) department further by dividing it into product categories. In addition he also created R&D especially for packaging. He also formed a special team or registration body. Previously registration was handled by each R&D. “This way each department can be more focused and work faster in a more skillful way,” said Bambang.

He also formed supporting departments using the concept ‘center of excellence’ to support the company’s operations.

Previously, each department had its own purchasing units, for example corporate purchasing, but now there is only one purchasing department that handles each product category.

Warehousing is now under one logistics department, not like before when it was handled by each department.

“So, it is now more focused and they are more skilled due to being under one single department,” said the father of two.

The third stage is infrastructure. To him one of the most vital infrastructures is supply chain followed by process and policy.

In short the entire company’s team should be able to collaborate smoothly and to solve problems as delegated.

The changes brought about by Bambang showed good results. Today Enesis is able to launch products faster as per target.

Moreover Enesis also implements the original equipment manufacturing (OEM) system to manufacture products in collaboration with
other related companies for faster marketing.

“Ideas and concepts are all from us, but the manufacturing is done by other companies,” he said. An example of such a product is Coolant, which is produced using the OEM system with a different concept from competing products in the market, including its packaging.

Bambang feels optimistic that threefold business growth can be achieved faster, even before 2013. “Currently our growth is between 20 and 30 percent,” said Bambang. Although many changes have been made Enesis will still remain a company that consistently manufacturer innovative products that are brand new in their product category.