177 - Michael Baldwin - Regional General Manager - RPM Global

Arete Podcast with Richard Triggs

Michael is the Regional General Manager for Asia, Russia, and Australia for RPMGlobal (aka RPM). RPMGlobal (Runge Pincock Minarco) Holdings Limited operates as a holding company. The company, through its subsidiaries, provides mining software, enterprise mine management, planning, simulation, consulting, and training services. In this episode, Michael discusses his 12-year career path, which included six different jobs, his education, how RPMGlobal grew from a small business to a global corporation, and the changes in RPMGlobal's management that expedited the company's growth. Michael also shared his views on the impact of the pandemic on how the business delivers services and whether or not the change will be permanent. Episode Highlights: Michael was born in Brisbane and grew up there into a coal mining technology family. His parents started a small business that was called Tri-Tronics. The business pioneered a dragline monitoring system that went global. Michael worked for his parents business for 11 years, from 2000-2010. Leica Geosystems acquired his family business in 2003, and then Hexagon acquired Leica Geosystems in 2005. When Michael joined RPMGlobal, it was still a substantially sized business. It was publicly listed in 2008 and had done a number of acquisitions, growing the software side of the business. Still, primarily it was a consulting business and globally had some seriously good engineering solutions. RPMGlobal is a software provider in the mining space, focused on advanced mining. They have a long history of being involved in the industry for over 40 years and currently employing over 400 people. Around 2012, there was a change of management in RPM, which coincided with a change of investor profile, which went from a lot of smaller investors to large institutional investors that brought in the transformation of management. When you've got a very good team underneath you, it's more about validating and setting a good strategy rather than having to get into the day-to-day stuff. RPM have a customer success team working closely with their clients to ensure they are using their software to its best capability. They also have our technical pre-sales teams that will work with people during the engagement, when they're looking at the software and whether it's a good fit for them and the design of the solutions. In 2012 RPM bought around 35 new products to market and invested around $150 million. Sitting in front of people and talking and having interpersonal interaction solves issues quicker than when you're trying to do things via Zoom, Teams or any other virtual mode. Michael Baldwin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-baldwin-6042141/ RPM Global Website: https://www.rpmglobal.com/ Richard Triggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtriggs/ Arete Website: https://www.areteexecutive.com.au/