Vitalita
Technology
Group
Letters
of Satisfaction
-
These are
some letters of satisfaction that Vitalita has received
from clients. These letters come from client managers
and peers. These letters comment on various current and
past staff members of the Vitalita Technology Group
(including Mark Foy, Vitalita President and Functional/Technical
Consultant).
These letters
are available in various document formats (Word document, PDF, etc)
on the Mark
Foy Information Page under the heading "Career Items".
GE
ACCESS
May
3, 2000
Boulder, CO USA
To whom
it may concern:
In my role as Information Technology Project Manager at GE Access, I was
tasked with converting legacy Service Business into the Oracle Financials
System. The project budget was approximately $2 million and consisted of
over 15 developers with a duration of twelve months.
Mark quickly emerged as a leader among is peer group. He was highly
successful in his role as Development Team Leader. Excellent
communication and leadership skills created a highly functional team who
accomplished a tremendous amount of quality work in very short timelines.
As this was my first major project, Mark acted as a mentor to me. His
experience and expertise guided me to the successful completion of a very
difficult task. I depended on him for coaching with regard to
communication skills as well as strategy and vision creation.
The project had a large impact to the business. Therefore, there was
pressure to implement quickly. The pre-chosen software did not
accommodate functionality requirements. Mark presented several options
with both pro and conÕs. This enabled executive management to make
informed decisions with regard to customizations. Mark always explores
every option without judgement.
Mark has the ability to transition from a technical role to a management
role where appropriate. The skill to "bridge the gap" between the
technical and the functional make him an excellent facilitator between IT
and the business. Rarely does a person possess this exceptional talent.
Overall, Mark was a tremendous contributor to the success of the Service
implementation. He successfully completes work either through individual
effort or through the leadership of others. He works with the highest
level of honesty and integrity. The quality of work is consistently
exceeds expectations. I highly recommend him and any resource that he
endorses.
- Denise
Gorely
- IT
Project Manager
- GE
Access
- Boulder,
CO
*****
GE IT DISTRIBUTION
GROUP
December
21, 1998
Boulder, CO USA
To whom
it may concern:
I would like to take the opportunity to describe the work that Vitalita
Consulting, and, specifically, Mark Foy, performed for me as Manager of
Applications Development at Access Graphics.
Mark has a firm grasp of technical details and takes the time to document
them. Mark is also highly skilled at recognizing issues that require
escalation to management for decision-making. Typically, Mark tackles this
by presenting a number of well thought-out options with pros and cons to
aid the decision maker in making choices and in understanding and
communicating the implications of that choice.
Mark is an excellent organizer and deals effectively both with technical
people and with those to whom he reports. Superior under stress, Mark
actually appears to become more calm and more patient as stress escalates
or conflicts emerge, making him an extremely valuable lead team member who
can inspire excellent performance, ensure accountability, and build
bridges even under duress.
In short, I would consider any company very lucky to have Mark join the
team, as he is virtually a shoo-in for creating the atmosphere and
structure necessary to bring in a successful project. Witness the success
of the huge, multi-million dollar upgrade of the highly customized Oracle
Financials applications for Y2K, which was delivered on schedule, under
budget, and with high quality. MarkÕs qualities and work ethic underpinned
that success. I would highly recommend Mark in any project that involves
complexity, tough time constraints, or high quality requirements.
Sincerely,
- Cheryl
Dopp
- Manager
of Applications Development
*****
SHOPNBC
(NBC/GE/VALUEVISION MEDIA)
May
20, 2003
To whom
it may concern,
Mark Foy was
brought into the ShopNBC account on behalf of Motion International
to assist in the stabilization of an 11i complete suite
implementation and conversion from a non-Oracle system
during 2002 and 2003. His unique combination of functional,
business and technical skills allowed him to contribute in
ways that others could not. He allowed us to delegate complete
identification, root cause analysis, and corrective actions
(with clean-up scripts) to be put in place without worrying
about the ball being dropped. Mark consistently provided
solid documentation of his findings and solid counsel and
advice to the client about the options available to solve
problems. In many cases his expertise of Oracle's 11i suite
provided for quick diagnosis and decisions to be teeÕd up
for management to make.
I will likely
call on Mark again when we get into a pinch with 11i. He is
a great team player and integrated well within our team here
in Minnesota.
- Damon
Metts
- Director
of Development
- Information
Technology
- ShopNBC
(ValueVision Media)
- 6740
Shady Oak Road
- Eden
Prairie, MN 55344
*****
ACCESS
GRAPHICS
December
21, 1998
Boulder, CO USA
To whom
it may concern:
In my
role as Oracle Applications Director at Access Graphics,
I have had the responsibility of filling technical and
management positions in Information Technology. Earlier
this year, I moved out of this role to a new position in
the company. During my tenure as Applications Director,
I employed many consultants from many different
consulting agencies to fulfill the development and
management needs for our Oracle Applications system.
Many consulting agencies have provided very competent
resources, but the consultants provided by Vitalita have
excelled within our organization. They have become key
resources on some of our most important projects.
Specifically,
Mark Foy has been an ongoing consulting resource within
our organization since October 1997. We originally
brought Mark in based on his strong technical skills. He
started working on development within the reporting group
and the EDI group. He easily adapted to our business
environment, and became an important contributor to the
growth in these areas. We were impressed with his
knowledge, methods, and thoroughness. Based on this, we
included him in our Oracle Applications 10.7 upgrade
project. In this project, he started out evaluating our
extensive set of custom and standard Applications code.
Excelling in this role, we moved him into the position of
Development Team Technical Lead where he managed and
coordinated the efforts of seven developers for 5 months.
His ability to cooperate and communicate with everyone
on our staff, helped us achieve a very successful
upgrade.
Additionally,
we brought on another member of Vitalita, Therron
Hofsetz, in September of 1998 to be Project Manager for
the Oracle Applications 10.7 upgrade. Therron played a
key role in coordinating the efforts of all the groups
involved in the project (infrastructure, development,
configuration management, users, management, etc.).
Therron personality makes him very easy to work with, and
his extensive functional background ensured that all
aspects of the project were being addressed. He kept the
group working as a team towards a common goal of bring
the project in on time and within budget.
In
general, the consultants from Vitalita have very strong
technical and business backgrounds that have enabled them
to make significant contributions to our organization.
They have demonstrated an ability to quickly understand
complex issues and provide innovative and sound
solutions.
Overall,
our organization has been extremely pleased with the
resources provided by Vitalita, and I would highly
recommend them to other organizations.
- JoAnn
Miller
- Oracle
Applications Director
- Information
Technology
- Access
Graphics
*****
BLUELIGHT.COM
(KMART)
June
5, 2001
San Francisco, CA USA
To whom
it may concern:
As Technical Applications Manager at Bluelight.com, I have managed many
different Oracle Applications technical and function people. During the first 4
months of 2001, I hired Mark Foy as a consultant in my group, and this letter is to
comment on my experience working with Mark.
Mark was immediately thrown into a rapidly changing group, where learning our
customized system and producing enhancements was critical. Bluelight was in the
process of rolling off the Oracle Professional Services consultants we had hired for
the last year to customize and implement our Oracle Applications system.
Therefore, Mark had to quickly assimilate knowledge of the system technical design
and customizations from the departing consultants. Mark was tasked with learning
all customizations and functionalities of the order entry system, the warehouse
interface, and some parts of the inventory interface. We were very happy that Mark
was able to quickly come up to speed in these areas, and then immediately begin to
perform business-critical additions and changes.
In particular, I was very impressed with the way Mark carried out his work, from
analysis to implementation and post-production support. His analysis was always
very complete, and easily understood by users and management so different system
extension options could be evaluated with all relevant information. He has the rare
ability to be able to effectively communicate will all different types of people
(technical peers, supervisors, end users, etc.), and this was definitely an asset within
our organization. Other developers and QA personnel were able to learn a lot from
Mark because he can clearly communicate complex ideas in a methodical style.
Mark was able to quickly scope requested enhancements, and give solid estimates of
how long it would take to produce high quality, well-tested solutions. His
organizational skills were valued because he could effectively schedule and manage
his work, without me having to give guidance every step of the way.
Mark is a very skilled software engineer with good documentation skills. We did
many production pushes of code Mark had developed and tested, and I can only
recall one occasion where we had a problem with the code push. Overall, his code
seemed virtually bug-free, and other developers appreciated how he documents his
code so that it can be easily understood in the future.
In summary, I would definitely hire Mark again, and would recommend him to other
companies without hesitation. He brings a long and varied background in
information technology that can be hard to find today, and Bluelight definitely
benefited by employing his consulting services.
Sincerely,
- Roger
Shirakawa
- Technical Applications Manager
- Information Technology
- Bluelight.com
- San Francisco, CA
*****
U S
WEST COMMUNICATIONS
July 22,
1998
Lafayette, CO
Memo to:
Current and Prospective Employers of Information Systems
Personnel
In my
25-year career with U S WEST Communications, I have most
recently held the positions of Engineering Systems
Mechanization Project Manager and Technical Project
Manager. My primary responsibilities included project
oversight, client requirements gathering and direct
interface with the development staffs. My charge was to
understand client needs, ensure the developers understood
those needs and developed programs that would satisfy
their requirements. I have worked with scores of
developers, many of them technically competent, many who
could speak to management and end users on whatever level
necessary and even a few who were creative and were able
to present fresh ideas. But, in my experience, there has
been only one individual whom I would recommend
unconditionally to others, Mark Foy.
Mark
worked as a technical consultant on a project of which I
was the Technical Project Manager from February 1996
until October 1997. From the very start he proved
himself to be highly competent technically. In addition,
he was required to perform under very difficult,
stressful circumstances, often with nearly impossible
deadlines and conflicting directions. Client
requirements changed weekly, sometimes as often as
hourly. He was expected to produce a high quality
product on a schedule that would have caused most
developers to just quit. Not Mark. Not only did he
remain completely unruffled under pressure, he produced a
product of extraordinarily high quality and made many
creative, useful suggestions to improve the results. He
was called up to work with a very diverse group of
people, some quite difficult. Mark worked well with
everyone and kept focused in a highly chaotic
environment. His technical excellence makes it a
pleasure to work with him but where I believe his star
shines most brightly is his ability to speak to anyone,
at any level, without being condescending or
unnecessarily technical. That is a quality very few
developers possess.
I
strongly recommend Mark Foy for any position where you
need technical expertise, creativity, and the ability to
work under extreme pressure. You will receive the
wonderful bonus of being able to just talk to him and
know that he can and will help you achieve your
goals.
I realize
this may sound too good to be true. I assure you it is
accurate and will be happy to discuss my experiences with
him if you require any additional information. What I do
know is if I had serious Y2K issues, required system
development or maintenance, needed to get out of trouble
in an existing system or wanted to develop a web site to
expand my business to the internet, I would call Mark
Foy.
- A. B.
(Bea) Wampole
- RTT
Technical Project Manager
- Information
Technology Systems
- U S
WEST Communications
- Retired
May 15, 1998
*****
LUCENT
TECHNOLOGIES
- From:
Nicole M. Lewis
- December 30, 1998
-
Member of Technical Staff
-
Lucent Technologies
-
Denver, CO
To Whom
It May Concern:
I have
worked with Mark Foy approximately 2 years at U S WEST on
several projects. I am a Systems Engineer responsible for
writing detailed requirements and have partnered with Mr.
Foy on several occasions.
Mark has
exemplified the following:
- Has
complete understanding of "big picture"
scenarios
- Adapted
to the U S WEST business environment
easily
- Completes
'quality' work quickly
- Is
extremely knowledgeable
- Incorporates
new technology into clients requests
- Flexibility
in accommodating clients change requests
In
closing, Mark has been one of the few consultants that
has been flexible, knowledgeable, and considerate of
user/client needs in my 15 years work experience.
Nicole M.
Lewis
*****
GE IT
DISTRIBUTION GROUP
April 2,
1999
To Whom
It May Concern:
As EDI
Coordinator at Access Graphics/GE IT Distribution, I have
known Vitalita consultants since December of 1997. In
that time, I have been very impressed with the service
these consultant have provided to our company. The
consistency of the service they provide is very good and
the quality of their work is very high. I have worked
with two consultants from Vitalita during the last one
and a half years: Mark Foy and Therron Hofsetz.
Mark Foy
worked as a software engineer for the EDI group directly
for about 3 months before I joined the EDI group, and
then for 5 months while I lead the EDI group. As his
role became more focused toward his position as
Development Team Lead for Access Graphics' 10.7 Oracle
Applications upgrade, his involvement in the EDI group
was reduced. During the 8 months he was developing on
EDI programs and system, he worked very hard to help us
achieve some of our aggressive business objectives in
electronic commerce. Mark was able to implement many new
EDI transactions with our business partners under
significant time pressures. I believe we were very lucky
to have his software engineering background within our
group so we could produce high-quality, effective,
expandable programs that were bug free and could be
implemented in a production environment very quickly.
Mark also assisted greatly in upgrading our EDI programs
and systems for Oracle Applications 10.7 and Y2K
compliance, ensuring a successful upgrade of our Oracle
Financials, Manufacturing, and Distribution
modules.
Therron
Hofsetz became involved in world of electronic commerce
and EDI during his time as project manager for the 10.7
Oracle Applications upgrade. Under his direction, our
company was able to achieve a successful implementation
of the new version of the Oracle Application modules,
including the Oracle EDI gateway and all of our custom
programs and systems that interface to the Oracle
database. His attention to detail, personable management
style, and ability to motivate team members made this
upgrade a success story for not only the EDI group, but
for all of Access Graphics and GE IT Distribution.
Overall,
I want to complement the Vitalita consultants for their
consistency, quality of work, and contribution to our
organization, and say that I would recommend their
consulting services to other organizations.
- Wendy
Melcher
- EDI
Coordinator
- Access
Graphics/GE IT Distribution
*****
GE
ACCESS
Subject: Reference for Mark Foy
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 17:39:08 -0600
This document is meant as a reference for Mark Foy.
I was involved in 2 different projects with Mark. First, a large long term (Oracle
Applications ) project (huge development team) that was very difficult to implement
and second a short term make it work fast and now type project that had huge direct
impact on my organization. Both were completed satisfactorily and on-time.
Specifically, the second one was wildly successful and instrumental to my organization.
I have found Mark to be:
- 1. Reliable
- 2. Knowledgeable
- 3. Concerned about quality
- 4. Willing to go the extra mile
- 5. A good communicator
- 6. Eager to help.
- 7. Someone with strong development skills
- 8. Someone with good project management skills
- 9. Someone I would go to to understand the real issues I needed to be aware of
concerning functional impact to my organization or understanding how to go about
integrating a solution to existing environments.
I hope my company continues to use him as we go forward into the future, as I perceive
he is the kind of quality individual it takes on a team to be successful.
Thank You Mark for your excellent support, direction and efforts in our time working
together.
- GE ACCESS
- Greg Webb
- Manager,
Strategic Client Support
- Technical Support Group
*****
U S
WEST COMMUNICATIONS
- US
West Communication
- Denver,
Colorado
To Whom
It May Concern,
This
purpose of this letter is to express my complete
satisfaction with the consulting services provided by
Mark Foy.
Mark and
I worked together on a large scale HP UNIX client/server
application using ORACLE RDBMS. Mark functioned in the
dual roles of developer and technical lead for our main
application, as well as several sub-systems. His
expertise in the areas of UNIX, ORACLE, ORACLE Web
Server, C language, and SQL Stored Procedures was
invaluable to our project's success.
Regarding
work ethic, Mark completes his work quickly and with the
highest quality. On more than one occasion, Mark was
given total responsibility for developing critical
components to our systems and each time he delivered
total quality software. From initial analysis through
final delivery, Mark worked with various technical staff
on user requirements analysis, software data modeling,
task definition and estimation, and overall project
management.
With
regard to client and peer interaction, Mark always
received the highest praise. During his short time at US
West, he built a reputation as a technical expert, sought
out by both IT management and IT professionals. Overall,
Mark is very easy to work with. He adapts to new systems
and technology while performing complete problem
definition research. Mark is able to communicate his
technical ideas with both technical and non-technical
peers alike. He works well with difficult people and
performs well under stress. In closing, I would welcome
the opportunity to work with Mark again.
Respectfully,
- John
P. Escamilla
- Software
Engineer/Member Of Technical Staff
- US
West Communications
*****
U S
WEST LONG DISTANCE
- Denver,
Colorado
- January
8, 1999
-
- RE:
Recommendation for Mark Foy
To Whom
It May Concern:
I had the
opportunity and privilege to work with Mark Foy from
approximately June, 1996 through August, 1997. During
this time I interfaced with Mr. Foy in the capacity of
System Administrator, Project Manager, and later System
Engineer, while Mark's role remained constant as a
Consultant and Programmer. The following is a summary of
my assessment of his job performance:
Mark's
demeanor is thoughtful, attentive, calm and friendly,
even under the most stressful of circumstances and
working with the most difficult of people. He takes time
to gather facts, insuring he is reacting to all facts and
not partial data, and thus produces consistent,
high-quality results. I have worked with Mark on massive
projects (entailing data conversion from an antiquated
mainframe application to a client-server architecture) to
routine software releases. Mark was always very timely
with completion of his work, if not ahead of schedule,
and was deemed as a source of knowledge and competency by
fellow developers as well as clients. I highly recommend
Mark Foy's talent and expertise, as an individual and as
a professional.
Respectfully,
- Barbara
J. Johnston
- Manager
- U S WEST Long Distance
*****
U S
WEST COMMUNICATIONS
Subject:
REFERENCE
I worked
with Mark Foy at US West for approximately 2 years. At
that time, we both worked in a highly fast paced
development environment.
As a DBA
I supported an extremely complex system consisting of 2
Oracle databases. Mark supported development of multiple
programs to support the following types of user
requirements for this system:
- Data
conversions from a large VM system to the Oracle
primary Application and Datawarehouse
databases.
- End
of Month and report processes from the Datawarehouse
database.
- Interface
programs from both databases to Mainframe/DB2
databases using Oracle Gateway to DB2 and Socket
technology.
All
aspects of Mark's job consisted of learning new
technology. Mark always made the extra effort to
completely understand how to use the new technologies. He
was very thorough and responsive to the development
requests he received. Mark also supported the production
environment during data conversions.
Mark
worked well with all personnel he had to interface with.
His attention to detail and drive to completely
understand the issues as well as the complexities
involved was instrumental in the success of our
efforts.
All of
Mark's work was of high quality and he performed above
our expectations in everything he was assigned.
- Tina
Gregory
- Oracle
DBA
- Mineral
Pre-Production Group
*****
U S
WEST COMMUNICATIONS
In 1997
Mark Foy worked as a consultant on a project at U S WEST
for which I was the technical lead. I am happy to take
this opportunity to tell how pleased I am with his
contributions.
The
application was required to produce reports, both
real-time and overnight, from a large Oracle database.
The architecture used a Web front-end, an early version
of the Oracle Web Server for listener and PL/SQL
cartridge, and PL/SQL packages for the application code.
The project was characterized by high visibility, rapidly
changing requirements, a political client group and a
need to produce a lot quickly. We met a long series of
deadlines successfully, mostly because of Mark's
efforts.
Mark made
several significant contributions.
+ He
adopted a new technology to meet our requirements. This
way of producing a reporting interface had been
demonstrated in a pilot project. Mark made it work in a
much larger setting, facing down many technical problems
with the Oracle infrastructure.
- He
worked well with a very demanding client community.
The requirements evolved rapidly, the end result had
to meet stringent legal restrictions, and the work had
executive-level attention. Mark was able to listen
well to client requests, meet challenging requests
when possible, and keep them happy even when
delivering bad technical news that some things could
not be done the way they wanted. He showed a lot of
initiative in this area.
- He
readily grasped the regulatory climate that determined
many of our requirements. As a result, Mark was able
to help the client fine-tune some fuzzy requirements
into precise specifications.
- He
communicated well with a changing cast of developers
and DBAs. New people had to be taught this unfamiliar
application architecture, and be coached to use a
uniform style. Mark was patient and helpful with all
the technical staff.
- He
produced work of high quality with amazing speed. He
was the most productive developer on the
project.
In
summary, Mark has equally strong technical and
interpersonal abilities. In a technical role he has a
strong ability to quickly grasp complex technology and
wield it effectively to meet requirements. In an
interpersonal role he works very well with clients and
technical people. I would gladly use his consulting
services again, and recommend him highly.
- Dan
Moore
- U S
WEST Information Technologies
- February
4, 1999
*****
U S
WEST COMMUNICATIONS
January
18, 1999
Letter of
Recommendation
Mark Foy
and I were both consultants on the same assignment at US
West. As the test lead for the development project, I
worked closely with the development staff.
Mark
performed quality work in a sometimes stressful and
deadline-driven environment. He was an excellent team
player and interacted very well with all the staff
members. Mark had excellent knowledge of the technology
and was willing to share his expertise with other members
of the team.
Mark was
very accommodating to the clients in meeting their
requests for changes to the application. Mark often took
the initiative to ensure the client requests were
fulfilled in a timely manner.
Mark was
very receptive and prompt in dealing with the test team
to resolve all issues during the system test
cycle.
I would
welcome the opportunity to work with Mark Foy
again.
- Pam
Norwood
- Technical
Consultant
- Productive
Data Commercial Solutions, Inc.
*****
ACCESS
GRAPHICS
August
10, 1998
To Whom It May Concern:
I have worked as a peer with Mark Foy for about a year and have found
him to be technically proficient and personally easy to work with. I value
his technical opinion and therefore often ask his advice when I have a
technical problem. He's always willing to listen to my question and offer
ideas. He has followed up by mailing me code examples that are pertinent
to my question. Mark is a pleasant person to work with. I'd be happy to
answer questions at my home number, 666-8684.
- Cordially,
- Jennie Elliott
*****
e-mail
vitalita@vitalita.com
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