Mr. Crew is a Senior Consulting Manager with Pillsbury's Global Sourcing practice. Mr. Crew is not an attorney. Mr. Crew has over 20 years of IT leadership experience with consulting services, large global corporations and high-tech startups. He is especially suited to lead major change initiatives involving global sourcing, significant challenges with stakeholder alignment, supplier relationship, cultural change, operational issues, or budget constraints. As a consultant to CIO’s and senior leaders, Mr. Crew provides advice and program leadership to firms looking to optimize service delivery.

Mr. Crew’s focus within the practice has included “restarting” troubled outsourcing relationships, assisting clients with organizational restructuring and change management, helping organizations assess offshoring opportunities, re-scoping outsourcing arrangements and launching supplier relationship management teams. He has recently made significant contributions to a major revision of the Pillsbury Global Sourcing (PGS) Mosaic^TM methodology.

Prior to joining Pillsbury, Mr. Crew served as head of Technology Sourcing for United Health Group, where he managed an annual spend for hardware, software, services, outsourcing and offshore of $1Billion. Reporting to both the Office of the CIO and the Office of the CFO, this new role for United Health Group was chartered to define and implement the strategy and organization to deliver optimal sourcing of this critical capability at an enterprise level.

Before launching his independent consulting practice in 2001, he was Vice President, Global Technologies Optimization for the American Express Company. In this role, Mr. Crew led a worldwide team, focused on improving the economics and operational performance of one of the world’s largest and most diverse IT environments.

Prior to joining American Express, Mr. Crew served as General Manager for a Minneapolis based systems integration and consulting firm, after a successful senior management career at Prudential Financial.

Significant recent efforts include:

• For the credit card subsidiary of a major bank, evaluated the “health” of an existing ITO arrangement considering financial and operational performance, communications, cultural alignment, process improvement opportunities and contractual issues. Developed action plans to remediate critical issues within a 30-day period and address systemic issues through a relationship “restart” program over 6 months. Results included improved management alignment, greater role clarity, improved processes and a commitment to joint annual planning. In addition, the client received a significant financial settlement for non-performance, including reduced ongoing charges.
• Advised the executive charged with launching a supplier and contract management team for the IT department regarding strategy, implementation, roles and process.
• Advanced CIO's strategy for implementing a single shared services organization. Developed job descriptions for modified and newly created senior leadership roles. Facilitated CIO direct report team sessions to redefine roles and responsibilities, and documented the new structure using the PGS Mosaictm methodology. Created communication materials to support the resulting reorganization.
• For a $1 billion software engineering firm, led an assessment to determine if accelerated use of offshore resources could be effectively utilized to cut IT costs while maintaining operational quality. Evaluated offshore outsourcing and captive offshoring as alternatives.
• Led negotiations, due diligence, service level definition and transition management for IT outsourcing programs valued at $400 million and $4 billion. In partnership with AT&T and IBM, created a new model for IT outsourcing focused on guiding principles, joint revenue generation, flexible pricing and focus on people. Results included capability on demand, increased operational performance, accelerated time to market, reduced unit costs of more than 10% per year, and shared risk among partner firms.
• Created a methodology for commodity procurement and optimization that was used across Technologies, Corporate Reengineering, and Procurement lines of business for one of the world's largest multinational corporations.
• Co-sponsored a global integration of over 3000 professionals ranging from individual contributors to Vice Presidents, from numerous organizational units, into a new worldwide team. Within a year the new leadership structure was operating smoothly, process integration was nearly complete, and technology standardization was well underway.
• Managed strategic supplier relationships with the world's premier network and telecommunications suppliers, including; IBM, AT&T, EDS, CSC, WorldCom, BT, NTT, Singapore Telecom, Telstra, Level3, and others.
• Optimized very large-scale international customer service center environment (20,000+ seats) with simplified, strategic supplier relationships, new technology platform, and a combination of internal and outsourced facilities.
• Led worldwide network security assessment and improvement initiative for one of the world’s largest private data networks.
• Consolidated $50 million in global communications contracts with 125 suppliers down to 15 suppliers, leveraging worldwide spend and standardizing products and services.
• Managed development and transition of help desk functions to outsource providers. Defined work flow, supporting technology and business interfaces. Ran internal focus groups and simulation lab testing. Established linkages and process for reporting, service levels, problem resolution and escalation. Utilized external benchmarks to foster improvements.
• Led a global program office overseeing major IT change initiatives including organizational alignment, technology standards, process improvement, outsourcing and transition to offshore services.
• Led a business process reengineering program focused on technology enablement for the marketing and back office functions of a major insurance company subsidiary.
• For the largest U.S. health services company, developed a sourcing strategy for IT that included transforming the team, creating alignment across business units and implementing industry best practices.
• For a large financial advising company, responsible for turnaround and revamp of large-scale outsourced network services contract.
• Contributed negotiating and technical expertise to several equity investments and joint ventures on behalf of a Fortune 100 multinational firm.
• Led a global team focused on improving the economics and operational performance of one of the world's largest and most diverse private data and voice networks. Consolidated over 25 regional and line-of-business networks to a single, scaleable worldwide network supporting more than 3000 office locations and more than 500,000 point-of-sale and ATM locations in 72 countries. Architected into this new infrastructure state-of-the-art voice/video/data integration, security/firewall/intrusion detection, and mobile computing capability.

Industry Leadership

• Minnesota Business Venture, Loaned Executive
• The Master’s Forum, multi-year participant
• The CIO Forum, multi-year participant
• The Global Forum, Presenter, “The Internet and Telecommunications Policy”
• US Justice Department, Expert Witness