Kurt Steckel Email & Phone Number

Northumberland, Pa, Us

San Francisco, Us

San Francisco, Us

New York, Ny, Us

CORPORATE PROFILE: A company delivering financial services to growth organizations RESPONSIBILITY PROFILE: I was promoted in the wake of Bison’s acquisition to report to Propeller's COO with a multi-million-dollar CAPEX and 10 employees/contractors with 5 direct reports. I was in charge of leading data, product, and engineering teams to build the foundations of the organization’s digital transformation. Propeller acquired Bison to build and scale its technology platform, developing low-latency financial, budget, and operational data pipelines, a modern data warehouse, and intelligent data applications for the financial team’s 350+ clients. As the project progressed, I traversed COVID complications and onboarded a new delivery team to develop cutting-edge data technology. This product has digitized the business, drove efficiencies with all clientele, and nearly doubled the company valuation during fundraising. Leadership resulted in staff averaging ~6 years tenure, outpacing industry norms.ACHIEVED IN THIS ROLEPROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT / MARKET PENETRATION• The CEO called upon me to lead penetration into the Trade Spend Management services market. I abolished outdated methodologies, sourced an offshore development team, and built mockups, the prototype, and MVP. Today, this product is outside the core business. Propeller can now work with larger clients, and this model will be replicated in other company initiatives.PRODUCT STRATEGY / STRATEGIC PLANNING• No official strategy existed that aligned with the CEO’s digital transformation goals, so I presented and won approval from the CEO and COO to lead development and execution. Once completed, I spent the next 1.5 years building the products that encompassed the core of the strategy. This document exceeded leadership expectations, enabled more effective discussions with investors, and increased the company’s valuation. This was a major contributing factor that secured a substantial investment from a PE firm.

New York, Ny, Us

ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP• Post-acquisition, the need arose to build interface products to digitize the business. The CEO tasked me to lead the charge. I created and led an engineering team to develop a collaborative workspace application and inject the digital portion of trade spend within it, which resulted in an immediate engineering lead at no additional cost. Within just one and a half years, this product became the flagship product of Propeller’s next phase of strategic expansion, which has enabled future product deployment and maintained competitiveness in its sector.PATENTS & TRADEMARKS• During the discovery process with a confidential firm, a warning concerning IP infringement from a competitor caused concern. The COO called upon me to investigate and provide a defense. The first 50 days, I gathered all relevant patents and prior art and developed extensive documentation on the company’s workaround. We consulted on this strategy to ensure accuracy and built a plan to execute defense by showing evidence that the Bison product does not infringe competitor patents’ independent claims. This strategy successfully established a defense for the company, ultimately unblocked significant funding, and both organizations are protected from further correlated allegations.TEAM BUILDING• The company partnered with four different offshore suppliers over 11 years, and each supplier transition could potentially thwart momentum. The CEO tasked me to guide a smooth transition with each new supplier and minimize business disruption. In each scenario, I sourced the vendor, negotiated terms, and led the transition of all work to the new team, which included replacing components due to varying requirements. During each transition, this strategy was repeated for all new suppliers and delivered higher-quality teams aligned with strategic goals.

New York, Ny, Us

RESPONSIBILITY PROFILE: The industry lacked a well-priced analytics product that included enterprise capabilities for early and growth-stage companies, so I developed such a tool after performing years of research with the intent to sell it to a larger organization. I assembled a team, built the platform, then led sales, marketing, and data architecture. We navigated funding issues and data complexities with critical software, which led to developing industry-first solutions to ensure functionality and data accuracy. These efforts delivered 100% growth (2X), which made us an attractive takeover target.ACHIEVED IN THIS ROLEPRESENTATION DEVELOPMENT• Close-won rates were dropping, and investigation revealed that credibility was not established early enough in the sales process. I began to reverse this trend via enhanced communications. The next 30 days, I established a presentation methodology, developed materials, and mentored sales reps on the system. These efforts became both SOP and Best Practice, doubled the company’s close-won rate, saved the business, and were a driving factor in its eventual sale.AUTOMATED DATA TEST COVERAGE• I discovered that QuickBooks ERP required improvements with extracting and maintaining accurate data. I was resolved to solve this for the entire marketplace. Over 3 years, I decoded all logic to fix data upon extraction and led a team to build a product enabling daily functionality for hundreds of clients. We navigated issues with funding, offshoring, and vendor negotiation. This product contributed significantly to YoY revenue and was the catalyst for the sale to Propeller.FUNDRAISING• I discovered that the current financial situation would hinder growth without raising more capital. Over several months, I gathered financials, created a strategy, developed investor decks, and met with investors. These efforts secured pre-seed funding, which enabled the organization to continue development and sustain operations.

New York, Ny, Us

ACHIEVEMENTS CONTINUEDSALES TRANSFORMATION / ATTRITION REVERSAL• Leadership charged me to spearhead efforts to increase enterprise account retention. I designed a retention process, built supporting analytics and reporting, and conducted big data analysis, which revealed the root cause was disconnected data sets with limited transparency. I also navigated change-resistant cross-functional teams to develop a process to reduce churn from 1.4% to 0.9%. This saved ~$200M per year for the $40B BU, and these tools are still used today at Verizon as best practice.DATA WAREHOUSING• Verizon required a shift of its B2B Customer Dimension from Type 1 to Type 2 across hundreds of attributes for historical reporting purposes. The Director of Finance charged me to lead the effort. I built a strategy to execute over two weeks. Then over 60 days, I utilized a hands-on approach to successfully deliver these tables in an expedited manner. This data was used to report B2B sales to Wall Street, has since become SOP, and still drives Verizon’s B2B reporting. This made Bison a critical contractor, which preserved a significant number of jobs.

New York, Ny, Us

ACHIEVEMENTS CONTINUEDBUSINESS / TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP• The Director of Finance recruited me to foster greater cohesion between Verizon’s IT and Finance teams. First, I interviewed relevant personnel and discovered a communication disconnect between the departments, then I created tools to bridge this gap with Finance team requirements and met with IT to ensure work was completed promptly. This strengthened relationships between the BUs, reduced rework for a savings of 10 hours per week for four years (~$200K in value), increased reporting accuracy, and nurtured better decision making.TEAM MENTORING• I identified and recruited a candidate from their occupation at a local cabinet manufacturer and mentored them on the principles of consulting, efficient communication, solutions delivery, and overall business growth. Despite having no previous experience, the candidate is now an application architect at a marquee firm with an above-average industry reputation. Similar career advancement outcomes resulted from mentoring other employees in my career, and my personal average rate of retention has been ~6 years, which outpaces tech industry benchmarks.

CORPORATE PROFILE: A $765M software company with 2,500 employees. RESPONSIBILITY PROFILE: In this role, I reported to the Director and was responsible for designing Hyperion Business Intelligence solutions for key strategic accounts and troubleshooting complex integration issues. The Director, Technical Services commissioned me to engage with Verizon. The following 60 days, I acted as the liaison between Hyperion and Verizon, engaged closely with all Verizon stakeholders, developed a revamped workplan to fill resource gaps at the proper time, and delivered status reports to track progress. These efforts rescued the contract from termination. I was recognized and praised by Verizon Leadership and Hyperion’s CEO due to the project’s success.

Washington, Dc, Us

CORPORATE PROFILE: A leading global development and investment banking company. RESPONSIBILITY PROFILE: Here, I reported to the Manager and was responsible for functioning as the lead Cognos consultant and Business Process Analyst on the IFC’s corporate financial reporting team.ACHIEVED IN THIS ROLEPRODUCT DEVELOPMENT / TURNAROUND• The Senior Manager Corporate Business Informatics and Systems Development charged me to enhance efficiencies with the offshore team. I first planned a strategy for the first seven days and the next two weeks, traveled to India to meet with the offshore team and change management to reduce cycle times and enhance accuracy. I even expedited a critical section of the project that was the main bottleneck, allowing the $1.5M project to proceed on schedule. Because of this, I was asked to stay an extra month to foster further efficiencies.

Mba, International Business/Entrepreneur Track

Ba, Business Administration

Diploma, Computer Network Engineering

Diploma, Spanish

Diploma, German Culture