With over twenty-five years as a sales rep and executive, banker, consultant, project manager, educator and owner of consulting business, Creig Foster has honed his expertise in most aspects of business management, especially in the areas of sales, marketing, change/project management, cash management, performance improvement, treasury operations, and teaching at both the college and graduate school levels.
Creig is one of a select number of professionals that has combined his practical corporate experience with the use of advanced business analytics – data mining, statistics, data visualization, and predictive modeling to help companies to solve their day-to-day business problems, enhance management’s decision making process and install on-going performance measurements and reporting.
He is a strong believer that better informed decisions using analytics and in-depth business reporting leads to better financial results – increased revenues, greater profits and reduced costs. Companies both medium and large have benefited from his corporate background, investigative skills, problem solving capabilities and practical application of these analytical tools. Not only are benefits realized quickly but on-going performance measurement and reporting using KPIs helps to improve business operations and financial results.
He gained a broad sales background while progressing up the ladder from territory sales rep at Lever Brothers and Xerox to Sales Manager and VP at Bank of America’s Cash Management Consulting Group. Direct corporate marketing experience was acquired while working for ProBusiness (acquired by ADP) where he managed all facets of a new product launch including marketing collateral, promotion, training sales reps, marketing plan, lead qualification through numeric scoring, interface and coordination with sales, operations, finance and IT and roll-out of the new HR back-office support service.
His consulting and systems development/implementation experience includes positions at Northern Trust Bank, Bank of America, TRW, KPMG, IBM and Siebel (acquired by Oracle). In these roles, he was responsible for managing projects for Fortune 500 companies (Time Warner, Boeing, PG&E, etc.) encompassing Sales Force Automation, Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Marketing, document management (Documentum), sales forecasting, cash forecasting, data warehouse design, calling card fraud detection, cash management (receivable, payables, and inventory management), customer information systems, change management, profit improvement, etc.
Business analytics experience includes direct project work, predictive model building, and business reporting design and implementation in the areas of marketing campaign management, customer loyalty and retention, lead generation and qualification, marketing mix allocation, promotional planning, product and price management, demand forecasting, etc. Companies work performed for included Lexis Nexis US Legal Markets, NASA – Human Factors Research Group, ProBusiness, Industrial Metal Supply, etc.)
In the financial area, improvement opportunities along with meeting reporting needs were realized in the areas of sales forecasting and customer profitability, working capital management and cash flow generation, inventory management, and credit and collections. Representative projects include work for ProBusiness, Syntex Corp (acquired by Roche), Fitech Laboratories, optionsExpress, etc.
Creig holds a BA in Marketing from Northwestern University and MBA in Finance from DePaul University, Chicago. Previously he taught at Golden Gate University’s MBA program, San Francisco and currently teaches marketing on-line courses at University of Phoenix undergraduate school.