As the CEO of ToolsGroup, Inna Kuznetsova firmly believes in fostering a collaborative environment within the business. She prefers partnership over a top-down structure where orders are simply issued. Her approach emphasizes the importance of strong executive teams that not only manage operations but also find enjoyment in working together.
Inna’s work across the executive team and investors to lay out the strategy and vision for the business and agree on the tactical plans developed by functional owners She keeps everyone informed, from the board and investors who need full transparency to the company’s employees, by writing weekly snapshots and conducting town halls twice a month. She stays in touch with analysts and partners to understand the trends, and her favorite part of her job is spending time with the customers, thanking them for their business and learning about their needs and strategies so that ToolsGroup can help the best.
Below are highlights of the interview conducted between World’s Leaders and Inna Kuznetsova:
Describe your background and what did you do before you started/joined the company?
As a mathematician by education who started her career in tech and then was recruited to turn around sales in a logistics company, I see numbers and optimization opportunities through software when others see boxes and orders. At the same time, I gained a great appreciation for the complexities and specifics of the supply chain after that experience. So, bringing technology and innovation through SaaS, analytics, and AI into the supply chain and shipping has become my focus. This is why I was so happy to join ToolsGroup, which is known for being the pioneer in implementing its own math and machine learning in demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and retail planning.
Prior to ToolsGroup, I spent almost 20 years at IBM, where I focused on high growth opportunities, including being the head of Linux, was the first global vice president of Russian origin in US headquarters, ran sales and marketing at CEVA Logistics as the Chief Commercial Officer, and later spent several years each as COO and CEO at INTTRA and 1010data, two companies providing technology and data analytics for shipping and retail.
Tell us about the inception of the company. How did it all start?
ToolsGroup was founded in Italy in 1993—we just celebrated 30 years—by a wonderful group of entrepreneurs that combined expertise in supply chain with deep mathematical and technological backgrounds. Over the years, it grew into a global company providing supply chain optimization through AI to hundreds of manufacturing, distribution, food and beverage, and retail customers in over 45 countries. Over the last two years, ToolsGroup acquired JustEnough, which previously was a division of Mi9 and Onera, strengthening our position in retail planning. We also got a new investor due to the acquisition by AKKR at the end of 2021, paving the road for a major investment in the evolution of our current products and new developments. I was honored to succeed the founder and CEO of over 29 years, Joseph Shamir, in 2022.
What has made you successful? What do you value?
I think being focused on customer and investor value, being very transparent and honest with the team and the board, and keeping the eyes on the goal while remembering that people do business with people are the main foundations of success. As anyone with a long career knows, it is not the ability to avoid setbacks and failures but the readiness to pull yourself together, get up after the fall, and keep fighting that defines the winners. And I do believe in hard work and constant learning; winning the lottery or throwing a hail mary may work a few times, but it is rarely a good long-term strategy.
What are the most important aspects of a company’s culture? What principles do you believe in and how do you build this culture?
They say culture is what happens when the CEO leaves a room. At ToolsGroup we truly live our values of innovation, collaboration, passion for excellence, and reliability. Our team is naturally curious, strives to deliver customer value, and feels deep responsibility for it. But one of the best things about our culture is that we like spending time with each other. I believe in transparency, leaving politics at the door, but having such deep respect for each other that you can argue out an issue in the conference room and then go have beer together. Case in point: our executive team once got into a tough argument but then went together to an escape room, and one of my colleagues said, ‘In some of my previous teams, it would feel like blood all over the conference table; here we got to the solution in thirty minutes with new appreciation for each other.’
What is the significance of innovative ideas in the company?
As a software company, we are very focused on our products and technology; innovation in these areas never stops, and it is important for us to stay competitive and provide the best knowledge to our customers. But equally important is to recognize a different type of innovation: process innovation, which supply chain companies understand very well, whether it’s implementing LEAN or updating processes for scalability. ToolsGroup is proud to have great talent in the supply chain space, not just technology. Our consultants work with customers to reduce excessive inventory, manage working capital better, and implement new ways of forecasting demand in the fabric of their business.
Give us your opinion on; do organizations rely heavily on individual heroics or team processes?
Despite the existing patterns in answering this question, I would say that it depends on the life cycle. Startups heavily depend on their founders’ and early employees’ ability to gain traction, while a company that scales its business relies more on a bigger team: the executive leadership expertise and working together, the clear roles and processes that provide for handling a bigger business, and a good culture. Having said that, I would mention that at no stage should individual brilliance or star quality be an excuse for behavior that alienates colleagues and damages morale in the company.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Going into a leadership role in a company is an important moment to re-evaluate how your responsibilities, constituents, and outcomes are different from your prior role and how people view you differently. What has made you successful before, e.g., running one function, may not be enough. Your job is to empower, not execute in many instances, to understand the complexity of other functions that you may not be familiar with, to hire the right people to run them, and to provide the necessary help. When you become the CEO for the first time, you need to understand how important it is to work well with your investors and your board, realizing the highest potential of having help from these experienced individuals and steering the company together. But for first-time managers, my advice would be to elevate themselves to achieve great results from whatever they do best, whether it is writing code or closing deals, to achieving the same through others: hire, coach, empower, delegate, manage performance, remove barriers, promote, and encourage.
