Thomas Kerber Email & Phone Number

Elk River, Mn, Us

Nw Minneapolis And Surround

Cottage Grove, Minnesota, United States

Manufacturer of corporate recognition awards, braille way-finding signage and etched metal dies. Steered the finances of the company through the turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic period which appended to several years of declining performance for this $6 million family-owned manufacturing business. Defended designation as a critical infrastructure business to keep the doors open during the COVID-19 economic shutdown months. Procured substantial financial aid through the various pandemic relief programs including PPP and PPP2 with full forgiveness of both, payroll tax deferment under the CARES Act of 2020, EIDL loans, ERC funding and MN state grant initiatives. Provided guidance and crisis management analysis on how to weather a potential sales decline of up to 50% through the pandemic. Provided executive leadership and support in the absence of a general manager, operations manager and absentee president. Authored the company’s COVID-19 preparedness and response policy. Successfully recruited a new president/COO and replacement for the operations manager. Uncovered and eliminated over $90k of recurring annual wasted spend. Spearheaded several new initiatives such as total LED lighting retrofit. Served as the IT manager, directing all aspects of a network of over 40 workstations, departmental kiosks and CAM systems, 3 servers and VOIP systems. Successfully onboarded HR manager, instituting a full-time integrated HR department.

Minneapolis, Mn

Broad self-directed project management, and technical and sales support responsibilities for both internal and customer-facing activities for the world's leading cash drawer manufacturer. Perform as lead technical support expert during the introduction of a new ‘smart’ cash drawer product into the North American market. Advise marketing department with technical and logistical expertise for tradeshows and provide ongoing front-line client feedback for marketing materials.• Coordinated with business development team on providing product demonstrations and technical workshops at over 30 customer sites and at least 2 major tradeshows annually, introducing APG’s new SMARTtill technology and building market demand.• Designed and maintained fleet of airline-ready demo kits to support sales, marketing and engineering teams with top-of-the-line hardware and latest release software applications for customer and trade-show demonstrations.• Trained IT management and development staff for over 10 clients on best practice process models and protocols for communicating with new ‘smart’ cash drawer products, leading to 2 successfully completed software integrations, 1 non-integrated solution, 1 non-integrated middleware solution to be released in 2020, 1 fully integrated solution in process with a tier 1 grocery retailer set to go-live sometime in 2020, establishing a firm initial product presence in North America.• Spearheaded reseller partner education on implementation of SMARTtill® technology, including physical and soft installation, end-user training, and design of pilot projects featuring this new technology.

Minnesota

Responsible for diverse administrative, analytic and developmental activities for expanding $500M multi-state diesel power sales and servicing company. Administered all aspects of scheduled and ad-hoc reporting functions using HALO Prism, HALO Source and Crystal Reports applications. • Actively participated as IT installation and support during corporate office relocation, a major acquisition, and integration of 5 additional branches to the already thriving 18 branches, facilitating smooth transitions with virtually no downtime. • Developed a "translator" database tool used to produce standardized importable price tapes from nearly any suppliers’ catalogs, reducing price update processing time from several days to just a few hours.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Performed critical data analysis, reporting, accounting and IT management functions for this rapidly growing multiple-contract supplier to the Federal Government. Collaborated with the company executives and senior management on realizing the company's strategic vision with respect to IT architecture and business process goals. Administered in-house network hardware and software, and managed contracted IT services. Responsible for government sales and compliance reporting for all MAS and FSSI contracts. Aggregated product offerings from dozens of vendors to produce and upload finished catalogs totaling well over a million items for 8 contracts on both the GSA and DOD procurement systems. Instrumental in bid preparations resulting the award of at least 2 multi-million dollar contracts.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Staffed at multiple client locations including ACCAP, Dane Industries, Best Vendors and several others. Assignments included detailed audits, AP, AR, GL, Sales Tax, Payroll, volumes of data entry and year-end processes. Software encountered include QuickBooks, Excel, Access, JD Edwards (PeopleSoft) and MAS. Always recieved excellent feedback and reccomendations.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Headed accounting department for 3rd-party benefits administration company. Performed day-to-day accounting processes, including AP, AR, GL, reconciliations, benefits, reporting and banking relationships. Held responsibility for numerous data analysis and programming functions including research and extensive analysis of client financial data resulting in the recovery of $30k in misplaced trust funds from troubled accounts.- Led several special projects including comprehensive database code changes to eliminate rounding errors, and creation of new module to initiate ACH funding transfers with clients.- Coordinated database overhaul to accomodate changes in COBRA law due to the 2008 Federal stimulus package.- Managed general office operations and accounting functions throughout acquisition process by TASC including office space decommissioning.- Significant daily advanced-level exposure to QuickBooks, Excel and Access including macros and VBA.

Wisconsin

Custom metal and electrical fixture fabricator, specializing in the manufacture and installation of point-of-sale POSTECH® and Cashier Console® equipment stands, checkout lane lights, signs and Star Guard protective corner guards for retail and grocery markets. Also provides comprehensive turn-key grocery and retail fixture, furniture, decor, signage and equipment installation services.

Associate'S Degree (As), Computer Science, 3.87

Activities and Societies: Phi Theta Kappa

Coursework Toward Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Computer Science

Activities and Societies: Purdue Marching Band: Big Bass Drum Crew, Phi Sigma Kappa