Team of Experts
Steve Player
Managing Director of Future Ready Finance
Steve helps organizations create more agile, forward-looking management processes. As a consultant, Steve has been helping companies improve cost and performance management for over 30 years.
He helps companies implement continuous planning processes such as rolling forecasts and dynamic performance management. He also leads the Beyond Budgeting Round Table North America BBRTNA. Steve has led planning and performance improvement projects at numerous organizations including American Express, ArcBest Transportation, DAI, Hollister, HOLT CAT, Intel, Navistar, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company TSMC, TTI (owned by Berkshire Hathaway), Vision Service Plan, and Zales. Prior to starting his own firm, Steve spent 20 years at Arthur Andersen where he founded and served as Managing Partner of Arthur Andersen’s Advanced Cost Management team.
As an author and international speaker, Steve is recognized as an engaging thought leader who improves the value finance organizations deliver. He is the co-author of Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting and Beyond Performance Management as well as four other books. Steve is also the co-host of the Planning Aces podcast of CFOThoughtLeader.com. Steve is a CPA and received his BBA degree in Accounting from the University of North Texas.
Pierre Guillaume
Co-Founder Beyond EPS Advisors
Pierre has more than 30 years of experience as a management consultant and specializes in cost management, advanced planning and budgeting, and business strategy development.
He has been responsible for cost, performance management, planning and budget systems, and strategic information systems implementations for clients in a variety of industries in North America, Europe and Asia.
Pierre is the co-founder of Beyond EPS Advisors, our consulting practice, which he co-founded after leaving Capital One, where he ran the cost budgeting, forecasting, and planning function. Prior to Capital One, Pierre was the northeast region strategic cost and performance management practice leader for Arthur Andersen.
Pierre’s work in the field of performance management has been documented and recognized in a number of Harvard Business School case studies. Pierre is a frequent speaker on advanced costing, planning and business strategy. He has also taught accounting and financial management at the Université de Paris and business strategy at the Centre de Perfectionnement aux Affaires in Paris.
Nancy Michaels
Cost and Profitability Manager
Nancy has 30 years of diverse knowledge and expertise in designing and developing BI, ETL, ABM and CRM processes via multiple tools. Nancy has completed projects spanning six countries for over 70 organizations which include 20 major Fortune 500 Global companies.
She is adept with campaign management, data integration design and development, data cleansing, data analysis, migrations, performance measurement, business intelligence, strategy mapping, balanced scorecard, storyboarding, profitability analysis, activity-based costing, financial management, business analytics, reporting, dashboards, portals, OLAP, GIS integration, software development, documentation, and training.
Nancy is an astute team leader and team member and has effectively implemented multiple tasks ensuring on target completion of all deliverables. She has exceptional interpersonal and communication strengths leveraged to train users, troubleshoot system issues, and ensure superior client care and satisfaction.
Nancy has a Master of Business Administration from the University of Oregon and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Portland State University.
Pat Bywaters
Strategy Execution Consultant
Pat has over 25-years’ experience successfully implementing planning and performance improvement processes.
He has skillfully applied strategy mapping, balanced scorecards, cost and profitability analysis, supply chain modeling, continuous forecasting/budgeting/planning, process improvement including reengineering, value analysis, capacity management, business case development, portfolio management, facilitation, change management and business software selection and implementation. His engagements have typically had a heavy focus on training and knowledge transfer of techniques to a cross-functional client team.
Pat has large firm consulting experience from Cap Gemini, marchFIRST and KPMG Consulting. While at Cap Gemini, he was a member of the Activity Based Management Center of Excellence within Gemini Consulting as well as the national supply chain practice. Manufacturing and distribution clients include Dean Foods, Alcon, NCH Corporation, YUM! Brands, Phillips Petroleum, Lennox Air Conditioning, Dana Corporation, Zales, Alumax, Alcatel, Delta Faucet, Fleishmann’s, PepsiCo Food Systems, and Williamson-Dickie. Pat was a founding advisory board member for the TCU Supply and Value Chain Center, where he jointly developed customized training.
Pat’s academic training includes an MBA in Accounting and MIS from The University of Texas at Dallas UTD. He also earned a B.S. in Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. He has a professional certificate in Supply Chain Management also from UTD.
Partners
Mr. Craig Schiff, president of BPM Partners, is a pioneer in Business Performance Management, helped create and define the field as it evolved from generic business intelligence and analytic applications into Business Performance Management.
Mr. Schiff has worked with BPM and related technologies for over 30 years, first as a founding member at IMRS/Hyperion Software (now part of Oracle) in the role of Senior VP, Products and Services, and later as a co-founder of OutlookSoft (now part of SAP in the role of President and CEO.
Prior to Hyperion and OutlookSoft he project managed the custom development of financial reporting systems for customers of GE Information Services Company including American Express and AMF. Mr. Schiff was also a founding member of the BPM Standards Group and is a recipient of the Ernst&Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
He has spent 30 years focused on budgeting, forecasting, consolidation, reporting and analytics. He has contributed his expertise to CFO Magazine, APQC American Productivity and Quality Center), Association for Financial Professionals, Industry Week, IMA Institute of Management Accountants), TechTarget, Information Management, TDWI The Data Warehousing Institute) and other leading finance and technology focused publications and conferences. He holds an M.B.A. in Finance from Fordham University.
The right expertise can turn your team into champions.
Contact Future Ready Finance now.