Karon Evanoff, VP Global Supply Chain at QSC, is a results-driven supply chain executive who is committed to cost management and the development of strategic, mutually beneficial alliances and connections with internal and external customers, material suppliers, and service providers. She is a visionary operations executive with extensive experience managing all levels of global supply chain transformation, including large-scale global deployments of ORACLE R12 and complementary cloud-based solutions, which improve the organization’s ability to scale toward a Demand Driven Value Network.
Below are highlights of the interview:
Describe your background and what did you do before you joined QSC? –
My background has been 100% supply chain, with a main focus on technology companies. I started my career with Western Digital, which was heavily cen tered on NPI, commodity management and managing semiconductor partnerships with leading semiconductor manufacturers. I subsequently moved into the telecom industry, did a stint in solar, then moved to the security and access management industry, and am currently here at QSC focusing on audiovisual and pro audio.
Tell us more about QSC.
QSC, LLC has been around for over 50 years and is a globally-recognized leader in design, engineering, and manufacturing. To better serve customers and partners, the company now operates as two independent divisions under QSC, LLC. The QSC Pro Audio division is focused on creating impactful and memorable experiences for its audiences with innovative, high-performance, and easy-to-use audio solutions. The Q-SYS division is focused on the AV/IT market. It revolves around Q-SYS, the cloud-manageable audio, video, and control platform, which provides live and virtual experiences by uniting hardware and software partners, developers, and creators for a number of vertical markets.
Who is your target audience? How do you create services that align with what they’re looking for?
For our Q-SYS division, we focus on corporate, education, hospitality, venues & events, cinema, government, healthcare, and transportation. Our products and technologies give AV integration companies the ability to create audio visual experiences in various spaces, and with our software-based approach, IT end users can easily add audio, video, and control capabilities into their IT infrastructure.
What are the major changes happening in client behaviour and market operation since pandemic?
We saw many market changes throughout the pandemic. At first, everything came to a grinding halt, then quickly sped up as many verticals decided to invest in upgrading their systems. The initial boom came from higher education, which realized they needed to enable hybrid learning solutions in all of their classrooms. We also saw many hotels, convention centers, and entertainment facilities use the downtime to upgrade their spaces. Over time, we saw all verticals come back strong, which has led to various struggles for our AV integration partners to source materials needed to complete systems. Today, our sales team works proactively with our customers to re-engineer systems and utilize products we have in stock. The supply chain issues have created a lot more transparency and visibility for our customers’ pipelines, and we see orders coming in much earlier so that they can “get in line” for an allocation as lead times have increased.
What gets you up in the morning? What are your responsibilities as the VP Global Supply Chain of the company?
I love solving problems and providing solutions that ultimately make our customers want to do business with us. I was reading a book by Dr. Elouise Epstein called “Trade Wars, Pandemics, and Chaos: How Digital Procurement Enables Business Success in a Disordered World,” and she wrote something that really hit home to me. She stated: “To succeed in this world, you need an ecosystem approach that’s built on a solid foundation, offers a plug-and-play choice of easily onboarded apps, gives users a delightful, burden-free experience, and features an intelligence layer that produces insights across the entirety of the operating system.” Why is that such a powerful statement for me? The supply chain is not confined to the four walls as it used to be when I first started my career. First, we needed data, but our supply chains were not as complex as they are today, nor were they as challenging with geo-political issues, ESG, etc. Now, we must create an ecosystem that enables our staff, our customers, and suppliers to access, send, and receive information that helps all parties succeed. It’s now all about providing visibility to information in a way that can be easily digested and presented to the user with the correct insight on the action or decision required.
Also, just because we are “operating” doesn’t mean we are operating efficiently. Early in my career, I was privileged to work with some early thought leaders and mentors as well as leading suppliers that were making huge strides in supply chain operations improvements, which allowed me, as the “buyer”, to get products with minimal hassle at a reasonable cost. I always looked at how my suppliers’ improvements helped me, as their customer, to achieve my goals. This has been a huge driving factor in what keeps me going—I continue to push for and improve to be a better supplier to customers and a better partner to our suppliers.
In terms of responsibilities, I am responsible with my team for managing the global QSC supply chain, from strategic sourcing and purchasing, global planning, global logistics and trade and the supply chain systems evaluation and implementation associated with digital supply chain transformation.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
First, I always ask myself, “Is my team enabled with the right processes, functional training, or tools to do the best possible job to achieve the company’s goals/objectives?” As the supply chain leader, I’m only as good as my team, so I am very conscious of making sure I keep a pulse on the team. I listen to the issues they are facing and see if we can do anything to help alleviate the roadblocks. No one wants to come in every day and feel like they don’t have any support to make the function and work situation better. We are lucky here because we have a very broad stakeholder group, including our executive leadership team—all of whom have demonstrated great support and respect for what the supply chain team does. Secondly, I have to ask – am I making a difference to the company? Do our customers see their experience working with QSC improving because of what my team and I are accomplishing? Can they win the project because we have selected reliable, quality suppliers? Do they have visibility to the information they require to close a deal or speak with a customer? Do we help drive positive customer experiences? Are we helping our bottom line?
What advice would you give to the next generation of female leaders?
Always stay on the learning curve. When I started in supply chain, it was mostly dominated by males, but I had a lot of great mentors, including female mentors, and was exposed to a lot of learning. In addition, the leadership teams I worked under recognized the importance of continued investment in their employees and looked to stay current and maintain a modern infrastructure to enable sustained growth and performance. Make sure whatever organization you work for understands that the supply chain is an integral part of the entire organization’s success and customer experience.
What are your future plans to sustain your and the company’s success?
We are working to build a stronger and more sustainable supply chain. We are implementing digital supply chain solutions around collaboration and visibility to further enhance the eco-system approach. Our next assessment and focus is how to build a wider ESG platform and roadmap – again working to be even better citizens of the globe as well as assisting our customers in their ESG journeys.
Website: www.qsc.com
