October 15, 2010
Company Organizational Announcements and 2010 Plans: 1/6/2010
Organizational Announcements & 2010 Plans
2009 was a character-building year for Crown Partners and I believe we are a stronger company because of the challenges presented and overcome. I look forward to 2010 as the year that we capitalize on our strengths and market position to truly move the company forward and up the value chain in the eyes of our clients.
The executive team has spent time over the past couple of months creating the overall business plan for 2010. We will cover the bulk of the plans during the Crown Town Hall Meeting on Friday but I wanted to provide some baseline information for you so we all come to the meeting with the same basic understanding.
The key elements of the 2010 business plan include the following themes:
§ Continue with our 4 practices and drive expansion and further alignment
§ Improve our Sales focus AND drive mid-market account penetration
§ Enhance customer experience and improve our value proposition
§ Focus on improving quality in our products and our customer engagements
Several organizational changes are required to position us to execute on our 2010 business plans. The major changes are outlined below and a new organizational chart is attached. These changes are effective immediately.
Sales
As a company, during 2009 we made significant investments in developing our sales capabilities. For 2010 we are taking it to the next level and Mark Kennedy as the company President will assume overall responsibility for the Company’s revenue generation. This move provides the focus required to ensure we meet our revenue targets for 2010 and beyond.
Guy Sulzberger will assume a full time position of Vice- President, Mid-Market Sales. Due to their ability to grow, these customers have needs that are often more urgent than our traditional Global 2000 targets. These customers are often less able to address their own needs and are under-served by our competition relative to our traditional Global 2000 customers. We owe it to ourselves to serve these customers. Guy’s focus will be on selling our solutions at the intersection of the CMO and CIO. While Guy’s aim won’t be selling technology directly, we expect that technology from all 4 practices will be leveraged as part of these business solutions. This change is a result of the investments we made in the Whale Hunting philosophy. Guy will be working directly with Mark and Tom Searcy (our consultant) to drive whale sized deals.
Kevin Adkisson will continue in his role overseeing all practice and software related sales and account management functions. Kevin will also formally take over full responsibility for the Engagement Managers as an outcome of our investment in this area in 2009.
Practices
Richard assumes overall responsibility for the practices in 2010. The practices encompass our go-to-market strategies and our client delivery teams. This move frees up Mark to focus on revenue generation for the firm, and enables Richard to align go-to-market strategies with business operations.
With Guy’s move into more direct sales, Malcolm Bliss will assume leadership responsibilities for the ECM (previously “platform” or “ECS”) practice and will continue to oversee the ETL practice. As part of this transition, Malcolm will return to his traditional executive-level customer-facing role. Charlie will have lead responsibility for ECM sales. Charlie and Craig will both continue to contribute to ETL sales.
The existing software product manager role will move over to the practices to align our go to market strategies for our software and services offerings. We will differentiate between the Product Manager (who is responsible for the execution of the product direction) and the Product Market Manager (who is responsible for the strategic direction of the product). In some cases these roles will be combined into one person. John Moerer will be aligned with the ETL business as the combined Product Market Manager and Graham Hutchinson will be aligned with the WaM practice as the Product Manager, working with Andy Zupfer as the Product Market Manager. We expect this alignment to drive out more Solutions as combined product and services offerings.
Business Operations
We have created a new group called “Business Operations” which will be led by Lynn Fraas, who was recently promoted to a Partner in the firm. This group will provide operational support to all areas of the business, across all practices and divisions. The project management functions currently in the individual practices and in some cases combined with the Engagement Managers will move under business operations to support our quality initiatives.
Human Capital Management will also report up through the business operations group and will continue to execute on and expand the Crown People for Professionals initiatives introduced in 2009.
Product Engineering
With Malcolm’s assignment to the practices and as a focus on increasing our quality and operational efficiency, Lynn Fraas will assume responsibility for the Product Development and Support teams (with Support reporting up outside of Product Development). We will continue to focus on building great products to execute on our hybrid vision. We will also place a greater emphasis on quality during 2010.
Lynn will take all of these operations under one umbrella to lead Crown in pursuit of Malcolm Baldridge standards for quality, customer satisfaction, and efficiency. Bruce will continue as the Director of Engineering, and the engineering and support teams will now report into Lynn. Lynn will take on Product Development and Support in addition to her Business Operations responsibilities.
Marketing and Alliances
We have added several outside suppliers to the marketing team to continue driving the company branding and lead generation activities. During 2010, we expect to hire several of these roles inside to continue building upon our Marketing success in 2009.
Additionally, the Marketing and Alliances combined Division will be led by Kathryn Kendell where she will also assume responsibility for corporate level alliances in addition to her Marketing responsibilities. Field alliances will be managed in the practices.
Finance and IT
The finance and IT groups will continue to report up through John Schomburg.
We believe this structure will support our 2010 business plan and will discuss the plans in more detail during Friday’s Crown Town Hall starting at noon, EDT.
Individual team meetings will be scheduled during January to make sure all employees understand the company direction and how their group will contribute to executing on the 2010 plan.
Lets make 2010 a record year!
Richard
Somehow I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a person who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four Cs. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it al the way, implicitly and unquestionably.
~ Walt Disney