Steve Tower Email & Phone Number

Toronto, Canada Area

Steve assists with business and cultural transformations, particularly those involving IT-enabled process improvement. With Prompta, he specializes in the area of Supplier Diversity. Steve has authoured a unique, continuous improvement “life cycle” tool to assess and guide organizations taking their Supplier Diversity programs to the next level.

Led a Disaster Recovery Assessment for an Electrical Utility-Identified gaps & suggested improvements -Facilitated updates to IT asset inventory, risk & threat assessment & recovery activity sequence-Prioritized list of recommendations in 3 categories: hardware & services, plan & documentation & testing strategyCreated a Strategy for Improving Disaster Recovery at Multi-national Real Estate Company- Led an evaluation of existing plans and imbedded IT practices for managing, maintaining & testing disaster recovery- Deployed a maturity model and checklist to identify program “gaps” - Conducted a cost-benefit analysis of proposed improvements & constructed a 3-year prioritized roadmapCreated a Disaster Recovery Strategy for a Commercial Property Manager- Led a team to develop a strategy for recovering critical application services- Assisted with business continuity plans for the IT department- Evaluated alternate sites and infrastructure architectures to meet recovery requirements- Created a DR plan templateLed the Evaluation & Selection of a new, resilient ERP Infrastructure at a Hi-Tech Company- Assisted with the definition of alternate technical designs for the ERP infrastructure architecture- Led technical and financial analysis of alternate bids - Helped design a new data center & disaster recovery “hot site” - Completed contracts, licensing and service arrangements with suppliersCreated a Disaster Program for a Large Professional Services Firm - Conducted a business impact assessment - Created an enterprise-wide disaster recovery strategy & arranged program funding- Led the construction and successful testing of application recovery at the recovery site for all critical services- Led initiatives to design a new resilient computer room & provisioned emergency power generation in 2 office towersDeveloped Disaster Recovery Guidelines for a Federal Government Dept.- Created a method for creating and implementing disaster recovery plans

Mississauga, On

Steve lectures on Scope and Risk Management at the exam preparation course of QCP (PMI Registered Education Provider). He develops, edits and upgrades educational materials for the latest release of the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBoK).

Steve leads AMI’s disaster recovery practice. He has overall responsibility for client disaster recovery planning (DRP) initiatives. This includes full life-cycle consulting for disaster recovery: program design, strategy and plan development, and project management of implementation, testing and maintenance. He is responsible for linking and coordinating DRP with business continuity, pandemic and emergency response initiatives. He develops tools and methods to support the creation, communication and updating of disaster recovery plans.

Steve managed a "full service", national information technology team, delivering infrastructure, application and process improvements. He launched several legal productivity programs, including a client-matter-document management intranet, "virtual" office capability and smartphone, Wi-Fi and voice-over-IP services. He led upgrades of core IT services including improved information security, business continuity, and virtualized storage and processing. Steve also created a number of new processes for departmental communication, annual & mid-year performance evaluation, staff feedback, career development, inter-office collaboration, project portfolio management, ITIL-based operation, quality assurance and systems development.

Steve was responsible for sales, account management and consulting to a group of large customers with complex business requirements. He identified business opportunities, constructed business cases and managed proposal development teams. He had "managed account" responsibility and defined value propositions for new projects. He also conducted business process improvements, completed large ERP project reviews, evaluated emerging software products and managed ERP strategies and implementations for FMCG, industrial distributors, automotive parts and read-mix cement clients.

Steve created a rapidly expanding, national team of over 100 consultants delivering specialized ERP services. He oversaw practice utilization, assignments, skill development, "apprenticeship" programs, mid-year - annual performance reviews, compensation and promotions. He led several quality assurance and independent risk reviews of large-scale ERP projects in the $10-100M range, including a large municipality, a telecommunications equipment manufacturer, an international brewing company, a major food retailer and an agricultural chemicals manufacturer. He instructed entry-level consulting courses and sponsored candidates for professional designation. His consulting work also included developing strategy and staffing plans for two of the largest ERP projects in Canada at that time.

Founded an ERP application software consulting practice focussed on delivering process improvements, business cases, strategies, fit-gaps, implementation and support. Managed and built specialty skills in a team of 40 (project managers, applications analysts, developers and technical architects), offering SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and Y2K services. Provided ERP strategy, business case and project governance assistance on two major, multi-year programs (refined metals marketing and a large electrical utility). Assembled teams of business partners (hardware suppliers, application vendors and consulting firms) to deliver turn-key systems integration and support arrangements for projects in the $3-10M range. Confirmed fit and feasibility of ERP for the five procurement cycles of a major Canadian bank, an oil and gas producer and federal and provincial governments for parts supply logistics and infrastructure maintenance.

Established and managed Accenture's "Americas SAP Competency Centre" and led the Toronto SAP Practice. Launched the first full-service outsourcing centre for Accenture in North America and commissioned it with it's first ERP clients. Built a 24-person application support group and delivered support under strict SLAs for two outsourced chemical companies. Directed ERP planning and implementation services at five mid-size and five Fortune 100 companies. Led the pilot implementation of ERP for an industrial robotics company, managed the pilot installation of ERP at the largest chemical plant in the US and led the evaluation and selection of ERP products for a very large, multi-divison manufacturing and services company.