Joseph Eckert Email & Phone Number

My responsibilities as the Home Products Director of Sales and Regulatory Reporting include overseeing sales channels, customer retention and strategy for acquiring new customers for our non-regulated residential Value-Added Products and services. The position is responsible for increasing revenue by growing current product lines, identifying new growth opportunities and bringing new products and services to market. Other responsibilities include annual regulatory filings with the Michigan Public Service Commission related to the non-regulated programs.

My responsibilities as the Customer Services Financial Operations Manager include financial management of our non-regulated Value-Added Products and services that are sold to residential, commercial and industrial customers. The margin generated from these programs is used to offset revenue requirement for the utility customers. This position acts as a CFO for these mostly non-regulated product and service offerings and is responsible for helping to identify and operationalize market opportunities including tracking the financial performance against the forecast.

My responsibilities as the Low-Income Customer Programs Manager included creation, implementation and management of programs designed specifically to assist our low-income customers move towards self-sufficiency. This position is an expansion of a portion of my previous responsibilities as Revenue operations Manager. In 2013, I applied for and received a $10.8M grant from the State of Michigan to create a program serving 10,000 low-income customers. The customers in this program had an 84% success rate in paying their bills as compared to a success rate of less than 5% in our traditional low-income plans. This has led to reduced costs for the Company including bad debt expense and operational costs of service. It has also led to improvements in customer satisfaction. Because of the success of this program, a new position was created to expand upon it. We were recently awarded a $13.2M grant to increase the program and to serve 14,000 customers.

My responsibilities as Revenue Operations Manager include supervision of the credit and collection field representatives, outside collection agencies, management of the dunning process, bad debt expense and management of our low-income customer pilot programs. My responsibilities included developing tactics to reduce aged receivables, reduce write-offs and increase recoveries for the corporation.

My responsibilities as Customer Billing Manager included supervision of billing staff responsible for review and correction of billing out sorts, unbilled accounts and correction of billing system errors. Consumers Energy has 22 billing portions per month with approximately 150,000 bills generated each portion. There are approximately 3,000 billing out sorts requiring review each time billing runs. I was also responsible for fine tuning the dunning system post SAP implementation.

CMS Energy is in the business of providing electricity and gas to approximately 3 million customers in Michigan. My responsibilities include supervision of the installation of the Finance module of SAP. This 3 year project went live on July1, 2008. Activities to date included blueprinting of all current processes for the Accounting, Treasury, Accounts Payable, Property, Budget and Forecast functions within the Company. Fixed assets and taxes are being handled by a separate installation of PowerPlan software which addresses the specific needs of the utility industry. This separate project is also part of my responsibility for providing a complete solution for our financial needs at CMS Energy. Currently, we are in the process of closing the books in SAP for the month of October. Additionally, we are working with other teams on the project to make sure the integrated system is functioning in all areas such as customer billing and work management.

CMS Enterprises is a wholly owned subsidiary of CMS Energy and the parent Company of approximately 140 subsidiaries in the business of owning and operating electric generating facilities and gas processing and distribution facilities throughout the world. My responsibilities included supervision of accounting staff involved in the preparation of monthly and annual financial information in compliance with GAAP for domestic and international entities, preparation of internal reports to the Board of Directors and upper management, and preparation of annual audit information. I was also responsible for ensuring that international entities financial statements prepared using IFRS were consistent with GAAP presentation in the United States. Additionally, I was responsible for the implementation and oversight of an internal controls framework that successfully met the standards of Sarbanes Oxley.

CMS Generation is a wholly owned subsidiary of CMS Enterprises. As Controller of CMS Generation, my responsibilities included supervision of financial reporting and accounting staff involved in the preparation of monthly and annual financial information for domestic and international entities, preparation of internal reports to the Board of Directors and upper management, and preparation of annual audit information.

CMS Generation is a wholly owned subsidiary of CMS Enterprises and is in the business of owning and operating electric generating plants in the US as well as abroad. My responsibilities include supervision of accounting staff, preparation of monthly and annual financial information for domestic entities, preparation of internal reports to the Board of Directors and upper management, and preparation of annual audit information.I also supervised the accounts payable and accounts receivable functions as well as assist in the budgeting process.

Gonzalez Production Systems is a manufacture of closure panels systems for the automotive industry. My responsibilities included supervision and preparation of monthly and annual financial information, external reporting to financial institutions, preparation of annual audit information and preparation of tax information. In addition, I was also responsible for the Treasury functions including accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting and cash management

My responsibilities include oversight of DMHC Joint Venture operations including Parkview Company LLC and Step One. Parkview Company LLC operates six methadone clinics in the Metro Detroit area providing substance abuse counseling as well as methadone dosing on an outpatient basis.Step One operates out of one clinic providing in-patient, outpatient and Intensive Outpatient counseling treatment for substance abuse. Methadone dosing is also provided through the outpatient treatment program

Master Of Science (Ms), Business, Management, Marketing, And Related Support Services

Bs, Accounting

Education record