Christopher A. Ratliff

Christopher A. Ratliff Email and Phone Number

Technology Executive | Leader | Strategic Thinker | Advisor | Mentor | Fitness Enthusiast @ AHEAD
Christopher A. Ratliff's Location
Greater Chicago Area, United States, United States
Christopher A. Ratliff's Contact Details

Christopher A. Ratliff work email

Christopher A. Ratliff personal email

n/a
About Christopher A. Ratliff

Dynamic technology leader with extensive expertise in the areas of digital strategy, public cloud architectures, agile application development, ERP/back-office systems, M&A, and cyber/risk management. Passion to transform, motivate, and partner with diverse, cross-functional business teams to successfully 'break free' and deliver best in class digital solutions!Career Highlights• 10+ years of building IT Strategic Plans/Roadmaps from the ground up to facilitate significant organizational growth in manufacturing, government, and hospitality industries.• 20+ years of leading enterprise software development teams including 5+ years of leveraging AWS/Azure cloud technologies to build cloud native, elastic B2B/B2C applications capable of supporting millions of monthly transactions.• 20+ years of architecting and deploying enterprise-wide technical infrastructures including 5+ years of AWS/Azure public cloud services with a focus on increased availability, flexibility, scalability, and security. • 20+ years leading Information Security teams focused on developing policies, IR plans, and security roadmaps for government regulated, non-profit, and public organizations.• 20+ years of oversight of key IT process controls including Change Management, Source Code Management, PII, PCI, NIST, CCPA, GDPR, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.• Delivered 10+ on-time, on-budget ERP and EPM implementations focused on process reengineering, revenue growth, and G&A reductions of up to $2 million per year.• Coordinated the successful diligence review and technical integration of 10+ M&A transactions.• Mentor of successful leaders who now guide their current organizations as CIO’s, CISO’s, and Directors.

Christopher A. Ratliff's Current Company Details
AHEAD

Ahead

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Technology Executive | Leader | Strategic Thinker | Advisor | Mentor | Fitness Enthusiast
Christopher A. Ratliff Work Experience Details
  • Ahead
    Principal Consultant
    Ahead Aug 2024 - Present
    Chicago, Illinois, Us
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  • Strategic It Consulting
    Information Technology Consultant/Advisor
    Strategic It Consulting Jan 2023 - Present
    A balanced blend of strategic executive leadership, dynamic technical skills, and extensive business knowledge focused on helping organizations integrate their technology needs with strategic business goals.• Enabled client to complete their M&A due diligence on time by delivering a detailed IT Executive Summary to meet their tight timeline requirements.• Strategic advisor for a startup software client eager to construct a business plan, technical roadmap, digital architecture, and budget/investor goals for the successful launch of their digital product over an aggressive 6-month timeline.
  • Korn Ferry
    Interim Executive/Cio
    Korn Ferry Jun 2023 - May 2024
    Los Angeles, Ca, Us
    Lifespace Communities, Interim CIO, Dallas, TXTasked as interim leader to quickly step in and address both short-term needs as well as the development of a long-term digital strategy for a growing senior living organization.• Propelled multiple stalled strategic IT projects to deliver best-in-class results in sales, occupancy, and Net Promotor Scores (NPS) for all Lifespace communities.• Completed IT strategic plan in alignment with leadership plans and strategic pillars. • Collaborated with stakeholders to support growth strategies, understand leadership plans, assess gaps, and quickly reorganize the technology function.• Provided day-to-day leadership for planning, implementing, and managing all technology-related activities resulting in double digit team sentiment improvements.• Provided executive leadership and project rationalization for all in-flight IT projects including new SaaS applications, artificial intelligence (AI), software development, information security, and infrastructure enhancement projects throughout the interim assignment.• Quickly completed an application rationalization review to eliminate redundancy resulting in savings of over $100K/year.• Identified and delivered multiple technology OKR’s over multiple, three-month cycles to align IT workloads and resources in support of aggressive growth initiatives.• Delivered seamless transitional support to the new permanent CTO.
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  • Sp+ (Sp Plus)
    Svp, Digital Information & Technology/Cio
    Sp+ (Sp Plus) 2020 - 2023
    Chicago, Il, Us
    Responsible for the digital strategy and execution of new product development, back-office systems, enterprise IT infrastructure, InfoSec, dev-ops, database administration, and service delivery management.• Redesigned SP+’s application development and deployment strategy to leverage automated CI/CD pipelines to deploy secure, repeatable systems which reduced application build times from weeks to less than one hour.• Headed the design and on-shore/off-shore engineering activities of new ‘subscription’ functionality of the company’s core digital parking platform by migrating to AWS serverless solutions. • Quickly architected and deployed Okta’s Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) and Workforce platforms to provide both PII protection as well as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) capability for all internal/back-office business applications. • Designed and delivered a standard automated application to eliminate thousands of manual data entry transactions used to report parking facility revenue by leveraging SP+’s new public cloud infrastructure resulting in an estimated annual savings of over $1 million.• Executive leader of the Cyber Risk Register and Incident Response (IR) plans which enabled the organization to build process and readiness for cyber incidents and significantly reduce cyber insurance costs by $1 million.• Delivered a 24x7, L1/L2 Network Operations Center (NOC) for SP+’s ‘eyes on glass’ technical support of public facing B2B and B2C transactional parking products while ensuring a system uptime of over 99.9%.• Refactored or eliminated legacy business systems to leverage AWS cloud services and significantly reduce costs while improving uptime and performance.• Architected and deployed a Data Lake leveraging AWS and Snowflake technologies to address SP+’s overwhelming need for secure, reliable, real-time, access to information to support the organizations need to grow organically by 10%.
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  • Sp+ (Sp Plus)
    Vp, It Development & Strategy
    Sp+ (Sp Plus) 2018 - 2020
    Chicago, Il, Us
    Responsible for the strategy and support for new product application development, enterprise IT infrastructure, and back-office systems.• Responsible for the digital transformation strategy focused on migrating to an AWS public cloud infrastructure with an emphasis on eliminating multiple legacy data centers, continuous release management improvements, elastic workloads, and system uptimes greater than 99.9%.• Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/industries/parking-in-the-cloud-sp-migrates-legacy-systems-to-aws/• Designed and guided the agile on-shore/off-shore API engineering of SP+’s AWS public cloud environment for the launch of a new B2C digital parking platform, which has sustained monthly double-digit transactional growth since its inception in 2019.• Coordinated technical infrastructure and database overhaul of legacy monthly parking platform responsible for billing and management of over 600,000 individual parkers.• Transformed the PMO organization from Waterfall to Agile project methodologies to reduce errors and accelerate new feature deployments into short duration sprints.• Oversaw complete replacement of enterprise network to align with the businesses growing service, performance, dependability needs.• Managed the sudden transition to a hybrid workforce model which included remote technology, security improvements, and workforce training.
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  • Sparton Corporation
    Vice President, Digital Information & Technology
    Sparton Corporation 2014 - 2018
    De Leon Springs, Florida, Us
    Top technologist brought on to rebuild the Information Technology team from the ground up to align with the aggressive growing business needs of doubling revenue from $500 million to $1 billion over a three-year period.• Established Sparton Corporation’s inaugural Information Technology Strategic Plan.• Ran IT like a business by instituting a centralized budget and simplifying the financial allocation process.• Designed and implemented SAP’s Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) tool for consolidation of decentralized ERP platforms to report financial information quickly and accurately from both legacy and seven newly acquired organizations.• Executive Chair of Cyber Security initiatives, Business Risk Management committee, and NIST 800-53/171 compliance teams designed to align with critical US Government product initiatives.• Oversaw deployment of standard Enterprise Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES/FactoryLogix) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM/Oracle) systems to further automate plant floor operations.• Oversaw on-time deployment of Oracle’s ERP solution at Sparton’s largest division focused on government compliance and streamlining of back-office processes resulting in a 75% reduction in their month-end financial close.• Established Enterprise BI platform which simplified and provided immediate field access to sales, manufacturing, and financial information via web and mobile devices.• Implemented cloud-based analytics solution to create full visibility into the spend portfolio and collection of data from multiple disparate systems allowing for data normalization to drive future strategic purchasing decisions and improving negotiation opportunities.• Reduced telecommunications spend by over $200K/year in first 3 months via renegotiation of audio/web conferencing contracts.• Implemented an outsourced, Enterprise Tier 1 service desk resulting in a 97% monthly ticket completion rate.
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  • Tootsie Roll Industries
    Director Of Information Technology
    Tootsie Roll Industries 2007 - 2014
    Chicago, Il, Us
    Leader of the global enterprise technology team responsible for short term and long-term IT strategic plans including a key multi-year system portfolio transformation from an aging, in-house developed back-office suite of applications to Oracle’s EBS and HR platforms resulting in a sustained inventory reduction of over $2 million while reducing on-time transportation shipping load times from over 4 hours to less than 40 minutes.• Created internship program which resulted in the creation of the Tootsie Roll Industries social media program which helped to support the relaunch of www.tootsie.com and other social media associated marketing campaigns.• Designed and implemented low-cost Business Intelligence platform using existing (free) Oracle technologies thus eliminating over $1 million in BI reporting costs.• Coordinated the integration and centralization of the enterprise Business System of a recently acquired international bubble gum company with a primary focus on consolidating redundant business functions and improving performance metrics within the areas of Order Entry, Supply Chain, Warehousing and Manufacturing.• Directed the design and implementation of an extranet-based Order Entry/Inventory Management system allowing brokers to order candy and sales collateral via a frictionless, internet-based application.• Re-negotiated and built MPLS enterprise WAN network and implemented a SIP based communication system resulting in $200,000 savings per year.
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  • Tootsie Roll Industries
    Business Systems Development Manager
    Tootsie Roll Industries 2003 - 2007
    Chicago, Il, Us
    Responsible for the design, development, management, and support of centralized Enterprise Business Systems including internally developed Order Management, Manufacturing, Inventory, HR, and Supply Chain modules as well as Oracle Financials Application Suite (11i).
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  • Brunswick Corporation
    Director, It
    Brunswick Corporation 2001 - 2003
    Mettawa, Il, Us
    Led technical infrastructure and system projects focused on reducing annual IT costs by over $1 million and improving efficiency through standardization, centralization, and integration of legacy stand-alone solutions to support Brunswick’s new centralized/shared services business model.
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  • Life Fitness
    Director Information Technology Services
    Life Fitness 1992 - 2001
    Rosemont, Illinois, Us
    Directed an international infrastructure support staff of twenty-two and an annual IT budget of $7 million with a relentless focus on customer service improvements and reliable IT solutions to enable the organization to grow its revenue from $300 million to $370 million over a three-year span.Multiple Roles (1992-1997)Held multiple leadership/technology roles including: IT Technical Services Manager, Application Development Manager, Computer Operations Manager, Oracle Database Administrator, Unix/Linux System Administrator, and Programmer/Analyst.
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Christopher A. Ratliff Skills

Business Intelligence Cross Functional Team Leadership It Strategy Leadership Integration Enterprise Software Process Improvement Oracle E Business Suite Erp Vendor Management Strategic Planning Strategy It Management Telecommunications Project Management Project Portfolio Management Enterprise Architecture Oracle Applications Customer Service Disaster Recovery Supply Chain Budgets Sdlc Cisco Technologies Software Development Business Process Improvement Pl/sql Oracle Discoverer Itil It Operations Social Networking Supply Chain Software Sarbanes Oxley Oracle Rdbms Hyperion Hfm Oracle Hr Solution Architecture Hris Microsoft Dynamics Erp Budgeting Software Development Life Cycle Demantra

Christopher A. Ratliff Education Details

  • Depaul University
    Depaul University
    Computer Science
  • Elmhurst University
    Elmhurst University
    Computer Science

Frequently Asked Questions about Christopher A. Ratliff

What company does Christopher A. Ratliff work for?

Christopher A. Ratliff works for Ahead

What is Christopher A. Ratliff's role at the current company?

Christopher A. Ratliff's current role is Technology Executive | Leader | Strategic Thinker | Advisor | Mentor | Fitness Enthusiast.

What is Christopher A. Ratliff's email address?

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What is Christopher A. Ratliff's direct phone number?

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What schools did Christopher A. Ratliff attend?

Christopher A. Ratliff attended Depaul University, Elmhurst University.

What are some of Christopher A. Ratliff's interests?

Christopher A. Ratliff has interest in Science And Technology, Education, Health.

What skills is Christopher A. Ratliff known for?

Christopher A. Ratliff has skills like Business Intelligence, Cross Functional Team Leadership, It Strategy, Leadership, Integration, Enterprise Software, Process Improvement, Oracle E Business Suite, Erp, Vendor Management, Strategic Planning, Strategy.

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