Our Clients
Here are examples of our record of successful engagements with satisfied clients:
Laurel
Software as a Service (SaaS) and machine learning based timekeeping for professionals that captures more time with less effort. www.laurel.ai
As the fractional Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for this company “on a mission to return time” throughout several funding rounds (over $55M raised), we worked with the CTO, COO, and General Counsel to ensure the security of its SaaS product.
Our paramount mission was ensuring very high confidence as to data confidentiality, because customers and prospects were often leading, international law and accounting firms with exceptional requirements regarding their client’s privileged information. As the CEO liked to say, “Protecting your data is table stakes”.
As their CISO, our efforts included leadership roles in:
- Ensuring the security and privacy (e.g., GDPR compliance) of highly confidential customer data.
- Establishing and complying with ISO 27001-aligned policies, and preparing for an initiative to achieve SOC 2 certification.
- Engaging with customers and prospects regarding the security of its SaaS product, defining how security was presented externally, and responding to exhaustive security questionnaires.
- Sponsoring independent penetration (PEN) tests of the SaaS product.
- Planning for business continuity and disaster recovery, including preparing a business impact analysis (BIA), setting recovery time and point objectives (RTO/RPO), and periodic testing.
- Deploying comprehensive endpoint management and anti-malware solutions.
- Performing periodic risk assessments and managing identified risk.
- Investigating and managing incidents.
- Managing access controls and reviewing user accounts.
- Establishing a security awareness training program.
- Forming and operating the company’s Change Advisory Board.
Services Lines:
Foothills Education and Technology Partnership (FETP)
Non-profit Internet Service Provider (ISP) providing reliable and affordable high speed Internet services to Southern California K12 school districts.
As the fractional Executive Director leading this non-profit, community-based organization (CBO), we navigated the highly regulated waters of telecommunications and school subsidization to provide K12 districts throughout Southern California with high-speed Internet service.
As a small provider within an industry dominated by behemoth carriers, FETP differentiated itself with superior service quality, lower service costs, and a laser focus solely on the needs of K12 districts. This was a successful strategy; at its peak, FETP served over 125,000 students.
FETP’s superior service resulted from maintaining a long-standing relationship with CENIC (California’s K20 Internet backbone), assembling a service architecture capable of achieving high service levels, and delivering a proactive level of support well beyond what is expected from a major carrier. FETP’s lower service costs resulted from its non-profit mission as well as long-term relationships and negotiations among the dominant carriers in the region.
Services Lines:
In this decade-long role for FETP, we:
- Fully managed FETP’s operations, sales, and finances.
- Reported directly to the Board of Directors, whose members were school district superintendents.
- Established and measured performance per aggressive service level objectives (SLO).
- Retained and worked extensively with managed service providers to provide a 24x7 network operations center (NOC) capable of achieving our targeted SLO.
- Introduced architectural changes to improve service quality, including migration to redundant, collocated data centers.
- Responded to RFPs and RFQs aligned with the FCC/USAC ERate and CPUC CTF programs.
- Established financial controls and procedures that were audited by an independent accounting firm.
Walnut Valley Unified School District
California K12 school district with 15 schools and enrollment of ~15,000 students. www.wvusd.org
Engaged for over a decade, we were involved in myriad, major initiatives that transformed how this high-performing District levered technology for education and operations. Examples of our work include:
- Thrice, their Interim Director of Technology, representing the department and assisting in the recruiting of a new Director.
- Participant in setting the strategic agenda for technology and developing three-to-five-year strategic plans. Emerging initiatives included one-to-one programs (where every student receives a personal laptop), distance learning systems, and portals for curricular collaboration.
- Led the selection and implementation of a district-wide student information system (Eagle Aeries), which provides a wide range of services to the District’s teachers, staff, students and parents.
- Led the selection and implementation of a district-wide, fiber-based metropolitan area network.
- Project manager to select and deploy the District’s email solution.
- Led a major personal computer refresh, which involved touching every PC at the District and bringing up back-end management tools.
- Introduced higher levels of information security, by: introducing enterprise authentication and access control (i.e., Active Directory, RSA SecurID); ensuring security is part of selection and configuration; and performing security assessments.
- Provide design and project management for infrastructure elements, such as networking, firewalls, backup & restore, and phone equipment.
Services Lines:
An AmLaw 200 Law Firm (Identity Confidential)
American Lawyer 200 (and A-List) law firm.
We were engaged by this Firm to perform a comprehensive needs assessment of their productivity technologies. We recommended they proceed with four major, interdependent initiatives:
- Replace their document management system (with Interwoven).
- Upgrade or replace over 70 productivity applications (including Microsoft Office), and improve application integration.
- Introduce software configuration management (with Microsoft SMS).
- Refresh all personal computers (through replacement or reimaging).
The Firm agreed with our analysis, and retained us as the program manager. We also provided experts for change leadership, training, software engineering, and deployment support.
Since the program’s successful completion, we have been retained for a number of other projects, including:
Services Lines:
- Led several iterations to improve and test their IT business continuity plan.
- Led and supported many information protection projects, such as for secure extranets, firewalls, access controls, monitoring, and meeting matter requirements.
- Performed an assessment regarding data storage solutions, and provided guidance on information lifecycle management.
- Assisted with several three-year strategic plans and budgets.
Pepperdine University
An independent, medium-sized university enrolling approximately 7,700 students in five colleges and schools. www.pepperdine.edu
We were engaged by an IT Director who was responsible for networking, telecommunications, and the server farm. He had joined Pepperdine about six months prior, and sought to make major improvements in regards to project control and output.
Using our proprietary project portfolio dashboards, we started by identifying and documenting active projects. Everyone was surprised by the number of concurrent projects (just under 50). Assessment of the project list produced a list of readily achievable improvements, which were adopted over several months by the department’s managers.
Our sponsor started using our project portfolio dashboards to more effectively manage his department’s priorities, and to communicate status with other directors and senior administrators.
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We updated the project portfolio on a weekly basis. In addition to keeping the dashboard fresh, we used this as an opportunity to transfer knowledge and capability to the department’s project managers. Over a few months of coaching, we saw real improvement in their control over their projects. During this period, we also filled in as project managers on several, high priority projects.
Finally, we transitioned operation of the project portfolio to the department’s staff, and made our exit.
True Religion Brand Jeans (NASDAQ: TRLG)
Global apparel firm that designs, markets, distributes and sells premium denim and casual sportswear. www.truereligionbrandjeans.com
Facing explosive growth, True Religion needed to upgrade its core, enterprise systems. We were engaged by the CFO and CIO for program management of this major undertaking.
Initially, Oracle’s eBusiness Suite (EBS) was procured and the initial program scope included the financial, supply chain, business process support, and reporting modules. Early in the program (during the requirements and design phases), the scope was expanded to include warehouse management and we eventually selected Manhattan’s ILS product. Later, retail store management (and integration with EBS) was added to the scope, and KWI was the selected platform.
DAZ Systems provided integration consulting, which included staffing an outstanding project manager (with whom we worked closely). Ascendant provided project management for warehouse management and integration consulting for retail store management.
As program managers, we were responsible for facilitating the steering committee (which included a majority of the company’s officers), maintaining the master project plan, providing budget oversight, facilitating resolution of major issues, and proactively managing project risk.
Ascendant also provided change leadership services for all three initiatives, which involved facilitation, process reengineering, and coordination of training and testing activities.
Services Lines:
Oracle EBS and Manhattan ILS were concurrently launched, and without impact on quarterly results. Further, this was accomplished on time and within budget. KWI was successfully launched some months later.
Corona-Norco Unified School District
Eighth largest K12 school district in California, with 48 schools and enrollment of over 52,000 students. www.cnusd.k12.ca.us
Some of our largest scale work has been with Corona-Norco. We were retained when a confluence of events placed their launch of a new Student Information System (SIS) - and their IT Director was retiring within days of the launch.
Our team rapidly filled a number of functions for this critical program: program management; change leadership; application architecture and configuration; database administration; and training. We achieved a successful, on-time deployment of the SIS; 49 sites were cut-over to the new system in just eight weeks, with as many as 19 concurrently making the switch.
We provided post-launch support until the system met all operational objectives. We also deployed new functionality, such as a Parent Portal, and Online Learning enhancements.
Services Lines:
Our success factors included:
- Staffing qualified, smart, communicative and hard working professionals.
- Immediately integrating with the District’s IT staff, so we worked as one team.
- Using our proprietary project portfolio dashboards for program management.
- Initiating a change leadership program, led by a very senior change leadership committee (which we chaired).
Concurrent with our efforts to launch the SIS, we worked closely with senior administrators regarding the: organization of IT; selection and qualification of the incoming IT Director, and smooth transition to the new Director during a period of peak stress.
PSI
Provider of licensure testing and talent assessments, from its Internet-based testing platform (ATLAS™) and hundreds of testing centers. www.psionline.com
We were engaged to provide program and project management for migration to NetSuite, a cloud-based Financials/ERP system. We provided end-to-end services, including:
- Assisting with contract negotiations.
- Acting as the internal project manager for configuration, testing and launch.
- Data migration design, testing and execution.
- Managing integration with third party applications, (e.g., Salesforce).
- Managing conversion, cut-over, and the post-launch “hangover”.
- Designing and managing the off-shore development of middleware to provide real-time integration between NetSuite and ATLAS™.
Services Lines:
Pleased with our services, PSI engaged us for additional projects, including:
- Assisting, from a financials/accounting perspective, with the integration of an acquired competitor, LaserGrade.
- Migrating their on-line store to the NetSuite platform.
- Leading a business process reengineering initiative for the accounting department.
- Assisting a new CIO to instantiate IT governance and project portfolio tracking processes.
the Leaders Dojo
An executive leadership group of CEOs from small to midsize companies.
The Leaders Dojo's leadership group met monthly to discuss issues of relevance, and an important part of these meetings are the guest speakers. Creighton was selected to customize and lead a four hour interactive seminar on how their executives could best manage information technology.
Topics covered included:
Services Lines:
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Watt Commercial Properties
National developer and property manager of commercial properties. www.wattcompanies.com
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Stephen S. Wise Temple & Schools
One of the Nation’s largest reform synagogues, with three campuses and four schools. www.wisela.org
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Newport Mesa Unified School District
California K12 school district with 32 schools and enrollment of 21,500 students. web.nmusd.us/
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