Ola Stormorken

Job: Reseller Sales Manager, Esso Energi
Education: MSc in Strategy and International Marketing

In my career in Esso, I have been lucky to take part in a number of varied work tasks. The positions have varied across functions and also national borders, although operation of chains has until now been the key in my career development.

I started my career in Esso as an analyst in our retail departement where my responsibilities included varied between analysing profits and margins to modelling market data. Soon afterwards, I was transferred to the sales department and became a regional manager in the motorist section, responsible for about 30 stations in south-eastern Norway. This job taught me what running a service station is really about. The work varied from sales campaigns and operations analyses of the stations to the appointment of new dealers.

My next move was to the company’s exchange programme, which gives young employees a chance to broaden their horizons and work experience by serving in one of ExxonMobil’s other European organisations. I was posted to Breda in the Netherlands, and took part in a number of highly interesting strategy projects – everything from introducing new products in the national market to acquiring competitors. After about a year there, I transferred to Brussels in Belgium for eight months and participated in a strategy project which analysed the company’s British station network.

As an important place of training, I took over the job as Operations Manager of CORS Norway, an ExxonMobil subsidiary which operates all the company’s stations (now a little above 100 stations). Serving as the operations manager for such a chain gave me a lot of knowledge about operations, economy, and personell management, and not least building of relations to make the organisation perform as a team.

Globally, Esso then chose to alter the operations structure of its own operated petrol stations through centralizing all back office functions like accounting, procurement, and customer service/IT. Through active use of ERP centralized in three different global service centers, out of which the European one is located in Manchester, Esso has integrated all its own operated stations in a global operations organization. Based in Manchester, I first took part in implementation of this programme in a number of European countries as Process Optimisation Advisor. Travels across Europe with cross professional and cultural teams gave me insight into how sensitive and complicated it is to run a chain across national borders. Later on, I was the local leader of a project team being responsible for implementing this new operations platform in Norway. With 18 inspiring local team members supported by cross functional teams regionally and globally, this gave me experience within projects as well as operations, which gradually has contributed to developing my own leadership philosophy.

After around 3,5 years with implementation of Esso’s global platform of chain operations, I have for the first time moved out of Retail and entered a new business branch in Norway, Industrial&Wholesale. Today I work in an Esso subsidiary named Esso Energi AS as Reseller Sales Manager, being responsible for all sales of diesel and heating oils within this business segment. Through an internal sales force and a network of distributors all over the country, the main challenge today is to optimize sales and delivery of products to B2B customers. The transition from retail to industry sales has been big, and not least instructive, giving me a strong desire to learn more, filling my sack with new experiences .... !