Alex Davis, Managing Director (Jewson Civils Frazer & Minster)
At just 20, Alex was teaching conversational English to the executive board of French-based energy firm, Elf, as part of her International Management & French degree. Her third-year placement, based in the South West of France for 15 months, sums up Alex’s ambitious and “in with both feet” attitude which has taken her career through an exciting and varied range of commercial functions within Saint-Gobain. Alex is a skilled negotiator and, in her role today as part of the executive leadership team of Saint-Gobain Contracts Division, she also leads our category, business development and marketing functions. Alex shares these thoughts about her career and her ambitions for the business:
“Since I joined Saint-Gobain in 1999, I have had the opportunity to see the business, and indeed, the industry from a wide range of perspectives. I joined the Group as a graduate trainee with my first placement in Solaglas, which is now Glassolutions. This gave me a solid grounding in a range of functions from estimating projects right through to marketing and sales. But it was general management that I really enjoyed and in fact, it was Nadine Matthews, who gave me my first proper break in that role at one of their largest sites in Dudley. At that time, Solaglas was in turnaround mode so it was a tough environment and there was a lot to learn. Looking back, being given the opportunity to really crack on and make a tangible difference to the performance of the business, albeit daunting, really gave me the skills to advance my career pretty quickly. It was in this period that I really grew an appreciation for the greater need for diversity in our business and the role I could and should play in that.”
With 15 years’ experience in glass processing and distribution developing high-performing teams, Alex took this skill set to Artex, where she joined as sales director. It was in this role Alex really advanced her commercial skills, and in the tough climate of retail developed a strong reputation for business development, significantly enriching mix and growing Artex volumes in critical retail and specialist distribution outlets. Alex continues: “Seeing the industry from the retail perspective really piqued my interest in material distribution so the opportunity to join Saint-Gobain Contracts Division in this role was the perfect alignment of my skills, experience and passion.”
In her role as commercial business development director, Alex is responsible for leading the procurement of the heavyside interiors and civils categories on behalf of Saint-Gobain Building Distribution, working closely with sister brands. She also leads the business development team, responsible for nurturing relationships with tier one contractors and national housebuilders for both Contracts Division brands. With significant experience in marketing, Alex also leads on the digital transformation programme with a number of landmark projects underway, and is responsible for the governance of the Jewson Civils Frazer and Minster estate optimisation and expansion programmes.
Alex shares these thoughts about the future: “The customer experience sits at the heart of this business and every aspect of our operational and transactional capability is designed to optimise our performance and impact. There are huge synergies across the two brands within this division and from day one we have designed every customer touch point to be driven by their needs, not ours. That’s an exciting place to be and with strong backing from Saint-Gobain, we have been able to invest heavily in both digital and physical infrastructure, to follow through on our customer promise, grow our business profitably, and come good on our purpose of ‘Making the world a better home’. Collaboration is the lifeblood of this business and as we are demonstrating through our partnerships with customers and supply chain, there are no limits to our capability and impact in this market.”
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