Tom Swidarski may not be a secret service agent, a bouncer at a night club or a front desk manager at a high-profile office building, but as president and CEO of Diebold Inc., his job’s focus is similar to all three — security.
On one hand, Swidarski’s job is to supply security solutions for his customers, which include financial institutions, government operations and commercial businesses across 600 worldwide locations. However, in addition to handling security for customers, Swidarski is also responsible for ensuring the security of Diebold’s 150-year-old legacy, a part of his job that presents its very own set of challenges.
When Swidarski became president of Diebold in 2005, he was tasked with the weighty challenge of eliminating $100 million of cost out of the company over three years — a program dubbed the “SmartBusiness 100.”
“We weren’t sure exactly how we were going to do that,” he says. “But we said, ‘Hey, Charles Diebold probably had ‘SmartBusiness 1.’ He got the first dollar out. It’s our job to get the $100 million.’”
Building a profitable business is a matter of controlling costs as much as it is generating revenue, and amid the global economic slump, Diebold’s SmartBusiness cost-savings initiatives have been a key part of increasing Diebold’s profitability and securing its position in the competitive global landscape.
Since 2005, Swidarski has not only led Diebold to achieve the SmartBusiness 100; but in the last year, the company has already launched SmartBusiness 300, and begun its third $100 million tranche of cost reduction. The company’s shares rose 18 percent last year, with fourth quarter revenue increasing nine percent to $791 million.
“Hopefully, the economy turns and things move in the right direction, but in all of our businesses, you can control the cost side of the equation,” Swidarski says. “You can’t control the revenue side — so it’s making sure that we have a good understanding of the cost side.”
