We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarona Samaroo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sarona, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

I think all leaders who want their companies to rise above their procrastination and competition and exceed the edges of their greatest capabilities should strive to develop their people, processes and technology to always be different from the industry standard because that difference is what will make you and your company an outstanding success story.

I challenge our industry standards by constantly assessing how to build capacity with our people, how to achieve optimum efficiency in our end-to-end processes with our automation and technology and how to create opportunities in new markets where very few or none have gone before.

Sarona, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Sarona Samaroo is a 33 year-old Executive at the Ramps Logistics Group of Companies and she is the current Vice President of El Dorado Offshore (EDO) in Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname. She has a demonstrated history of working in the public and private sectors. Sarona has 10 years of practical and technical experience managing recruitment and personnel logistics for offshore projects in the Energy sector in the Caribbean. She oversees El Dorado Offshore (EDO) in Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname. Her experience in the Energy Sector has developed her as leader in project management, general operations management, business development, human capital development, offshore recruitment and local content and community development. Her professional experience in both the private and governmental sectors has equipped her with the all-around experience she needed to become the expert she is and break barriers with industry standards.

As a member of the Ramps Logistics Group of Companies, EDO is ideally positioned to develop globally in the same way as its parent company, Ramps Logistics Ltd. For over 30 years, Ramps Logistics Ltd. has been the leading provider of freight forwarding and supply chain management services, supplying transportation and logistics solutions with tailored technology and solutions to support the way clients want to do business, wherever they are on the globe.

El Dorado Offshore (EDO) is the leading technology company and supplier of offshore manpower, recruitment and personnel logistics services in Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname through the execution and maintenance of high standards of quality, industry-changing technology and operational excellence to all our clients and employees. Our policies are aligned with a comprehensive Integrated Management System to demonstrate our commitment to Quality, Health, Safety and Environmental protection which adds value to our employees, associates, customers and the community.

Sarona is most proud of how the EDO brand has transformed the lives and developed the talent of our employees through employment opportunities with us, community development and local content development in each entity that we operate in. One of her greatest milestones is how she has led EDO to become the #1 and preferred Recruitment and Manpower Supply Company in the Energy Sector in Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname. She is also quite pleased with how EDO has transformed industry standards from switching from the utilization of manual processes to automation through technology-driven initiatives for our end-to-end processes in Recruitment, Training Management, HSSEQ, Payroll and Finance Operations to achieve optimum efficiency and operational excellence for our employees and clients in the Energy sector.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The COVID-19 pandemic brought us uncertainty and misfortune but I believe it also brought the future to our doorsteps. We are now able to effectively work remotely from anywhere in the world, create new streams of revenue with innovate business ideas that align with new trends in the post-pandemic and transform our people and processes with virtual training and technology.

When the effects of the pandemic struck the Caribbean, EDO was forced to pivot into new ventures to ensure our business was not affected by the uncertainty brought on by COVID-19 restrictions. Instead of sitting and waiting for restrictions to be lifted, we assessed how we can diversify our services to clients to secure new business and offer new services based on the needs of personnel in the Energy sector as it related to personnel logistics and quarantine to and from offshore platforms due to the COVID-19 restrictions. In 2020, for almost one year during the pandemic, we were the only manpower and logistics company in the Caribbean offering repatriation and quarantine services to clients in the Energy sector. Our innovation and grit for that year enabled us to have one of our most successful years in business as we were able to effectively pivot and create new streams of revenue during a pandemic year and that has since charted our success story as the leading manpower and personnel logistics company in the Caribbean.

Additionally, when EDO was just starting out and the team was focused on building the business, the team’s success rate in winning bids was low. Sarona opted to exploit its quiet phase after the first ten losses to shift gears and focus more on strengthening its people, processes, and technology. She states, “It took us close to two years, but those two years of looking within and mentoring and training our people, defining end-to-end processes and building out our technological capabilities, is what set the foundation for us to now have one of the most consistent winning streaks with bids for projects in the energy sector in the Caribbean during the years of a pandemic.”

According to Sarona, the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic taught her and the team about leaning into agility and ambiguity and not being afraid to pivot, shoot, miss, and do it over and over again until they got it right. So much of what the company has accomplished in the last year was because the team was forced to change course and take risks. And because the company was moving so quickly amidst an incredible amount of uncertainty, the team needed to practice being nimble, so that when those opportunities came along, they were ready to take the shot and win new business contracts.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I think when you are growing and rapidly expanding a business, there is always a high level of risk involved because sometimes your expansion can outweigh or outgrow the structures you have in place. As EDO rapidly grew from a company of 5 employees to 500 employees regionally, it became critical for us to re-assess the needs of our organization and re-tool the skills of our people, break down processes that no longer worked or aligned with our speed of growth and re-define and re-create new end-to-end processes through the use of automation and technology.

As a business grows and evolves, change is always hard at the beginning, messy in the middle but always beautiful in the end when you are quick to align the speed of your organization’s growth with operational structure and stability.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eldoradooffshore.com/
• Instagram: El Dorado Offshore
• Facebook: El Dorado Offshore
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/el-dorado-offshore/mycompany/
• Twitter: El Dorado Offshore