Robert Rodin (born c. 1953) is an American business executive and author who is best known for transforming Marshall Industries into a pioneering business-to-business e-commerce leader[1] while CEO from 1992 to 1999.
[7] Based in El Monte, California, the firm was a global distributor of electronic components including semiconductors, electrical connectors, and computer peripherals.
During Rodin’s tenure as CEO, Marshall Industries reported six consecutive years of record net sales and was one of the first companies to conduct E-commerce on the Internet.
[9] As chief executive, Rodin instituted changes at Marshall—influenced by the management theory and "quality movement" of W. Edwards Deming—that did away with individual incentives for his sales force and instead offered his employees a profit-sharing plan based on the company's overall performance.
Salespeople at the company shipped a disproportionate amount of products in the last three days of each month, often ahead of schedule to meet quotas and win prizes in sales contents.
[7] The company replaced its printed product catalogs with a website, Marshall on the Internet, and launched an intranet called MarshallNet that allowed customers to track their orders.
Kerry Young, Marshall's vice president of IT noted: “It wasn’t easy to develop this stuff, because there weren’t any people around to ask questions of.
"[12] In 1997, PC Week ranked Marshall third in a list of the "most aggressive adopters of innovating products," citing the company's intranet.
Rodin also made Marshall the first industrial distributor to provide live customer service 24 hours-a-day, via call centers as well as online chat sessions.
[5][8] From 1999 until 2002, Rodin served as the chairman and CEO of eConnections, which provided business intelligence solutions for supply chain management.
Free, Perfect, and Now chronicles Rodin's transformation of Marshall Industries from a successful $500 million business into a Web-enabled $2 billion powerhouse.