Management Service

************@*****.*** Kris Knutson Home - 573-***-****

**** *. *********** **.

Columbia, MO 65203

Below you will read brief summaries describing insights of my leadership and vision as an IT leader. This summary and the CV will give you a good idea of my broad knowledge and skill set, along with advanced team building and leadership to fully be engaged and deliver success in all facets of your IT needs.

Infusing new IT Strategic methods to help a struggling business in a turn-around

I started ProEnergy Services in December 2012 in the newly added role of CIO. In May the new CIO position was cut along with 10 to 15% of ProEnergy employees. With an ITSM focused drive, I reorganized the IT staff to focus on IT services delivery, metrics and analytics. A key goal and measure for me was to focus on CRM and ERP systems. I completed a cost benefit analysis and roadmap plan to deliver a fully integrated xRM/CRM delivery across multiple lines of business. It also included roadmaps for vendor and staffing management for the new formed union arm of ProEnergy Services. A “Quick Win” strategy developed. One was to engage 3rd party consultants to help automate time entry in the Manufacturing Shops. Another roadmap was designed for quick delivery of E-Signature integration. Several cost cutting measures were introduced and one lead to a negotiated $500,000 savings with a 5 year Mitel lease.

My forward thinking visions molded IT with the business. This brings a collaborative infusion IT designed to help save cost, reduce inventory or increase profits.

My Insight to Infrastructure Services – A “Pragmatic Vision” with “Just Enough Technology”

With twenty-five plus years of being an IT professional, I have approached technical issues pragmatically to solve business needs while allowing for growth and not over-spend or over-analyze the need. In 1993 I was the 7th employee hired by Carfax founded by Ewin Barnett. (A man with ideas, dreams and a little known company.) In those years I helped lead the growth of a small dial-up organization into what is now a profitable multifaceted global SaaS/Cloud organization.

My mission at Carfax:

Help build the key infrastructure services and teams focused on E-Commerce service delivery to customers 24x7x365.

I have worked and managed all areas of IT. This included leading multiple teams in developing data coding; database and WEB systems design; customer analytics for capacity and trending needs; strategic to operational project management and product collaboration. As Director of Infrastructure Services my team grew to ~50 employees of an international company delivering a product to business partners, dealers and consumers.

The “Pragmatic Vision” and “Just Enough Technology” is demonstrated by the ability to analyze and deliver multiple options for delivered services. That in turn leads to a highly efficient decision process in spending company resources wisely for “Just Enough Technology” preventing overage and under spending of hard dollars or time constrained resources.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kris Knutson

PS. IT and IT leadership is more than a “Job” to me. It is a lifelong passion. As it is difficult to put everything in words, I would like the opportunity to meet and discuss my passion, qualifications and global IT understanding for all aspects of your IT leadership needs. I can be reached at 573-***-****

************@*****.*** Kris Knutson Home - 573-***-****

1001 N. Denninghoff Rd.

Columbia, MO 65203

Executive Summary:

I am an experienced senior level IT Infrastructure visionary and leader with 25+ years in building an IT organization from startup/venture years. I was instrumental in helping build a world class Infrastructure to deliver a SaaS/Cloud solution into the #1 vehicle history provider in the nation. Responsibilities included; ~$20mm in annual expenses and leading 5 teams with a total of ~50 people across 2 data centers, cloud and co-location service management, ~800 servers (virtual and non-virtual) and 1.2 petabytes of information. My experience brings a network of contacts, vendors and relationships that can effectively solve technical hurdles in IT service delivery.

Technology Accomplishments and Strategies:

* Predictive Analytics Instrumental in the strategy and tactics around customer analytics on systems.

* Virtualization Reducing server deployment time and server costs 20 fold.

* ITIL Best Practices Change & release management strategy that supports 5 to 10 daily deployments.

* Tiered Storage Not only building multiple layers of storage but aggressively look at “cloud’ storage.

* Blade Adoption Dropped physical space requirements by 40% while meeting growth needs of 200%.

* Oracle DB Advanced DB strategies in support of a growing 150 billion record data warehouse.

* Agile Built an Agile Methodology infrastructure team ready to assist developers.

* “Hybrid” Cloud Solving the business needs instead of becoming an impediment. Embracing

technology not only in-house but finding technology that can quickly be acquired in

the “cloud” for both long and short term needs.

* “Light bulb” WEB Deploying multiple WEB servers giving many layers of redundancy.

Team and Non-Technology Accomplishments and Strategies:

* Growth Helped grow an unknown company from a few customers, no profits, little data, and

one product to a highly profitable international business with millions of customers.

* Nines of uptime Developed team zeal to never stop making uptime better and achieved 99.95% uptime

with a new goal of 99.99%. Reached 3 consecutive months of 100% uptime while

deploying 10 WEB site changes daily and loading 100 million vehicle records monthly.

* Budgeting Maintained vendor partnership while negotiating 40% to 70% in savings.

* KANBAN Infused this strategy to assist teams in the planning and communications of

projects and daily interrupts from systems, internal employees and external customers.

* Law of Sevens Driving force to deliver focused communications multiple ways and multiple times.

* Service Desk Built an advanced tiered support team across the organization to focus on solving issues.

* Retention Little to no employee turnover with an average tenure of 9 years.

05/2013 - Current Kris Knutson Strategic IT President and Owner/Consultant

Taking my 25+ years of enterprise wide global IT understanding, I am consulting with SMB’s in an effort to give IT awareness to struggling business. Currently; I have assisted in QC and UI work with and advanced CRM implementation, made Social CRM recommendations and roadmap planning to a client. I have also conducted phased approach planning around a SAM audit from Microsoft to a client. I have been engaged in developing an overall strategy for Data Management and Lifecycle Management with a exponentially growing mortgage company. Their IT staff and systems were ill prepared in resources and skill sets to handle the explosive growth their business. Lastly, I am working with a consulting company to develop and market a vCIO/Fractional CIO marketing plan and build a new business arm within the organization.

12/2012 – 05/2013 ProEnergy Services Chief Information Officer

Quickly instituted an ITSM strategic plan and tactical roadmaps for both technology and staff development. Discovered several cost cutting measures including a $500,000 saving in “Telephony” costs over 5 years. I managed 3rd party consultants to deliver on a “Quick Win” strategy around automation of time entry, in the Repair and Manufacturing Shops. The savings is 1 FTE. Helped develop a long term strategic roadmap and plan for delivery around a fully integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM, GP, Point of Sales system and Cloud based Bullhorn. This plan integrated multiple LOB and included more than Customers, it included vendors and staffing resource management.

1993 - 2012 Carfax, Columbia, MO Director Infrastructure Services

* 2011 Added New Role - Facilities Management

* 2007 Added New Role - External Support Desk Tier 1 and Tier 2

* 2004 Added New Role - DBA and Change Management

* 2001 – 2002 Director I.S. Added New Role - Capacity Planning and Internal Infrastructure

* 1997 – 2001 Manager Systems Group Focused on WEB and Systems on growing 24x7x365 E-Commerce

* 1993 – 1997 Lead System Specialist Built a team of 4 to a team of 24 PL/1 developers and systems admin.

1991 – 1993 ABC Labs, Columbia, MO Sr. Systems and Database Analyst

I was hired for senior knowledge in RDB database and DEC Computer Systems. This included project management, systems installation, tuning and development. Other duties included software management of All-in-1 with extensive Powerhouse development, database design/analyst installation, tuning and training, CASE design using DEC-Design. MRP Software lead analyst with purchase recommendations and installation of EMS integrated business systems. I developed training and code customization in DIBOL/COBOL for EMS systems to peers and end users.

1986 – 1991 AIS Inc., Whitefish, MT Director Information Systems

Selected by main venture capitalist Kent Nelson and served on a 5 member board of directors. The selection was for technical insight, honesty, integrity and pragmatic approach. The company was developing a pre-internet recreational database called “The ORG” as a gateway host for American Airlines travel agents. My duties included managing an annual expense of nearly $1,000,000 and active directing of a department of 12 analysts/developers and a contracting team. Served as an active role with the development of DEC computing systems including CMS, MMS,CDD, DTM implementations, RDB Database design, maintenance and tuning. Language development with C, and Fortran, RDB, RMS and system level callouts.

1985 – 1986 University of Montana PT - TA/Math Lab

1985 State of Montana Forestry Intern Micro PC Support

1984 – 1985 University of Montana PT - Lab & Micro Consultant

1983 – 1984 Nation Centers for Career Education, MT PT - Computer Programmer

1982 Rocky Mountain Computers, NM Salesperson Apple Computers

Prior to 1982 Knutson Family Farm, Bloomfield, NM Ran a fishing worm business

Education and Personal information:

I graduated Bachelor of Science, University of Montana 1986 Computer Science curriculum. In addition to Computer Science degree, I have 50 credit hours in Business Administration with focus in Finance.

Vision and Goal:

Infuse IT in the business as part of the business and its profits, with “Just Enough Technology”. This IT leadership understands the business needs and maximizes technical advancement without overspending vital company resources while keeping an eye on risks and rewards.

Recent Accomplishments

Hybrid and Cloud Adoption

I lead the development and implemented a strategic plan to consolidate three data centers into two. This was based on a prior strategic “gross revenue levels” conversation with our CTO on when to execute this plan. This involved vendor research, vendor relationship management, vendor negotiations, best practices, and cost analysis between “In-house/build”, “Co-location”, “Cloud” and “Managed Services”.

Department Re-organization

Based on Hybrid and Cloud adoption, I lead the reorganization of geographically separated infrastructure teams into consolidated functionally focused teams, reducing a five year staff growth projection by 40%. The reorganization involved planning and collaboration with our CTO, CIO and a peer to develop areas of excellence within our Infrastructure Departments. This resulted in a promotion of a direct report becoming a Director of Infrastructure Engineering.

5 year Corporate Service Desk Plan

In 2012, I developed a strategic plan to expand the role of our External Service Desk team. This design was to fill the role of a “Corporate Wide” service desk supporting all levels of service desk needs both external and internal. This required a new “Director” position reporting to a COO within the organization. The plan included grooming another of my direct reports to help define this role and work toward a promotion. Service desk thoughts were basic and silo driven without any understanding of service desk measures, metrics and ITIL best practices.

DEVOPS and Infrastructure Service Delivery Management

I worked toward maturing infrastructure teams to understand and engage with “Agile” development teams. Namely, this was to focus teams in the development of processes and procedures around rapid production deployments, while maintaining near 100% uptime. This process was arduous. Development naturally wanted to “Toss the Pig over the Wall” and Infrastructure teams usually don’t accept changes quickly.

Continuous Improvements and Advancement to support 7x24x365 with 99.99% uptime

I embrace continuous improvement of measures/metrics to look at wrong directional trending, which could cause outages or rollback of changes. This involved proactive analytics and a vision to keep in focus what it is to be a “Utility”.

Facilities Management

I was given the duties of directing the facilities management team for both the Data Center and a nearly 35,000 square foot building on 10 acres. This was based on my working knowledge of our facilities and data center operations.

Proud and Personal Notes

In 2011 Carfax was selected as #1 out of nearly 80 “Best Places to work in Columbia”, by the magazine “Columbia Insider”. I am positively mentioned by an employee I hired 12 years prior. It made me feel I was doing the right things.

During my tenure at Carfax, my wife and I put on a fall hayride for the Carfax employees that worked for me and their families. We did this for 13 years and we enjoyed watching the families and children grow as each season passed.

Contact this candidate