Mark Fellenz brings to bear a deep professional background in management consulting along with the creativity and ingenuity of an entrepreneur. His specialty is blending the strategic and tactical in always finding smart, out-of-the-box approaches to whatever challenges may exist.

Mark started his career with Ernst & Young LLP consulting for some of the largest companies in the world and then moved into successive cycles of start-up efforts, independent consulting and project management activities, which brings him his current dual-track of both consulting and finally launching a start-up of his own making. He earned a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and an MBA in entrepreneurship, both from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Mark is looking forward to a hopefully great season of camping and another round of snowshoeing toward the end of the year.

To connect with Mark and EntrepreneurialC

Situation: Babson College sought to dramatically reengineer its entire MBA Admissions process, taking it from a traditionally passive model to an outward-facing, proactive approach across all four of its MBA programs.

Achievements: 625% growth in Fast Track MBA enrollment within 12+ months while simultaneously launching new Fall enrollments both on the Babson Campus and in Portland, OR For the approximately 18,000 inquiries / year, established consultative approach and requisite team to proactively contact and consult with each and every candidate inquiring on any of the four MBA programs across seven different enrollment cycles Managed entire web presence and drove creation, production and distribution of all Admissions marketing material Deployed reporting infrastructure to provide new progress tracking and insight into each cycle in near real time – Enabled fact-based assessment and development of predictable strategies for success within each cycle Achieved quantitative and qualitative increases in class quality, e.g. average GMAT, years of professional experience, future professional trajectory, along with improved Admissions office performance, e.g. Selectivity and Yield Improved rankings for the Two-Year MBA program, growth across the One-Year MBA program (from one to two cohorts), and sustained improvement in the Evening MBA program Drove tremendous improvement in coordination across Babson offices and external vendors – Dramatically bettered performance, relations, and overall confidence in Admissions

Situation: Worcester Polytechnic Institute recently established its School of Business from its former Department of Management and seeks to further build upon its #1 Part-Time MBA program ranking through active recruitment and deployment of new / improved programs.

Achievements (to date): In 3+ months, increased Fall enrollment by 30+ with no sacrifice with respect to quality Shortly thereafter, increased Spring enrollment by 20+, this time with zero to slight increase in quality Designing / Deploying recruitment strategies and Outreach for a working professional Blended MBA program launching in May (essentially, a near executive-level, fully-loaded, cohort-based MBA) Implementing myriad process, system, reporting, and other improvements, including adoption of paperless processing via DataBank, management of on-line application, preliminary rating / screening process for Fall applications, creation of marketing communications, approaches to landing pages and inquiry gathering techniques, and weekly pipeline reporting, among others

Situation: NSTAR, a major public utility, faced a major dilemma – They needed wireless, mobile-device capability in all their warehouses, yet the time and effort to achieve that objective wasn't feasible given a traditional approach projected to cost $5M and one year to upgrade their existing systems.

Achievements For NSTAR: Delivered successful Proof-Of-Concept Pilot Pilot that proved reliability and viability of an approach NSTAR had already tried (and failed) to deploy themselves and gained first paying Customer’s full confidence that a wireless solution was feasible for 80% less Soundly beat two established competitors in blind competition Won $400+K sale – Anticipated add-ons raised estimated value of total sales to $1M For Extensa Software (software start-up): Developed business strategy and go-to-market approach, including partnerships, and generated leads and sales opportunities, broadening market exposure and presence Absorbed Product Management duties to assess and oversee development and product launch Built Professional Services capability, leading to successful Pilot and implementation sale

Situation: Uuquo.org seeks to solve the problem of Username proliferation across and throughout the internet by offering an open and true-to-form Web 2.0 service that makes the internet easier for People to use and more streamlined for Websites to offer valuable content and services.

Achievements From nothing more than a concept, efforts to launch Uuquo include the following: Product Development: Launched initial website within 12 weeks of formal product development; Drafted specifications for initial beta product along with initial definition of longer-term anticipated product needs over a rolling 24-month horizon Market Analysis: Assessed target markets, especially focusing on segmentation and how the synergy between target markets might trigger (or be leveraged to catalyze) critical mass vis-à-vis viral adoption – Primary targets include undergraduate college applicants (managed identity), web developers and programmers (authenticating portfolios), and multi-player on-line gamer (avatar consistency) Beta Test: Launched informal beta offering to confirm estimates and generate added learnings important to longer-term projections – In support of Product Development and Market Analysis, confirmed a) that user base is actually an aggregation of many long-tail market segments and b) which features should next be launched Note: Uuquo is currently still operating in beta-mode while preparing for a complete V1.0 launch of its services.

Situation: Enkata Technologies, a CRM Analytics start-up, needed a complete operational framework and customer service-oriented approach for its initial launch of an internet portal focusing on customer feedback and its later launch of Analytics services via an ASP business model.

Achievements Operational and Customer Service: Created 5,000+ relationships with customer service departments across the entire economic spectrum, establishing and nurturing a robust foundation for a collaborative network to remedy instances of customer dissatisfaction Shortened cycle times by 90% or more in critical areas by incorporating leading self-help / knowledge-based methods to eliminate costs and improve productivity Drafted and managed SQA test procedures and additionally lead effort to build batch processes to automate effectively 80% of workload Designed entire Customer Service methodology, policies / procedures, and technical infrastructure and tools Constructed simulation model of the entire Operations Group, bringing together fixed and variable cost components into a single model capable of both measuring process performance and seeding downstream workforce requirements Product Management: Managed Product Management activities to both maintain and regularly enhance and relaunch portal and internal corporate systems – Led process of identifying system weaknesses / improvements and building solutions consistent (and technically compatible with) existing infrastructure Led major aspects of comprehensive site relaunch, including seamless integration of customer-facing portal features with database and BackOffice functionality Drafted specification for and ultimately led entire development and implementation of BackOffice application, completely facilitating website operation and internal workflow

Situation: With Ernst & Young specialized in solving business process and systems challenges of international nature and complexity for such notable clients as Ford Motor Company and General Motors.

Situation: Ford Motor Company engaged Ernst & Young to completely reengineer its global supply chain (production planning through dealer order management) that, at the time, annually manufactured and sold approximately 6M vehicles across North America, Europe, and Rest Of World. Achievements On a project accredited with a value proposition exceeding $1B, contributed substantial efforts toward creating, piloting, and deploying a supply chain vision for Ford, including: Developed components of a future state vision for Ford’s reengineered supply chain, defining global process characteristics, barriers to implementation, enablers, and critical success factors Managed two sub-teams totaling approximately 20 combined full-time personnel Launched regional and national pilots (and coordinated an international pilot) to test reengineered Order-To-Delivery processes – Managed entire pilot implementation and integration of reengineered solution with existing processes and systems Reviewed functionality of client-selected software application with respect to process requirements and workflow implications for production planning personnel Situation: General Motors faced considerable short-term challenges in their coordination of sales and operations planning activities for dealer and fleet sales as GM both implemented a new order management system and underwent organizational realignment. Achievements Accredited with saving $4+M within a 6-month period through a creative simulation-based solution that identified preventative measures to ensure consistent allocation Developed longer-term vision and shorter-term implementation alternatives to cope with both the new system and organizational changes Assessed current state with respect to industry leading practices and facilitated GM through a process of constructing departmental roles & responsibilities for a newly created customer service department Situation: Echlin, a $4 billion automotive supplier, needed to deploy an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) package across its facilities in Connecticut, Ohio, and Kansas as well as rationalize its business processes, both targeting improved coordination and operational efficiency. Achievements Supervised both a plant-specific team in Connecticut and a functional team focusing on product management, managing all client interaction at the Connecticut facility and spearheading product management functionality for the entire project Rationalized all integration points, identifying and depicting entire systems landscape Developed data migration approach for all three facilities and 180,000 individual parts Led efforts to identify improvement opportunities and applicable leading practices as the basis for a business case for the overall implementation

Education

Master of Business Administration, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, May 1994
Concentration in Entrepreneurship

Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, May 1991
Concentration in Automatic Control Systems

Interests

Snowshoeing, Camping (and Bike Camping), Behavioral Analysis, National Politics and Foreign Affairs / Policy, Entrepreneurship, Open Source and Open Approaches to Everyday Problems