Cloudbook Profile: Tom Kelly

By Zach Nelson

A contradiction, that is what I think best describes Tom, but in a good way. Tom started his career steeped in Finance, climbing the ranks to CFO but during his career journey he has become a very competent CIO. Today he jokes that his business card reads CFO/CIO/EIEIO, but in reality he is one of the few people I know that get the importance of a functional Finance and IT relationship.

Since 1998 Tom has been a strong believer in leveraging the Cloud to drive performance and efficiency. He would challenge the traditional CIO’s mindset that all company information and applications must be “controlled” by the company. For example, in 1998 he took the entire planning, budgeting and forecasting process to the Cloud for Deluxe Corporation, at the time a $2 billion public company. The product was called Adaytum, which has subsequently been acquired by Cognos. You can imagine the barriers he encountered at that time but his vision and ability to execute persuaded Deluxe to embrace the change.

Recently Tom was able to put a company’s entire IT infrastructure in the Cloud by adopting Google Apps, NetSuite and other best of breed Cloud applications. He did this seamlessly in less than one year improving information and efficiency while driving significant savings for 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment.

Today Tom is the Managing Director of T-Edward, Inc. a unique company that was founded to facilitate moving a company entirely to the Cloud. He considers the linkage of strategy to key business drivers to be the best predictor of company success, and leveraging the Cloud allows him to ensure that the execution of each company’s strategy is a reality.

He has shifted many business leaders’ perspective and assumptions about how to efficiently and effectively run a component of a business’ operations or the entire business completely in the Cloud. He is a sought after contributor to magazine articles and noted Cloud expert that enjoys the opportunity to evangelize the benefits of embracing the Cloud.

Zach Nelson is Chief Executive Office at NetSuite, Inc.

Contributions

Contributions

Article: Software's Temperamental Star
December 17 2009
The outlook for on-demand business applications remains promising, but there is room for improvement.

Presentation: Nothing But Net
March 20 2009
A presentation from SaaSCon2009, on the transformation of Kardia Health & 2nd Wind with the use of Web-based software including: Google Apps, NetSuite, WorkOasis, Adaptive Planning, EchoSign, Concur, eFax, Halogen, Monster, WebEx, Zoomerang, and other on-demand applications.

Article: One Company's Budget: Getting Back Into Shape
March 19 2009
An exercise equipment retailer overhauls the IT department budget, swapping old programs for hosted applications.

Paper: A Company Achieved a One-Month Payback Migrating to Google Apps
March 19 2009
A Company achieved an ROI of 837% and a one-month payback migrating to Google Apps. Nucleus Research conducted an ROI study with 2nd Wind Exercise and found that this 300-user specialty retail company achieved an ROI of 837% and a one-month payback. 2nd Wind replaced its existing Microsoft Exchange environment with Google Apps, reducing IT costs while improving cross-company communication and collaboration.

Paper: 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment Uses ServiceExpress for Management Solutions
October 23 2008
ServiceExpress consolidates 2nd Wind's utility and waste management services and provides energy management information reporting to all of the company's retail locations throughout the country.

Paper: NetSuite Case Study: 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment
April 19 2008
Exercise Equipment The CFO/CIO of 2nd Wind discusses the implementation of NetSuite and the benefits it brought to the company.

Paper: Google Apps Case Study: 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment Legal Discovery
April 19 2008
Exercise Equipment Gets in Shape for Legal Discovery Initially, 2nd Wind implemented Google Apps to replace its Exchange server. Soon after, Tom Kelly began to look for an archiving solution and found Google Message Discovery.

Paper: Adaptive Planning & NetSuite Case Study: Kardia Health Systems
April 19 2008
The CFO/CIO of Kardia Health, Tom Kelly, implements Web-based technology platforms to reduce the time it takes to prepare monthly financial statements, produce reports and manage the business with rolling forecasts and analyses.

Paper: Adaptive Planning Case Study: 2nd Wind
April 19 2008
Explosive growth overtaxed 2nd Wind's enterprise systems and IT infrastructure so they turned to Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. They saw an immediate improvement in the flexibility and scalability of its systems, but soon recognized a need to implement strategic financial functionality.

Video: A Company's Migration to Google Apps
April 01 2008 - YouTube
Tom Kelly talks about how a company migrated to Google Apps and generated over a 600% ROI in the process!

Tom Kelly

Managing Director at T-Edward, Inc.