I started my career back in 2000 at Boston Scientific Corporation.  Like many recent college graduates, I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to do with my life.  2000 was supposed to be a gap year where I figured out if pursuing law was really what I wanted to do (clearly it wasn’t).  BSC was an amazing company.  I was lucky enough to be there during a major product launch (drug eluting stents) that reshaped the business.  The organization did countless acquisitions while I was there which gave me experience well beyond my years.

At BSC, I was part of the corporate financial planning and analysis (FP&A) team. We were responsible for generating the management reporting for worldwide consolidated results including much of the reporting created for Wall Street Analysts. It was an incredibly dynamic and demanding team. My role on the team was administering the financial systems from which the reporting was sourced. This included Hyperion Enterprise, Hyperion Pillar, and Upstream Datalink. Now if those names haven’t dated me, I don’t know what will.

In my 6 years at BSC, I was constantly challenged - how could we ensure accuracy of the data, how could we produce reporting faster, how could we account for newly acquired businesses, and how could we continue to evolve the systems landscape. The latter launched the next stage of my career. We were deploying Hyperion Planning (version 4) to replace Hyperion Pillar as well as redesigning the master data of Hyperion Enterprise. I was working side by side with our consulting partners and found myself saying, I think I could do this.

In 2006, I joined the consulting ranks at a small consulting firm called Vertical Pitch. VP was run by former Hyperion folks. The founder was a sales leader at Hyperion, the sales team were sellers at Hyperion, and the practice leaders were former Hyperion Consultants. I joined the Consolidation team run by Peter Fugere. Few in the Hyperion (now Oracle EPM) world haven’t heard the name Peter Fugere. Peter had a strategy, he wanted to build a team with the best and brightest and that’s what he did. Peter recruited some of the most talented and experienced HFM people in the industry.

And then there’s me. Sure I had some experience with consolidation but nowhere near the level of the colleagues by whom I was surrounded so on my first long term project I was staffed as the Upstream consultant. Upstream / Hyperion FDM was primarily used to integrate data into HFM. Vertical Pitch had limited Upstream/FDM experience since Hyperion only acquired Upstream in 2006. My prior experience implementing and using the software at BSC created an opportunity. Peter wanted me to become VP’s FDM guy. This was a pivotal point in my career even though I initially resisted it.

Throughout my life, the words of my grandfather ring in my head, anything worth doing is worth doing well. Over the next few years, I committed to learning as much about FDM as possible. I wanted to know how the software worked so that I could implement it as well as anyone in the world. I would spend the day at a customer site (in the olden days consultants actually flew to their customer’s offices every week!) and then go back to my hotel room, fire up my VM and dig into the software. What are the API calls doing, what is the underlying table structure, what data gets written where when a specific action is taken.

This research and learning was probably the smartest thing I ever did in my career. I knew the software inside and out so now I could focus on learning how to deploy it to better address my customers’ needs. Learning the why behind the implementation of software is so much more valuable than the technical actions you perform as an implementer.

Two pieces of advice I’ve gotten over the years
1. Knowledge isn’t power, sharing knowledge is power. 
2. Create a brand that is memorable.

As I progressed through my learning journey, I took these both to heart. I love sharing the knowledge I've gained and decided to start a blog to share my knowledge and passion with my little corner of the Hyperion (at the time) world.

The next question became, what will your web address be?  At the time I’m in my late 20s or early 30s and still had a bit of that bravado that comes with youth (and insecurity) so I picked a name that combined what I knew and conveyed a message.  FDM Guru.  Is it a little much?  Probably.  Is it memorable, definitely.  
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And off I went, blogging regularly.  My little site was growing and I was hitting several hundred visitors a day on days when I published new material.  These aren’t Sports Illustrated numbers but not too shabby for a blog focused on a little software application that most people never even heard of.  

My growing brand and the assistance of an insider helped me break into the conference circuit. I started speaking annually at the ODTUG Kscope conference in 2010 and did so every year through 2019 (more to come on that).

Over the next few years, several key events happened. First, I became an Oracle ACE. This was a defining moment in my career. At the time I was invited to the ACE program, there were less than 350 ACEs across all Oracle technology in the entire world, less than 20 ACEs that focused on Oracle EPM technology, and no ACEs with a focus on EPM Data Management. I was honored to be selected to be part of such an elite group of industry recognized experts. This truly was a watershed moment in my career. A bit of the bravado (or said another way, the proverbial chip on the shoulder) melted away. It might sound counterintuitive but the validation made me more humble.

The second key event is that Oracle sunset FDM and launched FDMEE, the next generation of the software. This required a personal rebrand as FDM had become a relic of the past. So what does any non-creative type do? FDMEE Guru, that’s what. My simple marketing brain thought, well I’ve started to build a brand so why erase that and start from zero. A bit short sided as FDMEE would eventually be sunset but don’t fret, my next rebrand would be so much better #eyeroll.

Software documentation is often acceptable. Yes it will give the core information one must have but it rarely goes to the level needed to help an organization realize the full potential of the solution. FDMEE was no exception. The market was adopting FDMEE more and more and I saw a need and an opportunity. So I decided to write my first book - The Definitive Guide to Oracle FDMEE.

Truly a labor of love, this book took me nearly 9 months to complete.  I remember the day I completed it.  We got a pretty substantial snowstorm here in Boston.  I woke up early to snowblow the driveway and the whole time all I could think about was the dedications I needed to write.  I finished clearing 12+ inches of snow, kicked off my boots and snow pants, sat down still sweating and excitedly wrote two pages of thank yous to all of the people that helped me get to that point, particularly my wife and daughter who sacrificed many evenings and weekends to my muse. 

Like becoming an Oracle ACE, publishing a book was another watershed moment. When you publish, you are putting yourself out to the world for review. Anyone can critique your work. It’s scary but no matter how harsh the critique, you will always be able to say, I did that. And so with excitement and a little trepidation, I put my work out to the world. I’m grateful and relieved that most of the reviews were positive.

Every significant moment in your career is usually building toward another moment. The building of my brand over the course of a decade was marching me toward a new opportunity

In November 2019 after 13 years, I left the consulting world to join a small startup based out of New York City. That startup was OneCloud, an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) offering focusing on data integration and automation for business applications, primarily Oracle EPM and Anaplan.

I learned of OneCloud at the Kscope conference. Remember how I mentioned the building of a brand? The CEO of OneCloud (Quin Eddy) was a long time Hyperion guy and actually founded a software company previously. Quin knew me through the conference circuit and reached out to me to see if he could demo OneCloud to me and sign up my firm as an implementation partner.

Here’s a life lesson. I went into that meeting highly skeptical. I remember thinking, I can do everything this software can do with Jython, why would I recommend a customer spend more money on software. And then I saw the demo and immediately knew this was something special and I wanted to be a part of it. Take the meeting, even if you don’t think it’s worth your time!

I joined OneCloud as employee #7 and was named the Chief Customer Officer. I didn’t even know what a CCO was at the time. Over the coming 2.5 years, we willed amazing growth - 3x annually, exactly what Venture Capitalists demand to see from a startup.

So you may ask yourself, where does Workiva come into all of this? OneCloud and Workiva formed a technology partnership where OneCloud would be embedded in the Workiva platform to serve the data integration needs of the platform. We had become a strategic component of the Workiva platform and their leadership recognized it. In August 2021, Workiva acquired OneCloud.

As the head of customer success at OneCloud, I landed in the Customer & Partner Experience (CPX) team at Workiva. I was lucky to have such a supportive leader (Penny Ashley-Lawrence) that worked with the Workiva’s new CEO to carve out a role that would challenge and energize me. That role was Product Owner for the Data Management Suite and I was able to form relationships across the entire Workiva organization. I was incredibly lucky to have such an amazing opportunity to collaborate on product direction, work with engineering when customers pushed the limits of the system, partner with sales & marketing to continue to refine the message, and build a center of excellence that embodies Workiva’s commitment to customer and partner success. So why would I leave?

OneCloud was a magical experience. It was dynamic, fast paced, and exciting. It was a startup. Workiva is multinational with over 5000 customers and 2000 employees. It’s a different pace because that scale demands it. I found myself missing something but I didn’t know what. I thought it was the startup life and so I took a very brief detour in my career journey and joined a software startup that had nothing to do with data management.

In life, we take chances, we try new things. Sometimes we discover a new passion or strength. In my case with the second startup I discovered what I truly love - delivering data management solutions. I love solving data problems and I need to put my hands on the keyboard. So I decided to take a chance and start this thing.
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I am so incredibly excited to have launched Bespoke Data Management Consulting Partners and I look forward to the opportunity to deliver tailored solutions that bring your data into focus.

And now you know a lot more about me. Learn about my vision for what Bespoke Data Management Consulting Partners will be and why exactly I picked this name for my new company.