Former Concentra, Salesforce executives bring wealth of experience in developing IT strategies that drive cost optimization, revenue growth and business transformation.
Everest Group—a consulting and research firm that has served 120 Fortune 500 companies and a total of 1,230 enterprises around the world in the past three years alone—today announced the addition of two seasoned professionals to its team. Stephen Chen, formerly chief of staff for the CIO at Concentra, and Matthew Strickler, who previously served as director of transformation consulting at Salesforce, have joined Everest Group as associate partners.
Everest Group CEO and founder Peter Bendor-Samuel said these additions to the consulting team reflect Everest Group’s growth and commitment to delivering results for its global clients. “Our clients throughout the world rely on Everest Group’s global consulting practice to deliver impactful services,” said Bendor-Samuel. “That requires a team of highly experienced professionals who have a track record of shaping profitable, market competitive and transformational business strategies. Stephen Chen and Matthew Strickler bring that uncommon expertise to Everest Group.”
Chen, based in Dallas, brings 20 years of extensive industry and consulting experience to Everest Group. He specializes in corporate restructuring and optimizing SG&A (selling, general and administrative) expenses. His consulting expertise includes IT strategy, business transformations—including IT organization redesigns, service delivery and IT process improvements—and outsourcing.
During his tenure at Concentra, Chen oversaw an US$80 million annual IT budgeting and planning process. He developed and implemented an enterprise portfolio management function designed to align business strategy with strategic initiatives and govern the enterprise portfolio. Chen also assessed Concentra’s IT functional maturity, implementing changes to improve delivery effectiveness and business portfolio alignment. Prior to that, Chen served as a principal in Booz & Company’s IT strategy group, where he spent eight years serving in client delivery and practice leadership roles. His engagements concentrated on IT strategies and functional optimizations, with a focus on health payors and financial services. Prior to Booz, he held various functional roles in supply chain management with Shell Oil Company.
Strickler, also based in Dallas, specializes in spearheading change across client organizations, driving operational improvements with a bottom-line impact, and identifying and assessing investment opportunities. With more than 20 years of global experience spanning multiple industries, his expertise includes helping businesses in the technology sector identify growth and profit opportunities, scale their organizations, and transform their sales capabilities
While at Salesforce, Strickler served a lead role in developing strategic offerings to drive customer-centric transformation. He also developed a more robust and integrated annual planning capability that resulted in significant increases in revenue, headcount, and contribution margin. Prior to that, Strickler served as senior director of operations and strategy of the cloud services business at Hewlett Packard, where he played a key role driving progress for a new web services business model and scaling the organization from inception to private beta launch. Previously, Strickler spent six years at the Boston Consulting Group advising senior executives on growth strategies, assessing merger and investment opportunities, post-merger integration and transformational business models.