Chris Vlad is the “Hands On” IT Professional with more than 20 years of successful experience providing IT solutions, as well as managing people in organizations, from start up to high growth.

Successful experience managing projects and implementing process improvements with impact on bottom line. Experience building teams, mentoring and developing talent, providing outstanding training and system support to leverage operational efficiencies and improve business operations. Strong working knowledge of available cutting edge technology. Ability to creatively and effectively manage technologies to implement the vision of now IT will deliver technology, and enable business capability in support of business initiatives.

-Demonstrated ability to plan and implement software and hardware migrations from evaluating software and hardware requirements to design specifications, blue prints, test procedures, implementation schedules to managing and running the implementation and final solution certification.

-Experience in ERP (enterprise resource planning) and retail management software solutions. Personally investigated and certified solution providers, negotiated large scale software acquisitions, plan the conversions, implemented and supported business rules for SAP and SAP clone solutions.

-Managed IT Departments as MIS Director, as IT manager, Senior Software Developer and Product Manager for a $500 million project currently in implementation in Europe.

-Software architect and Implementation Manager for B2B4Business solution (in use today by Ace Hardware), which was later acquired by a venture capital firm.

-Customer service manager for IBM for banking and wire transfer security

-Trouble-shooting and customer relations at an advanced level for IBM systems (5 years experience).
-Experience with IBM AS/400.
-MS in Computer and Information Science graduate of Knowledge Systems Institute, Skokie, IL.


PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS & ACTIVITIES

• Principles of managing people, managing projects, motivating employees, Six Sigma approach to team building
• Marketing products and services in the rapid changing online world, budgeting right, spending wise and deriving meaningful conclusions and the impact of advertising.
• Contributor to Mysql and PHP communities in the area of performance optimizations and scalability for online applications
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experience in retail businesses.