Raymond Costello Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Group Management is a PEO who bought Synergy early in 21. My job as the Synergy CTO was to transition Synergy clients to GMS and close down the Synergy business and I.T. functions. Many times takeovers are brutal but this one was a good and fair business acquisition. GMS is a powerhouse and its growing exponentially. Synergy was a boutique company that provided nurturing and hands-on high-touch HR to it's clients. GMS attracts clients who are tech savvy and can fend for themselves within the knowledgeable umbrella of their services. Throughout my career I've looked for companies who had serious issues with I.T. and needed help. That was not the case with GMS because they have the people.

Greater Chicago Area

Synergy is a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) located in the financial district in Chicago's Loop. Companies outsource their HR, Payroll and other administrative headaches to us which we do very well because that is what we've done since 1989. This is a great business and its a perfect partner for companies who want to concentrate on their products and services instead of trying to keep up with managing the overhead and the incredible burden and risk of HR for their employees. I've been with many companies with in-house HR and it could be an incredible pain in the butt. When I first came on with Synergy I thought we took on the worst part of a companies business but we have so many professionals in the office and in the field that it makes HR easy. That's what we do, we make the client HR business easy. Great business, great people, what a concept.

Unicous was a startup company that managed electronic coupons using manufacturer's marketing dollars instead of manufacturing trade dollars. It brought more money directly to the consumer instead of the traditional coupon where most of the money goes into advertising, printing and distribution. The electronic coupon was paperless and it presented itself at the shelf where the consumer makes the decision. All the consumer had to do was see the shelf sign and choose that product. The discount was taken automatically at the register. The retailer then sends the transaction logs electronically to Unicous and Unicous delivers the invoice to the manufacturer. No paper, all electronic and great for the consumer, retailer and manufacturer.We built our product from scratch using MS SQL and various languages under .NET. I outsourced our development and our data center. The data center outsourcing was key for us because we had virtual servers with the ability to expand our processing power and our storage with a single phone call. When sales detail from stores come in for processing, we needed something that could grow with us. We interfaced our product to Great Plains so we could invoice our customers and clients (among other things). The problem that we had with growing our business was a chicken and the egg conflict. Manufacturers wanted more retailers before they came on board and retailers wanted more manufacturers before they came on board. Starting it up and getting momentum was difficult. I worked closely with NCR, IBM partners, Fujitsu and other POS manufacturers to integrate our product into their systems.

Toano, Va

Lumber Liquidators is a manufacturer and national retailer for hardwood floors. Our facility in Toano Virginia cranked out thousands of pre-finished flooring of every style and color every day. Our stores were all over the country and usually in out-of-the-way locations.My job was to support the Prelude ERP, retail stores, distribution centers, telecomunications, security systems and various corporate systems. My first job was to coordinate the move from Colonial Heights to Toano and rebuild the Customer Service department. It was a massive job but the payoff was well worth it.Lumber Liquidators was a great place to work and Williamsburg was a beautiful place to live.

A venture capital group purchased Chicago-based Gingiss Formalwear and L.A.-based Gary's Tux Shops and wanted to build and sell the largest formalwear company in the country. Both businesses were similar in age and had great reputations in thier parts of the country. The VC group built an excellent executive group to pull it all together but the market went bad and our funding dissapeared sending the company into liquidation. The assets were purchased by May's Department stores. My job was to support our I.T. initiatives and help prepare the company for purchase by a prospective buyer. That buyer never came and our locations were absorbed into After Hours Formalwear.

Donald Bruce was a 70 year old jewelry manufacturing business with locations in Johnston, Rhode Island and the North West side of Chicago. Johnston was the main manufacturing plant while Chicago did some light manufacturing and mainly distribution. When I got there, both locations operated separately with different software systems and item numbers. There were many problems that prevented the business from running efficiently so everything was a fire. Production planning and forecasting was very rudimentary because none of the systems talked to one another and the item numbers between both plants were different. I led an evaluation of ERP systems that would unite both locations and provide tools that would help us be a leader in our industry. In 15 months we installed Oracle Financials and Manufacturing and we were on our way. Unfortunately, our first season after implementation was destroyed by the events on 9/11. No one bought jewelry and our business never recovered.

I interviewed for the CIO position months before being called in to interview for the Director postion. I didn't know it but the director position has already been filled but I did so well in the interview the new CIO created a position for me. I oversaw the AS/400 operations, networks, store retail systems, POS (Point of Sale) and the help desk. We had many challenges with hardware and software but it was fun to find the source of our issues and come up with solutions. One crazy problem was that our pricing in our stores was all screwed up. Price-change batches crashed into each other making the POS price near useless so everything had to have a price ticket on it. I had already solved those problems when I was with Handy Andy but the IBM POS systems added an additional challenge.Also, our entire network would get locked up regularly from the store-level POS to the AS/400 which would paralyze our entire company. The company would have to wait the 30 minutes to 2 hours for the system to be responsive and that was ridiculous. I found out that it was a communication anomoly that was caused by a group of our older POS systems. I put a bridge in to trap the problem and I proposed replacing the older POS systems.Sportmart got into financial trouble which caused it's sale to Gart Sports in Denver. It was sad to see another 25-year Chicago institution leave town but at least they were alive.

Wooddale

Palatine

Bs, Computer Science For Business

Associates, General