Tzipi Ozer-Armon

Tzipi Ozer-Armon’s career has been wonderfully varied. She’s worked in consumer electronics with SanDisk, and healthcare with Teva Pharmaceutical. Today she sits at the helm of clinical solutions business Lumenis which acts as a nice junction, providing an opportunity to combine her knowledge of the technology sector with her experience in life sciences.

"When I came on board I found a really great company in terms of the technology and the people," Tzipi recalls. "But it was a company that was stagnated in terms of sales and not as profitable as it could be. In the last three-to-four years we have managed to bring the right people on board to change this. I am a great believer in people; I think people make all the difference. This is not only in terms of the individual, but also the collective. I believe that teamwork, a non-political organisation, a good atmosphere and a place where it’s fun to work is what makes us different from some of the other organisations out there. That was the first thing to change in the company and it certainly was a great turning point."

Lumenis is now at what Tzipi calls the ‘magic point’, where strategy meets execution, and there is a solid foundation in place for growth.

Tzipi explains that the company needs to scale up in order to be competitive, and to do that it must leverage the organic growth that it has achieved thanks to its ground-breaking innovations, and also look to merger and acquisition activities. "Both of these factors will facilitate a more accelerated growth trajectory for the company," she notes.

However, integrating with other companies doesn’t come without its challenges, as Tzipi explains. "First of all, the challenge is to be able to successfully make the move based on the interaction between the buyer and seller. You have to be very focused in terms of what you want to acquire and what’s your best fit. That’s what Lumenis has been doing. So the economical consideration is one thing, and the other is the non-economical consideration, and that sometimes makes it more difficult. So I think the first challenge relates to the transaction itself, and the second challenge is regarding the integration process. In the past, Lumenis was a combination of several companies that came together and merged successfully. Now, in our current form, we are starting yet another journey in terms of building our knowledge base and post-merger integration capabilities."