Bill Kropp

Bill Kropp is a Technical Support Specialist in the Portland office. He is the gatekeeper for most of Valin’s refinery customers and the refinery portals. He receives quote requests, orders, and open order reports (OOR) through these portals. He also receives emails from Valin refinery account managers requesting additional quotes or information pertaining to existing orders. He must first research each request carefully and then works with the refinery team members to complete quote requests.

Bill performs above and beyond to make sure customers have items they need in an unplanned turnaround or emergency as well as in planned turnarounds. He has been known to drop what he is doing to make shipments happen over the weekend due to line-down emergencies.

Bill works with several refinery portals for large refinery customers. He receives emails from each portal notifying him of requests on behalf of a specific refinery. He must log in to each portal separately to investigate the requests and then follow up accordingly. Requests include Action Request Requisitions, Requests for Quote (RFQ), Purchase Orders, Acknowledgments, customer approval, and converting quotes to orders. Each request is unique and responses with the actions taken must be updated in each portal.

Due to an overwhelming number of price increases, it has been difficult to keep pricing current. Pricing for two of the largest refineries is often unreliable thus, Bill must always confirm pricing which takes a lot of time and attention. He is actively working to slowly increase prices to better Valin’s gross margin as well as working to update the pricing for bin stock items. Bill also supports continued maintenance of our OLA (operational level agreement) in collaboration with the sales management team. This often requires a review of thousands of SKUs and pricing to make sure Valin’s contractual obligations are met and priced accordingly.

Bill is driving new digital initiatives such as the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) program, by running reports to determine the items that are on backorder for specific refinery customers. He is also working to help establish a new VMI system at another major refinery that will be coming online in 2022.

Bill executes his duties all while mentoring and training the next generation of customer service resources to help provide a better customer experience for Valin’s refinery customers. Bill rolls up his sleeves and gets the job done with a good attitude despite the heavy demands of our refining customer base. Bill is highly appreciated by both employees and suppliers and is often the ‘go-to’ in-house resource for customer support.