Willi(am) Andrist

Family researchers and my American, Canadian and Australian cousins very often asked me about my curriculum. I therefore made the more business part available. Oh no, I won't show you the more wild sides of my live.

Business Curriculum:

Born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, I grew up in Bern (Capital City of Switzerland) and Meikirch (a village country side of Bern). 

My educational background: educated in Berne, commercial schools in La Neuveville (a city in the French speaking part of Switzerland) and Berne. Later I started with a typical Swiss apprenticeship to learn the Banking Business. An apprenticeship is a training program going three years, with one or two days per week in commercial school, ending with a federal diploma exam. I spent two more years to achieve the federal diploma in Marketing Planning. Then I added 5 more years to achieve higher federal diplomas as a Qualified Business Manager HKG and as a Director of Marketing. I liked my jobs, therefore all this education happened while I was almost 100% (or more ;-) working for my employers. I spent nights and weekend days for those diploma courses. Thank's to my best friend for all support and understanding...

My professional background: I spent eight years in Banking. I had Banking jobs from the apprenticeship to the department manager level. I always took the opportunity to learn a new Banking subject whereever I had an opportunity. So I had a chance to learn all aspects of retail banking business at a full service branch. Over the years I also specialized in securities management and consulting. I was responsible for the introduction of new real-time applications for securities management. Later I took the chance to learn more in accounting, payment traffic, asset and liability management, cash management and then organization management and many more aspects of the business at the headquarters. At the IT outsourcing and Service Center of a group of large Swiss Banks I learned alot on Electronic Banking and became responsible for the operation of  E-Banking applications and services. As a project manager I successfully lead the integration of customers online transactions at their front-end with the realtime system of the service center. I also was responsible for consulting some banks key accounts in electronic banking. This time we developed also very individual online connection for major customers having their accounts all over the world. .

Later I spent four years in a consulting company, a full subsidiary of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. This was a startup consulting company which was very successful in its market. We restructured many Swiss Banks, searched for synergies, made valuations and mergers, we coached workgroups for best organization and strategies, helped to raise service centers for banking groups, developed planning processes and tools for asset and liability management and financial simulation for banks. After the restructuring phase of this Banking segment we were more in consulting of strategies and marketing plans. Also very interesting mandates were in more operational support in implementation of retail banking concepts, customer retention programs combined with datamining etc. Although it finally was a lot of very operational work for the customers, I felt, it was time again to do more than merely consulting with others. So I moved to Swiss Telecom PTT (now: Swisscom) the incumbant telecommunication operator in Switzerland.

The first job was with the Marketing head office of the Business Customers Directorate and the Business Innovation Unit. I made business and marketing plans, contracting and licencensing for internet services for business customers, for individual industries solutions (like telemedicine - new technologies in medical teleconsulting -, application service provisioning in groupware, security/cryptology evaluation for commercial transactions etc.). Later I felt more suited to the strategic issues of a Telecom company. I was asked to join Corporate Development Department. We were in a change process and prepared ourselves for the liberalization (i.e., government deregulation). In 1996 I was mainly in charge of the development and implementation of the strategic planning process and the methodical tools. But I was not only in methods I also coached the development of the strategies of the largest business areas (Voice) and the new functional 'Marketing and Products' business unit. In 1997 I became the manager of the strategic planning process for Swisscom. A high light was the Business Plan in 1998. It was a major contribution to the successful Initial Public Offering of Swisscoms shares, the largest IPO in Europe in this financial year. - The new planning process which has been developed for 1999 included both a mid term plan and a short term budget, which were independant processes so far. This was new to most players of the industry. Based on the learning curve we follow in Swisscom this means improved quality and better link of short term and long term plans and a more efficient planing period, reduced human resources involved etc. It was a challenging job in an always changing environment. I was further involved in the setup of Corporate Value Based Management and the implementation of Balanced Score Card on Corporate Level, Benchmarking management processes in connection with Business Excellence Models (EFQM). Although developing strategic content and plans in this time, I felt, it was time, to do more in content than processes and was attracted by the E- and the Internet Service Provisioning (ISP) business.

In August 2000 I have chosen another job. I became Head of Corporate Strategy with Bluewin AG, Zurich, a subsidiary of Swisscom. Bluewin is both the leading ISP and the leading portal in Switzerland. In this role I was again responsible for the design of new planning and strategy development processes, but main focus was on the content of strategies. Further I was in charge of industry research and supporting of portal strategy development, respositioning of access offering, basic analysis for market segmentation and customer ranking as a basic instrument for CRM and customer value management. A main task was the setup of a multi access and mobility portal.

After 13 month (or more likely: four internet years) the later project brought me to Swisscom Mobile Ltd. in Bern. October 2002 I joined the Third Party Business Unit (TPB), responsible for Market Development. TPB is like a startup in Swisscom Mobile which enables third parties to bring their own mobile service to the mobile enduser having their own marketing like individual branding, pricing, etc. Some of the current scopes of market development projects are in enabling mobile Marketing (mainly campaign management) and mobile payment. The required mix of both senior marketing and telecommunicaton skills match my professional background at its best.

Third Party Business became merged with consumer business. Therefore my main focus was on Business Solutions for Swisscom Mobile. 

Most of above sounds like a more technical job. Believe me, most challenging and main part was human interaction in the role as a moderator. That's what I always liked best with all jobs I had. 

What I like or dislike, values:

I like honest and open minded people, criticism (vice-versa). I trust in people. My hobbies are sports like volleyball, skiing, free climbing (as long as it's not too frightening), music, watching news on the TV, trekking, Korbball (a derivation of basket ball), scuba diving in warm saltwater. Salsa, Merengue and Bachata came up last year. I'm improving my dancing skills. I like to spend my time with friends, very often on privately organised events. - I don't like irrational actions, cruelty, too selfish people, tactical instead of open discussions and to much of routine on the job. Illustrated

My virtual family: to the Andrist Welcome Page
_'       '