GSA Technology Council

Michael Bolick, president and CEO of Selah Technologies, an advanced materials manufacturer, has been named to the University of South Carolina NanoCenter’s External Advisory Board (EAB). The USC NanoCenter is the University’s focal point for science and engineering studies of nanometer-scale structures, their unique properties, and their integration into functional units. Bolick was invited to join the Board because of his proven experience with advanced materials manufacturing and dedication to nanotechnology research and development.

Bolick recently attended the Board’s planning meeting in Columbia, SC. At these annual meetings, members discuss the Center’s strengths and challenges, the strategic objectives necessary to further its direction and mission, current and prospective means of funding, outreach efforts, and idea generation.

“I am honored to be a member of the EAB, as I believe we have the same goals for the furtherance of science and engineering – growth through education, research and innovation,” says Bolick. “I look forward to working with this distinguished group as we strive to support the NanoCenter’s stewardship role for knowledge and technology that is expected to ultimately benefit South Carolina.”

Bolick speaks to the GSA Technology Council at the February luncheon.

ScanSource has named Jeff Yelton president of the ScanSource North America POS and Barcoding sales unit. Yelton has served as vice president of merchandising for the sales unit since 2005 where he has led the team responsible for strategic direction and management of the company’s vendor relationships, including the development of integrated marketing programs, asset management and growth strategies.

As president of ScanSource NA POS and Barcoding, Yelton will continue his role in managing vendor relationships, while also overseeing the unit’s overall strategic direction, financial performance and growth initiatives.

“Jeff has been a real leader and advisor in ScanSource – to our employees, our vendors, and our reseller partners. His previous experience working in the retail channel is a significant asset, and his passion for our company runs deep,” said Scott Benbenek, president of ScanSource Worldwide Operations. “Jeff’s leadership and management skills, in addition to his strong relationships with our vendor partners, make him a natural fit for this position. Jeff and Mark Morgan, ScanSource vice president of sales, have been integral to the continued strong performance this unit has achieved over the past few years.”

Before joining ScanSource, Yelton worked for Retalix Ltd, where he served for more than two years as CEO of Retalix North America and previously executive vice president of acquisitions and business development. During this time, he was charged with creating and implementing strategic initiatives for the company. Before Retalix, Yelton worked with Kyrus Corporation for seven years, where he held sales, business development and senior management positions and prior to that, he worked at IBM Corporation for 12 years.

Customer Effective, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and value-added reseller of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, announced the opening of a new office in Charlotte, N.C. The Charlotte office will provide regional sales and customer support for the company’s growing CRM software client base along the Atlantic Coast.

“Customer Relationship Management (CRM) IT initiatives are at the top of many organization’s strategic plans for 2008,” said Scott Millwood, president, Customer Effective. “As executives implement key CRM initiatives, we are ready to provide any level of support and expertise to increase their return on investment. Our expansion in Charlotte will allow us to capitalize on the rich talent pool of experienced, well-trained technology and financial services professionals there, and will enable us to provide world-class support to our clients in this region of the country.”

Customer Effective provides CRM solutions to mid-market and enterprise organizations across a wide variety of industries. With its Capital Effectiveâ„¢ CRM Suite, the company provides front office solutions for financial services professionals in commercial banking, private equity, investment banks, hedge funds and wealth management. Powered by Microsoft Dynamics CRM, these solutions provide effective marketing, sales and customer service performance including strategic views of the business through custom dashboard reporting and key performance indicators. Capital Effective utilizes functionality from the 2007 Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Office Outlook to bring together information from all data sources within an organization to provide one, holistic view of each customer in real time.

Dovetail Insurance Corporation, a newly founded insurance technology and service company, with over 4,800 independent agents, has chosen Columbia, South Carolina, for its corporate headquarters. Columbia is already home to a rapidly growing insurance technology cluster of companies.

“Dovetail’s initial focus will be on providing a comprehensive solution for insurance policy administration and other related functions with insurance carriers that service government programs such as assigned risk plans, residual markets and the National Flood Insurance Program,” said Steve Francis, president and chief executive officer of Dovetail. “Dovetail’s goal is to become the most efficient, non-risk bearing company of its kind by leveraging the technology assets of the Pequot portfolio companies and other best-in-class sources.”

Larry Wilson, a venture partner with Pequot Ventures, serves as the chairman of the board of Dovetail Insurance Corporation. Wilson is the former chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Policy Management Systems Corporation (PMSC), which merged with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) in 2000. Pequot Ventures, the venture capital arm of Pequot Capital Management, has over $1.8 billion in committed capital.

Lawrence Lenihan Jr., Managing Director of Pequot Ventures, with over 17 years of operating and investment experience in the technology industry also serves on the Dovetail Insurance Corporation’s Board of Directors.

In addition, Michael Gantt, has joined Dovetail as a board member and chairman of the Strategy and Technology committee. Gantt is a former senior executive of FiServ and PMSC.
“Our experienced management team, along with the other Pequot insurance technology companies, is well on its way to creating the technological infrastructure and the business relationships necessary to accomplish our exciting mission,” said Francis, who has over twenty-five years of experience in property and casualty agency distribution and technology. He is the former president of Trumbull Services, a technology and servicing carrier subsidiary of The Hartford. His prior experience includes: senior vice president of business development for InsLogic, a national personal lines agency; vice president of P/C development for PMSC; and vice president of claims, sales and development for PMSC.

Other key members of Dovetail’s experienced management team include the following:

Tony Mattioli serves as the chief operations officer. Mattioli has over twenty-five years of experience in business development and delivery in insurance technology. He is the former vice president of business development for Full Capture Solutions Corporation, a predictive analytics technology company focused on the Property Casualty Industry. Mattioli was also at PMSC and was the national sales manager for the Insurance Services Office (ISO).

Kay Womble serves as vice president and CMO of sales and marketing. Womble has over 28 years of experience in the insurance market with a specific emphasis on business process outsourcing. Most recently she held the position of vice president of marketing for Trumbull Insurance Services, a subsidiary of The Hartford Financial Group.

Susan Cromley serves as Dovetail’s controller. Cromley has held numerous accounting and compliance management positions since she began her career in 1990. She has spent the last seven years at Netbank, an internet banking and mortgage operation, where she was their controller and director of accounting.

In addition, David Stephens serves as director of operations, and Betty Stroud serves as director of agency development. Stephens has over 17 years of experience in the property and casualty insurance industry with an emphasis on technology. Stroud has been working in the agency environment for over 10 years and has been responsible for agency relations and agent performance for several large carriers.

via: Dovetail Insurance

Yahoo! Inc. has announced the appointment of Aristotle “Ari” Balogh, 43, as chief technology officer (CTO). Formerly the CTO at VeriSign, Inc., Balogh will lead Yahoo!’s global engineering organization and manage all of the company’s technology operations. Balogh will be based at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., and will report directly to Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO).

“World-class technology development is a critical part of Yahoo!’s strategy. Bringing a strong technology leader on board to drive engineering and operational excellence across our technology group has been a significant priority for the company,” said Yang. “In Ari Balogh, Yahoo! is adding one of the industry’s most talented leaders to our bench-strength of technology experts. With a proven track record for successfully leading large scale engineering initiatives and driving rapid cycles of technology innovation, Ari’s leadership skills are well suited to leading Yahoo!’s development efforts as we continue in our mission to deliver the best, most indispensable experiences on the Internet.”

As CTO, Balogh will be responsible for company-wide product development which includes optimizing resources, speeding innovation, and ensuring the quality of Yahoo!’s products and services. Balogh will focus on establishing a common architecture and building blocks to drive development aligned with corporate strategy and on improving the overall effectiveness of Yahoo!’s engineering efforts. All of Yahoo!’s engineering functions, including technical operations, infrastructure, and internal IT support groups, will report into Balogh.

“Yahoo! has been a technological powerhouse since the earliest days of the Internet and I’m extremely impressed with everything this team of talented engineers has accomplished,” said Balogh. “I am excited about the opportunity to build upon this kind of demonstrated success and to participate in the development of the Internet applications and services that are transforming our culture. I am honored to be a part of the Yahoo! team.”

Prior to Yahoo!, Balogh was executive vice president, chief technology officer, and head of global product design for VeriSign, where he led all internal and external technology functions. During his nearly ten years at VeriSign, Balogh held numerous technology leadership positions that focused on aligning technical execution with business priorities; driving product strategy; and improving the speed of innovation and quality across the entire lifecycle of service creation and delivery – from product concept to billing. He was recognized by InfoWorld Magazine as one of the top 25 CTOs in 2007. Prior to joining VeriSign, Balogh held leadership positions at SRA Corporation and Roadnet Technologies. He holds an M.S.E. in electrical and computer engineering, and a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from Johns Hopkins University.

via: Yahoo!

The Premier Inc. healthcare alliance today announced that 13 South Carolina hospitals have joined the nearly 200 hospitals that have selected Premier’s SafetySurveillor™ as their Web-based tool used to detect and alert staff of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). SafetySurveillor protects patients by continuously tracking HAIs and antibiotic use to monitor prevention and control activities.

South Carolina hospitals that selected SafetySurveillor to better protect patients while meeting public reporting requirements include:

• Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, Greenville – two hospitals;


• Greenville Hospital System, Greenville – five hospitals;


• Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston;


• McLeod Health, Florence;


• Palmetto Health, Columbia – three hospitals;


• Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, Spartanburg.

State law requires the S. C. Department of Health & Environmental Control (DHEC) to establish a system for compiling infection data from various medical facilities and to coordinate the activities of an advisory committee. As of February 1, 2008, Medical facilities will report on surgical site infections and central line related bloodstream infections, and later on other categories as decided by DHEC in consultation with the committee.

SafetySurveillor helps hospitals collect data needed to meet state-mandated public reporting of certain HAIs, including prophylactic antibiotic start and stop times and screening for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile, some of the most common and harmful infections found in hospitals today. Due to the large volume of clinical data that needs to be analyzed, many hospitals have resources to do targeted surveillance of high-risk patients only. With the automated SafetySurveillor system, hospitals have the ability to detect HAIs, alert staff and facilitate timely intervention to reduce and prevent infections.

SafetySurveillor has also been chosen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an HAI surveillance system software vendor participant in developing a standards-based solution for transmission of HAI data from existing commercial software systems to the agency’s National Healthcare Safety Network.

Premier SafetySurveillor is integrated into the Premier Performance Suite™, which includes benchmarking, reporting analysis and real-time surveillance of clinical, safety, financial, operational, labor productivity and supply data. The Premier Performance Suite is powered by the Perspective™ database, the nation’s largest integrated clinical, financial and operational comparative database, providing patient-level detail to identify opportunities for improvement in clinical quality and efficiency.

About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Serving 1,700 U.S. hospitals and more than 49,000 other healthcare sites, the Premier healthcare alliance and its members are transforming healthcare together. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier operates one of the leading healthcare purchasing networks and the nation’s most comprehensive repository of hospital clinical and financial information. A subsidiary operates one of the nation’s largest policy-holder owned, hospital professional liability risk-retention groups. A world leader in helping healthcare providers deliver dramatic improvements in care, Premier is working with the United Kingdom’s National Health Service North West and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to improve hospital performance.

Nearly 200 hospitals have selected Premier’s real-time SafetySurveillorâ„¢ application to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and optimize antibiotic use

ECPI College of Technology has extended its military scholarship program for South Carolina veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. This scholarship program was initially introduced in fall 2005 and is also available to spouses and dependents of military veterans who have served in these regions. Up to $150,000 in scholarships is available for students who begin classes at ECPI College of Technology or Medical Careers Institute, the School of Health Science at ECPI College of Technology, campuses in Greenville, Columbia, or Charleston, South Carolina through Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2008. The scholarship may also be applied to online courses at ECPI.

Qualified veterans are eligible for up to $5,000 in scholarship tuition. Qualified spouses and dependents are eligible for up to $3,000 in scholarship tuition. Individuals desiring to apply for this non-need based scholarship program should contact the campus President at any one of the South Carolina campus locations of ECPI College of Technology.

via: ECPI

Manfred Gollent is an Improvement Architect and Change Agent helping clients ranging from individual professionals to Fortune 500 organizations to improve results, expand their potential and reach their goals more consistently. In this capacity Manfred facilitates Strategy Development, Productivity and Efficiency Development as well as Team Building and Organizational Development.

Prior to founding QLI International in spring of 2006, Manfred Gollent has been a turn-around executive in a Fortune 500 company with global operations for some 22 years. He lead the rebuilding of underperforming subsidiaries in the United States, Europe and Asia by developing their leadership structure and organization, restructuring their market portfolio, operations and efficiency to improve results towards meeting investors expectations – predominantly through organizational development as well as coaching and mentoring people to high performance while utilizing minimal capital investments in the turnaround process.

During his tenure at the headquarters his senior management roles included facilitating strategy development and improvement processes of operations in the UK, Belgium, Norway, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the USA. Manfred has extensive experience in all areas of management including marketing, sales, financial operations, product development and manufacturing. He served on company Boards in Norway, U.K., France, Belgium and U.S.A.

Following his passion for business and people development Manfred is now consulting to principals and executives of companies of different sizes as well as individuals in entrepreneurial roles with a focus on strategy, efficiency management, organizational development and personal development. In addition to his engagement with organizations and open enrollment workshops for personal development in the areas of leadership and sales, he is coaching individuals to help them maximize their potential and achieve their goals more consistently.

Manfred has a degree in Electrical Engineering and an Executive MBA from IMADEC University in Vienna, Austria. He is certified in training and marketing by ASI, a certified facilitator and affiliate of the Total Quality Institute, and is a certified affiliate and trainer of the Resource Associate Network.

Manfred has written articles for various publications and has given presentations to organizations and professional associations on topics including strategic planning, sales development, process management, leadership development, customer loyalty and goal development.

ScanSource said Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has completed its investigation of its historical stock option grant practices, without recommending an action.

A special independent committee of ScanSource’s board completed its own review of the stock option grant practices on Jan. 19. ScanSource said the internal probe did not show that that the company’s current senior management, former chief executive, or board engaged in intentional misconduct.

PropertyBoss Solutions, a Greenville, SC-based company offering property management software and services, announces the addition of Christy Parr as Client Specialist. Her responsibilities include client care – assisting and training clients with the implementation and operation of PropertyBoss products. She will work closely with clients and staff to coordinate and assist with customer care. Parr has experience in customer service, IT support, and training. Most recently, her responsibilities were in Quality Assurance and included software testing and development of training and documentation materials.