Company Experience

Ken was contacted by the divestiture team lead at Emerson Electric to help the overloaded staff during the $1.4B divestiture of one of their divisions.

Ken was retained as an executive consultant by the CIO at Werner Ladder to provide oversight and guidance on multiple projects. Werner was in the process of multiple international acquisitions on their way to becoming the largest ladder manufacture in the world.  Among the projects that Ken was responsible or integral were:

• Design of a follow-the-sun with skill/language based call centers in the US, Philippines & United Kingdom.
• Developing a global call center architecture and identifying, qualifying and recommending cloud-based uCaaS providers (Unified Communications as a Service)
• Integration of new acquisitions into their ERP system
• Integration of Werner’s engineering systems across multiple continents and time-zones
• Establishing multiple geo-sensitive websites to assure performance in Asia Pacific, EMEA and North American locations utilizing AWS services
• Providing technology guidance and oversight on the build of a new manufacturing plant in Vietnam
• Renegotiation international services contracts for telecom and software services

Ken was recruited to American Utility Management (AUM) to help stabilize their infrastructure as well as help change the image of the company from a commodity processor of utility bills to a trusted advisor and consultant to the Billion $ multifamily residential industry.   AUM, as a Software as a Service provider, had grown so fast, their infrastructure could not scale to meet demand.    Some of the initiatives Ken was responsible for were:

• Design, acquisition and implementation of a hybrid dedicated and cloud-based delivery platform
• Upgrade of a custom Oracle database platform containing over 1 Billion records of customer utility information
• Evaluation, design and implementation of an award-winning industry-first customer facing analytics engine
• Design and implementation of SCORE (Statistical Comparison of Relative Efficiency).  SCORE, a complex statistical evaluation platform, compared hundreds of multi-family residential communities to each other and scored their efficiency.   Using this information, AUM and their customers, were able to partner on ways to improve efficiency and lower utility costs.

As the Chief Technology Office for Rand McNally for over 10 years, I gained experience running software development, supply chain, distribution and back office operations.  In this role, I created and executed strategic plans and successfully managed teams of over 100 associates.   Initiatives included, the following highlights.  In over 10 years, there are too many to list.

• Developed relationships and negotiated multiple international (on-shore, near-shore, and off-shore) development and supplier contracts for both software and physical goods
• Developed and maintained successful partnerships that resulted in profitable, award-winning software for mobile devices
• Worked with the largest companies (Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Google) to develop business relationships, sell products as well as install and operate their systems
• Worked with sister companies to consolidate purchasing power for telecom, computing resources and other shared resources.

Ken was recruited from Taco Bell, in California, to Arby’s inc, located in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.  Ken worked with a world-class team to implement all new restaurant and back office technologies which included $17 million in new point-of-sale equipment and back-of-restaurant systems as well as a new back office system for the corporate offices.  Some of these projects included:

• Working closely with IBM and back-office software vendors and systems
• Acquisition/installation of new central computing system as ERP software
• Design and installation of industry-leading business intelligence software.
• Design of the first exception management reporting systems in the industry.

At Taco Bell, Ken was involved with many industry firsts which included:

• Design and installation of some of the very first decision support systems
• Design, acquisition and implementation of industry-leading planning and logistics software
• Acquisition and implementation of CRM and relationship-tracking systems
• Design and build-out of a brand new central accounting center for Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC in Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Brokering Internal development and strategies for the Operations, Finance and Marketing Divisions