Navigating strategic change

Dorothy Rice, CMA, FCMA, demonstrates the value of strategic management techniques. She does so by championing them, from conception through to delivery. Her dedication has changed the way Ultra Electronics Maritime Systems does business

By Robert Colman

A number of strategic management concepts have gained a foothold in business over the last 20 years but it’s rare that you find a company implementing them across an organization in an effective, strategically-minded manner. The challenges are many and varied — buy-in from senior management, implementation by managers and staff, maintaining the energy to see the concept properly integrated into the business.

Dorothy Rice, CMA, FCMA, is one of a rare breed of strategic leaders who are able to make change happen and demonstrate its value across an organization. As vice-president of finance and administration at Ultra Electronics Maritime Systems (UEMS), she has championed a number of initiatives that have created new efficiencies and value for her organization. 

Made in Nova Scotia

UEMS, located in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is an international leader in the design, development and production of advanced electronic, electro-mechanical, and hydro-acoustic sensor systems for military applications. The company was established in the late 1940s and was originally known as Hermes Electronics. In 1995, it was bought by Ultra Electronics Holdings plc, from the U.K. — a company that specializes in aerospace and defence electronic niche markets worldwide.

“We came to the attention of Ultra when we expanded internationally,” says Rice. “For many years, we dealt primarily in the Canadian and U.S. markets, but in the 1980s began selling overseas in France, the U.K., Japan and a variety of other countries. We were originally a supplier to Ultra.”

Importantly, UEMS has remained largely autonomous from its parent organization in the past 10 years. “We do most things as if we were a stand-alone business,” explains Rice. “All of our products are developed and produced in Nova Scotia, from the idea to shipping and billing.” Currently the company employs about 180 people, including 20 managers.

National support

Rice’s own history with UEMS began in 1982, when she joined Hermes as a cost accountant. “I’m surprised when I think how long I’ve been here but there have always been lots of opportunities for professional growth, and management has been very supportive of my ideas,” she notes.

At the time that Hermes was sold to Ultra, Rice was director of finance and administration. Together with the president of UEMS, she led the process that culminated in the sale of Hermes to Ultra.

“I created a prospectus and had it presented through (former parent company) Devtek to Ultra,” she explains. “I also created the initial balance sheet for the new company. It was Ultra’s first North American acquisition, so it was a learning experience for us all.” Due to her involvement in this initiative, Rice was also called upon to be part of the evaluation and subsequent acquisition of a U.S. company in 1998 and a Montreal-based company in 2002.

Ultra was first floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1996. All of the Canadian requirements for this — legal and financial — were managed by Rice. She is a member of the Board for Ultra Electronics Canada Defense Inc., and as the corporate secretary is responsible for ensuring Canadian tax and corporate legal requirements are met.

Team building

The support of senior management has allowed Rice to introduce a number of innovative programs at UEMS. For instance, she led the development, introduction and implementation of the first formalized IT strategy for the Canadian arm of Ultra. This included an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system encompassing operations, materials and finance.

She was also responsible for leading management through a cost structure review, which brought gains in overall market share worldwide.

More recently, she introduced a new “lean office” initiative.

“We had introduced lean processes in our manufacturing operations, and we could see that we’d gained a lot of benefit in adopting a team approach to building products,” she explains. “From that experience we opted to roll it out among our office staff, looking at material handling and lean procurement. We introduced bar code scanning, smarter and faster ordering, and we’ve improved adherence to shipping deadlines. In our program management and design work, we also created a lot of standardized processes to simplify operations, and created new bid procedures for projects.”

The company has realized savings from these initiatives over the past year or more. “I find you can apply many management theories in most environments,” comments Rice. “They all create better team building opportunities, and create opportunities for savings at the same time.”

Scorecard roll-out

Another wide-reaching change Rice made five years ago was introducing the Balanced Scorecard and cascading it throughout the organization.

“I became a moderator in CMA Canada’s Strategic Leadership Program (SLP) in 2001, and I saw through the reading I did for that work that the Balanced Scorecard was what we needed for our organization,” she remembers. Shortly thereafter, the managers on her staff were given training, and it was rolled into the different areas of the organization quickly.

“We’ve all been very enthusiastic about the Balanced Scorecard,” says Rice. “We’ve rolled it down so that the objectives for office employees are tied to the scorecard’s strategic initiatives, so it’s a really actively used management tool. We create action items around the scorecard, and it becomes the agenda around our monthly management meetings.”

Rice has seen the Balanced Scorecard create alignment and openness in the organization’s communications strategy.

“I hold an all-hands meeting monthly to present the results of the Balanced Scorecard to our whole staff,” she notes. “At first, we only met quarterly but I wanted to increase the profile of the initiative. Before we had this forum, we would simply say at year-end ‘we made money’ or ‘we didn’t make money.’ The Balanced Scorecard has given everyone a closer connection to our results and to business process in general.”

UEMS has undertaken a number of improvement initiatives, including total quality management (TQM) and ISO 9001. Rice has been a lead presence in these efforts, and has seen results in terms of profitability and performance.

Among Ultra’s 18 sister companies, Rice has been a mentor, particularly through her knowledge of standard cost systems. She assisted in the introduction of standard cost systems in other Ultra companies.

New avenues

The opportunities for UEMS and Rice to grow cease to abate, even today. Right now, the company is introducing a new line of products related to homeland security — integrated emergency management, maritime domain awareness, and port/border/infrastructure security systems and service.

“This is a more service-related business,” explains Rice. “It will bring change in the way we relate to our customers, and it will also introduce new customers. We recently went through a 360 degree feedback process to understand how we have to change to deal with this new business.”

The new suite of services is being rolled out over the next five years or so. Because of the nature of the business, the company will no longer use a standard cost system.

In addition to these changes, Rice has become more intimately involved in HR initiatives. Although she has been involved in union negotiations before, the change adds to her role in that arena.

Despite all of this, Rice still finds time to help out on a parent activities council, remain active as a member of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and moderates for the SLP. Rice is married with one daughter and lives outside Dartmouth in a home overlooking the ocean. She has also mentored young CMA candidates and was made a Fellow of the Society (FCMA) in 2005.

Robert Colman is editor-in-chief of CMA Management.

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