Customer Service Sales

PAUL THORNTON

Email: abns0a@r.postjobfree.com

Mobile: +1-612-***-****

http://www.businessleaderforhire.com/

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE

Dual citizen: United States & United Kingdom – willing to relocate anywhere in the US or EMEA

Executive Summary

Paul is a problem-solver and team-builder with a background in Infrastructure, Operations, Datacenters and

Workflows. He is a dedicated and self-motivated Information Technology Senior Executive with more than 20 years

experience in leading and driving both strategic and tactical implementations. Paul has extensive experience in

gathering, analyzing and interpreting technical and operational requirements to support Enterprise-wide strategic

board level decision-making. He is an innovative leader with a track record of assessing and capitalizing on

opportunities to improve efficiency, productivity, and profitability in a variety of operational business roles. His

diverse background in deadline-driven, high-availability Tier-3 datacenter environments -- both domestic and

international arenas -- enables Paul to manage teams directly whilst working across cultures to motivate others to

achieve common goals. Envision the future, then make it happen

• • •

Strategic Analysis & Planning Senior Management Datacenter Operations

• • •

Marketing & Business Development Project Management Tactical Implementation

• • •

Budgeting & Cost Control Intermediate Spanish Basic French / Portuguese

• • •

Personnel Development Vendor Negotiations International Business

Professional Experience and Selected Accomplishments

President/Co-Owner

Carts and Grills Inc., Greer, SC 2007 to 2009

Manufacturer and supplier of ice cream carts, barbeque grills and portable sinks for the mobile catering industry.

Design and develop innovative product line for startup company, including creation of the manufacturing

process, implementation of a marketing strategy, initiate sales channels and define logistics. Set up Company

server with custom (Access) database for direct marketing and tracking sales leads, as well as Company

accounting system (Quickbooks). Designed a completely unique battery-powered system – first-to-market in the

industry –, which is currently under consideration for a patent application. Set up all Search Engine Optimization

(SEO) for Company website to ensure search placement on the first page of results on all major engines.

Fulfilled initial agreement by creating the startup then exiting and turning over the Company to a silent partner.

I.T. Systems Support Manager

Jostens Inc., Burnsville, MN 2003 to 2006

An $850M provider of products, programs and services that help people celebrate important moments, recognize achievements

and build affiliations. The Yearbook Printing Division produces over 3 million pages per year on both offset and digital presses.

Reporting to the Director of R&D, a dual-role position that provided leadership and managed the Graphics Systems

Support Group (six direct reports) for projects transitioning from an R&D environment to a production environment,

as well as team-member researching new products for release and implementation. The GSS group were the

SMEs for the entire Printing Plant, covering all datacenter networking, storage, server administration and

production application support across 5 Plants nationwide, and one in Canada. Responsible to the VP Printing for

the business direction of all five of the Plant Managers from a tactical and strategic perspective - covering organic

growth, capacity planning, business continuity and maintenance/service contract requirements. Managed an annual

combined budget of $4.6M.

• Requested to participate in the Operations Strategic Planning session (6 member team) creating a $60M+, 5-

year business growth and implementation plan for the Company.

Received the Legend Award in May 2006 (the Company's highest honor) for my contributions on this team.

• Assessed all new infrastructure equipment needs, obtained capital and purchased equipment (servers,

desktops, digital presses and network gear) for relocating a printing business. Managed and coached staff

during installation of the Plant's new production datacenter (empty-room build-out) and achieved the

goal of full production within 6 weeks.

• Tasked with reducing cost of the IT service contracts by $200K. Secured a new contract with an equal level of

coverage without adding to the business risk. Realized a savings of $259k over the life of the new contract.

• Challenged with creating a disaster recovery plan for all five Plant datacenters around the country since an

effective one wasn’t in existence. Developed and implemented division-wide disaster preparedness plan using

cutting-edge replication, backup & restore technology on both disk and tape. Implemented standard

workflows to allow the Company to balance Plant workloads across the country at peak production by

transferring work (data) over the WAN (OC-3) - improving Business Continuity & recovery options.

• Worked directly with an on-staff color scientist to develop and implement standard color management and

ink weights for all ICC-compliant devices (IGen, Indigo, Xerox proofers, Komori presses and Prinergy workflow)

in all five of the Printing Plants. This ensured pages printed in California would match pages printed in

Pennsylvania – and allowed for workload balancing in peak periods by FTP'ing pages to alternate sites. Remote

proofing was used by Customer Service Representatives to ensure correctness of transferred pages.

• Created an intranet site where all critical documentation (technical policies/procedures, workflow standards

etc.) could be accessed by stakeholders from anywhere in the company.

• Inherited a dysfunctional team that had major communication problems. Utilizing a personality assessment tool,

assessed individual and team issues, then implemented a series of group team-building sessions. Through

coaching and team building created a department delivering superior performance by improving their

communication skills.

• In anticipation of new market penetration, collaborated with Marketing and Operations to research,

recommend and purchase Digital Presses. Created a structured implementation plan for a 2-year period

including adding new print workflows and additional presses based analysis and projections to support business

growth.

• Due to changing business needs, researched and recommended new proofing devices used as part of the core

production workflow. Negotiated pricing ($420k) and implementation schedule to fit business requirements.

Improved efficiencies by 20% and realized savings of $500K within 2 years.

• As a member of the R&D team, conceptualized and developed an entirely new manufacturing/production

workflow in the Printing Plants using both LEAN and six-sigma principles resulting from several strategic

planning sessions. Work had begun on this multi-year, multi-million dollar project before my departure.

• Led a team on implementation and migration strategy for the Prinergy workflow system, storage system

(over 210Tb on FC and SATA disk) and core server strategy (SGI) as part of a major $5M upgrade to the

Company's infrastructure. Realized increased efficiencies by 15% and cost savings of $180K.

Technical Operations Manager

Sun Sentinel Newspaper, Deerfield Beach, Fl 1997 to 2003

A newspaper owned by Tribune Publishing with a daily circulation of approximately 260,000 serving the South

Florida Tri-County area of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

Reporting directly to the VPIS/CTO, provided leadership to Technical Operations Department – including the Tier-3

DataCenter (over 220 servers on EMC SAN, Sun, Cisco, IBM, Wintel and Avaya) and support staff of 14 direct

reports and 5 indirect. Responsible for the daily Datacenter operations, depot-level repair of monitors, PC's/laptops

and printers as well as system administration of both the output management (core workflow for all film and

proofing) and human resources (personnel records and resume tracking) systems. Managed annual budget of $2M

• Created a Clarify-based Help Desk by re-training 14 Computer Operators from the Datacenter. Re-wrote

job descriptions, constructed cross- training plan with metrics to determine progress. Successfully launched

within three months with only two personnel replacements required to build an effective team. Worked with

Telecom administrators to set up ACD's, Hunt Groups etc.

• Team-member selected to analyze future business needs and determine best PBX solution to replace the

Siemens currently in use. Planned datacenter implementation for migration to new switch (Avaya Eclips)

combined with transitions from 66-block to 110-block. Assisted in implementation plan for remote shelves in 12

Distribution Centers.

• Responsible for the system administrators tasked with supporting the entire print production output

workflow (Autologic's OMan), including proofing and imagesetters. This included technicians supporting

imagesetter calibration and consistency to allow page registration and color accuracy across any of the five (Aii

3850) devices in use for the core newspaper and two devices (Dolev) for the New York Times production.

• Tasked with upgrading the voice and data cabling systems in two locations with zero downtime. Led the

implementation team of 36 people to deliver to deadline and under budget an entirely new cabling

infrastructure in collaboration with a network hardware (infrastructure) upgrade over 2 year period.

• Evaluated and selected a potential successor from a pool of staff who had been under-recognized. Coached

and mentored an individual to be ready for promotion upon leaving company. Time frame by coincidence

was 6 months; this individual exceeded expectations and one year later was ready for even more responsibility.

• Created a structured documentation and change management program to improve communication, document

changes to systems and reduce downtime due to human error by 25%. Customer satisfaction grew because

users (stakeholders) became involved in the change management process and understood what changes

were being made on Datacenter systems and servers that could impact their business.

• Negotiated free Windows training classes for an entire department from the local Community College, saving

the company over $70k.

President/CEO

Color Technology, Inc., Miramar, Fl 1994 to 1997

Provided consulting services by way of business/workflow analysis and recommendations to customers in Latin

America. Import and Export (primarily from Europe to Latin America) electronic Pre-Press Equipment; including

provision of parts in a rapid-response environment to minimize downtime.

• Analyzed client's core business production workflows for efficiency, productivity and cost-savings.

Within a week's timeframe, made recommendations regarding new workflows and/or software/hardware to fit

both their business and budgetary needs. Combining consulting services with equipment sales and support

realized new revenue streams for the business.

• Formed international partnerships with independent Pre-Press service engineers and partnered with local

service providers. Provided on-site training on Pre-Press equipment in Latin America and acted as

technical and business consultant. Brazilian sales grew over $150k within 6 months.

• Developed a targeted, culturally specific international marketing plan that resulted in over 400 responses and a

20% revenue increase.

• Grew the business in a remote country with major political strife by developing relationships through a local

trade show. Partnered with local service engineers to ensure ongoing effective delivery of parts and service

under adverse conditions.

• Created supply chain of trusted vendors (both domestic and international) who could be relied upon to deliver

goods under favorably negotiated terms in a "just-in-time" environment.

• Created and built a Company website in 3 languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese); performed all

maintenance and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to ensure placement in the top 20 results on all major

engines.

EDUCATION & LANGUAGES

• MBA Technology Management, University of Phoenix

BSc Business Management, University of Phoenix.

•

• Intermediate Spanish; basic Portuguese and French.

TECHNICAL

Network analysis & design (Cisco), Server hardware (Sun, SGI, Dell, HP), Atex, EMC/Dell Storage Area Networks

(SAN), tape backup systems (Storagetek), Creo Prinergy workflows, Autologic OMan workflows, CCI (page and

advertising creation), color & font management, various imagesetters/CTP, scanners and an understanding of

telecom/PBX's (Avaya). Software includes Veritas, Tivoli, Openview, OpenManage, Clarify, Magic, Sun/Solaris,

SGI/Irix, Windows(2k), Macintosh, Creative Suite, MS Project.

Paul Thornton Page 3

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