Craig Bickel is a senior IT and business transformation leader, practicing in the areas of systems strategy, portfolio management/ business alignment, merger integration, outsourcing, and interim management. He has more than 30 years of experience working with companies such as AlixPartners, LLC, Cabot Corporation, CSC Index, EcoLab, General Mills and Rockwell International. Most recently, he was Senior Vice president and Chief Information Officer for Lawson Software Inc., the third-largest maker and supplier of Enterprise Requirements Planning software. |  |
In his role as Chief Information Officer at Lawson, Mr. Bickel drove the implementation of global financial and operational applications completing the merger of Lawson and Intentia which had faltered for four years since the acquisition. Additionally, he drove the development of the world's leading case management tool allowing the global support organization to adopt a 24 X 7 "follow the sun" model. He also transformed the IT organization from a regional support organization to a customer-focused global partnership organization while reducing cost and staff levels by 15%.
Prior to joining Lawson, Mr. Bickel was a director with AlixPartners LLC, the world's leading turnaround and restructuring firm. There, he led the overhaul and re engineering of the financial planning and control systems for a global integrated oil-and-gas company. In support of PE firms' roll up strategy, he restructured IT and worked on mergers & integrations, first for three global wire rope companies; and next on four hot-shot trucking companies. Mr. Bickel also worked in project rescue for a failing ERP implementation at a national mattress manufacturer and did cost reduction and chapter 11 work for a global electronic games distributor.
At Cabot Corporation, a global specialty chemicals firm, Mr. Bickel was Vice President and Chief Information Officer. In his role as CIO, Mr. Bickel led the globalization and integration of all systems and technology, in a $50M, 150 person global effort to redesign and standardize processes, establish shared service centers and build a real-time operating infrastructure. This work was the foundation of the company's ‘Excellence Initiative' contributing $100M in additional profit. He also drove channel integration strategies and eCommerce initiatives with Cabot's global customers, leading to an industry-leading position in Vendor Managed Inventory and supply chain integration. Under his leadership, Hackett judged Cabot's IT organization "best in class" regarding total costs. Finally, Cabot IT also won the CIO magazine award for enterprise value creation, and appeared in Information Week's ‘Innovation 500'.
Mr. Bickel spent 6 years with CSC Index where he worked in Business Re engineering, IT strategy, merger integration, interim management and IT performance improvement. He consulted with firms such as Johnson and Johnson, Burlington Industries, Hoechst AG, Celenese, Sara Lee, RR Donnelly, and Digital Equipment Corp.
Mr. Bickel started his career as an application developer at Rockwell International on the Space Shuttle program and held systems analyst, data base management and director of planning positions at General Mills and EcoLab.
In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Bickel has been an adjunct professor in the MBA program at Hamlin University and has spoken at numerous industry forums (national events for the Conference Board, Chemical Week and industry forums for Microsoft and Peoplesoft). He has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Southern California in Operations Research and Marketing and an MBA in MIS from the University of Minnesota.