Professional Bio

                                                                                    

Chris Gilmer

Christopher Gilmer is a general business expert with 30 years of experience in small, medium, and large companies encompassing all aspects of successfully leading and managing a business. From his senior executive position at Disetronic Medical Systems to his most recent role as COO for Virtual Marketing Strategies, he has proven successful in generating ideas to increase revenue while implementing process and system improvements to reduce the costs for each business. Armed with experience and training from Fortune 100 companies including Roche Diagnostics, Unisys Corp, and General Motors Chris has applied these learning’s at smaller businesses.

His passion for small business is fueled by the success he and his team achieved while conducting business initiatives including;

  • Commercializing new innovative products gaining new customers
  • Building strong teams through training, coaching, and empowerment
  • Enhancing/replacing IT systems to support operations
  • Reducing cost through numerous process improvements
  • Implementing new financial tools to improve profitability
  • Starting up new business opportunities while growing current business

Career highlights include:

  • Over his 16 years with Unisys, Chris demonstrated career progression through numerous roles of increasing responsibility in line and staff management. He had various responsibilities such as order fulfillment, master schedule, supply and demand planning, revenue planning, and lastly supply chain management as the Group Director.
    • He led implementation of a “configure to order” process that greatly reduced WIP and FGI and shortened the delivery process
    • Chris managed numerous large projects including centralizing MRP for four sites while consistently driving process improvement
    • He developed, communicated, and implemented business plans for a $3.2B manufacturing operation
    • As General Manager for Zomax, Inc. Chris built a professional team that enabled the business to double in size from $5M to $10M in the first year by increasing business with existing customers while adding four new ones.
  • Chris joined Roche Diagnostics, Inc. and was responsible for forecasting patient care products for North America. He was promoted to Director of Forecasting and after 2 years took a position with Disetronic Medical Systems (owned by Roche) as Director of Business Operations. Chris was then promoted to Vice President and General Manager at Disetronic. Some highlights of his career with Roche/Disetronic are:
    • He worked with the sales and marketing teams to develop strategies that increased market share by three points resulting in $30M in incremental revenue
    • He led startup of operations for Disetronic in Fishers, IN successfully closing business in St Paul, MN while maintaining normal operations, hiring and training over 90 people, validating all hardware and software, and developing a quality and regulatory team
    • He led the sales and marketing team developing strategies that increased customer base by over 2,000 people and revenue by $11M
    • Additionally he provided operational support for a new business venture establishing an Independent Diagnostic Testing Facility to pursue new opportunities in the anti-coagulation business for Roche. This added 6,000 new customers and $5M in revenue
  • Chris joined VMS (Virtual Marketing Strategies)as Chief Operations Officer with responsibility for all areas of operations, including finance, IT, H.R., resource planning and compliance, meeting strategy and patient adherence operations. While at VMS he accomplished the following:
    • Improved IT focus and reduced cost by over $1M annually
    • Reorganized all operations to better meet customer needs
    • Improved financial reporting and forecasting
    • Developed business plans for company including actionable metrics

Chris is certified as a small business advisor within the Organization for Entrepreneurial Development (OED). This certification along with his experience with both large and small businesses makes him the right choice for supporting small business owners to improve their sales and profits as well as improving operations. Chris is the President of GILMER CONSULTING LLC which is founded on the premise of making small businesses more successful.

Chris graduated with a B.S. in Management from Oakland University, Rochester, MI and also attended Walsh College and Central Michigan University for post graduate studies.

Chris and his wife Debra (Debbie) have been married for 33 years. They have a son named Matthew who resides in Virginia with his wife Jill. He loves to fish and spend time travelling and playing golf with his wife.