Frank Cortesa

Frank is a seasoned executive who brings to the table 30 years experience in a unique combination blending seven intensive years in a cross industry CRM group of a major systems integrator (Accenture) with the experience of leading multiple global CRM projects for a Fortune 500 company (Data General).  He has been consulting independently since January 2005. 

Frank has extensive experience in every facet of CRM from overall vision creation, project requirements definition and vendor selection to cross functional global deployments.  He has worked with management teams in sales, service and marketing in twelve foreign countries across four continents as well as multiple organizations in the US and is very effective at integrating business functions to improve overall operational effectiveness.  He helps deliver measurable business results through improved CRM capabilities by helping a company develop the vision and approach to align their customer facing operations with corporate objectives. 

Frank is skilled at building collaborative relationships among the often disparate groups of stakeholders involved in a set of projects.  Differing objectives and needs can derail even the best planned projects, if left unresolved.  The need of the business for improved capability NOW is sometimes at odds with the IT group’s need to control cost and manage scope.  Frank works with the management and project teams to help achieve balance between these forces, helping them to pull together instead of against each other, to ensure the project focuses on providing value to the targeted user groups.  Delivery on time and within budget is good; coupling that with delivering sustained value to the business is what truly makes a CRM project a business success.  The experience and capability to work with an executive team to achieve this is what differentiates Frank.

In addition to his extensive CRM work, Frank recently helped a major insurance company to improve the effectiveness of their post acquisition integration efforts.  He helped establish an effective Project management Office function, consolidated projects to reduce the overhead involved in managing them, streamlined the reporting processes to provide better more consistent management insight while reducing the work involved in producing the reports.  He also led several of the individual projects as needed.   

Based on his work with the integration project he was asked to work with other groups to develop financial models and plans for a major outsourcing initiative and develop service level agreements among the various business functions and the outsourcing service provider.

Other selected relevant experience includes:

• Delivered multi-million dollar, year-long sales transformation project for Marriott International, improving performance of 2000+ properties and 4000+ users. 

• Developed a comprehensive CRM roadmap for Caterpillar integrating over 25 existing systems, in-process initiatives and new recommendations for a more customer-centric focus across multiple divisions and channels.

• Led analysis of business requirements for COMPAQ to plan the integration of 14 North American call centers.  Developed plans for a series of system consolidations and process improvements to reduce headcount, eliminate overlapping functions and consolidate facilities.  Savings were estimated at over $20 million.

• Delivered executive level CRM overviews for client executive team of a Canadian Government Agency on applying CRM capabilities to their operations.

• Developed a CRM program approach and managed the vendor selection process for a non-profit accreditation organization focused on increasing repeat sales by 20% and shortening sales cycles by several days.

• Conducted seven sessions of Accenture's proprietary Siebel Project Management training course for over 150 Accenture consulting managers who would lead client projects to design and develop Siebel-based CRM solutions.

• Led the cross-functional team at Data General that built the business processes, designed, developed and deployed a laptop-based set of sales tools that integrated account management, opportunity tracking, forecasting, and configuration and quoting functionality from different vendors.  This depth of functionality was groundbreaking at the time and is rarely equaled today. 

Frank has an MBA from Babson College in Wellesley MA and a BS in Accounting from Boston College