When an outstanding 85% of car-purchasing decisions in households are influenced by women, the automotive industry has only 16% of women as Senior Executives.

 

Viktorija Nikolovska, was employee number One when Speedmaster expand to the United States. Viktorija said, “When I started at Speedmaster USA over 15 years ago I was the first employee and for a while the first female. Female representation was below industry benchmarks but so much has changed since the early days.”

 Running in parallel with an innovate approach to product development that has been part of the business DNA for the last 40 years. Speedmaster has focussed all initiatives for growth around technology as the enabler for change and progression. After a successful completion of a 3 year, global technology upgrade with their technology partner Oracle. Speedmaster has a cloud based solution at the core of every business processes and this helps the progression of many other strategic objectives like diversity and inclusion targets.

“We are now able to employ a new type of Speedmaster employee which is what we dreamt about. Employees can work from our office, at home, or anywhere around the globe. With this flexibility and system agility we no longer need industry professionals to decipher engine components from the same location all at the same time. We are (Speedmaster) slowly achieving our goals, one team member at a time. It’s really is exciting to see what we have achieved from day one” Tells CEO Jason Kencevski.

Speedmaster now has female leadership in Accounting, Human Resources, Administration, Supply Chain, Warehousing as well as key roles in Customer Service, Sales, Ecommerce, Distribution Centre Operations, IT and Infrastructure. Female representation is now close to 40% and Melissa Parra, who leads HR for Speedmaster explains, “I am very proud of the team we have built and the diversity each and every person brings to the team is extremely valuable and unique.”

 

“With studies showing that inclusive and diverse companies are more likely to cultivate innovative people with the potential of capturing new markets. We knew a sound tech stack was a key foundation” says CMTO Eric Pereira.

 

Following the successful rollout of global technology solution, Speedmaster has an infrastructure solution built for both now and the future and they currently employ more than double the industry standard of females in its workforce. This they say is a contributing factor to helping them achieve a record 14th SEMA Award in 9 years, something never achieved before in a 40+ Billion Dollar Industry.