Greg Makowski

Current

Principal Consultant at Golden Data Mining

Past

Director of Product Management / Principal Data Minining Engineer at CopaCast
Sr Knowledge Discovery Engineer at JDA Software
Product Manager at Accrue Software

Sr Knowledge Discovery Engineer at NeoVista Software
Senior Technical Analyst at Epsilon Data Management
Assistant Director, Institutional Research at Western Michigan University
Summer Intern at Pontiac Lake Parks and Recreation

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Education

Boston University
Western Michigan University

Recommended

7 people have recommended Greg

Connections

273 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

Greg Makowski’s Summary

Objective: Director of Data Mining / Product Management

15+ years experience in data mining, analytics, forecasting and clustering to solve business problems
12 years business experience covering targeted marketing, pre-sales and post-sales, product management
8 years experience in Product Management, 6+ years at startups

• One product design lead to a patent pending on automated training and forecasting in a retail supply chain marketing problem (see the video & PPT links below for details).
• AARP wanted to reduce marketing costs to prospect for customers. I developed a neural network system that scored 80mm records, resulting in a savings of $1mm / month, while acquiring the same number of customers.

• DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: experienced in repeatedly managing the six month product development cycle for many types of software products (web interface, enterprise, real time internet) through all stages, managing others
o Planning: market research, gap analysis comparing current vs. best practices, sales loss analysis, product roadmap, financial market analysis, pricing, conceptualize new product features, MRDs, PRDs, technical specifications, recruit and work with prototype clients and their data, design automation systems, develop analytic prototypes
o Development: interact with engineering in an Agile process, international development teams

• “A geek that can speak”, as a technical person with a strong business understanding who approaches the process to begin with the end, with the business objectives, priorities, values, deployment constraints, pre-sales, post-sales, account and project management, trainer

SEEKING DATA MINING SPEAKERS for http://sfbayacm.org/dmsig.php

Greg Makowski’s Specialties:

• Vertical experience: web 2.0, advertising, retail demand chain, customer relationship management (CRM), finance, insurance, telecommunications, genetics, drug discovery, speech recognition
• One product design lead to a patent pending on automated training and forecasting, using experience from deploying 70+ data mining systems

Greg Makowski’s Experience

Director of Product Management / Principal Data Minining Engineer

CopaCast

(Computer Software industry)

June 2007 — June 2008 (1 year 1 month)

Leader in many roles in the small, early stage stealth mode startup. CopaCast performs comprehensive social targeting, real time data mining of social networks, publishers and advertisers.
• Product Management: Starting at a very early stage, helped conceptualize business and technical approaches. Performed market research and surveys, developed functional requirements, wrote PRDs, produced product literature, developed and refined pricing models. Successfully presented and assisted in securing investor financing for our start up, assisted in sales calls to close deals.
• Data mining: specified and taught the process, specified analytic approaches and preprocessing, TreeNet, SAS.
• Account management: worked closely with the first clients and brought advertisers, publishers and ad networks online, worked with different display ad media formats, various business partners, responsible for invoicing and payments. Managed a Campaign Coordinator.
Sr Knowledge Discovery Engineer

JDA Software

(Public Company; JDAS; Computer Software industry)

June 2001 — May 2007 (6 years)

A product management research and prototyping role to create new software functionality based on advanced data mining, working closely with customers. Responsible for PRD’s and other PRODUCT MANAGEMENT functions.
• Reduced dollars of over and under stock by 30%. Developed a general robust system to allow retailers, without analytical expertise, to forecast the expected number of units sold for a planned sales event. The patent pending system automates model training and forecasting, focused on predicting the change in units sold for a retail sales event, compared to normal sales.
• Developed for automated forecasts for manufacturers, to predict short term orders (1-14 days) from retailers, to each store. Attained 85% correlation between forecast and actual.
• Part of team that researched optimal case packing configurations of clothes by size to meet store and national demand. Applied the cutting stock problem from operations research to efficiently solve this problem.
• SQL, SAS, Unix scripts, TreeNet, RuleQuest, DecisionSeries
Product Manager

Accrue Software

(Public Company; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

January 2000 — June 2001 (1 year 6 months)

Managed new and existing products through development life cycle; from customer requirements analysis, market analysis, sales success analysis; to specification, working with engineering, preparing product release announcements, marketing literature, lead generation, sales training, ROI analysis, gaining referencable customer quotes and stories.
• Focused efforts on analytics to find the web "trail to the sale" of web useage.
• Co-presented a webinar with industry analyst to 300+ people, on "best practices and gap analysis"
• Became known as a “fix-it project manager,” leading a 5 person team for 5 months, moving the client’s perceptions of Accrue from a grade of “F” to “B+”
Sr Knowledge Discovery Engineer

NeoVista Software

(Computer Software industry)

June 1996 — January 2001 (4 years 8 months)

Responsible for pre-sales presentations, conducting knowledge discovery workshops to investigate the business problem and deployment constraints, resulting in a project plan and fixed price proposal. Post-sales project management and account management. Hands on data mining lead. Presented business solutions and ROI results to VPs. Wrote business case studies and technical white papers.
• “Give me 2 months and I will save you $2 million” - common in targeted marketing or customer relationship management.
• Balanced pre-sales activities with management of 1-3 post-sales small project teams, ranging up to 12 person months.
• Consistently won sales situations by incorporating business knowledge and value in the analytic process.
• Selected as the "go to guy" for projects varying broadly over different vertical markets.
• Developed the 4.5 day data mining training class for end users, bringing in some humor.
• SAS, SQL, Unix scripts, DecisionSeries, RuleQuest
Senior Technical Analyst

Epsilon Data Management

(Public Company; ADS; Marketing and Advertising industry)

1992 — 1996 (4 years)

At the time, Epsilon was owned by American Express.
Applied advanced analytics to targeted marketing problems. Used neural networks, regression, trees, cluster analysis.
• Worked with the creative advertising department, used cluster analysis to develop targeted messaging by customer segments.
• Deployed 45+ analytic systems across North America, South America and Europe.
• Project leader for 1-3 projects of 1-4 people starting with 1-80 million records and 1-5000 fields.
• Project manager for data visualization product development, involving Advanced Visual Systems.
• SAS, SQL, Unix scripts, Decision Trees, Neural Ware
Assistant Director, Institutional Research

Western Michigan University

(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Education Management industry)

1985 — 1992 (7 years)

Assisted the Director in the development of research design and statistical analysis techniques for long term forecasting models for enrollment planning. Initiated and documented a streamlined system for electronically responding to complex annual state and federal surveys. Interviewed, hired and trained programmers. Produced requirements and specifications, supervised programming, testing and maintenance.
Summer Intern

Pontiac Lake Parks and Recreation

(Recreational Facilities and Services industry)

June 1984 — September 1984 (4 months)

Mowed Pontiac Lake with a barge and drove a dump truck. (This isn't relevent, but a light conversation starter).

Greg Makowski’s Education

Boston University

not finished , Cognitive and Neural Systems , 1992 — 1994

finished 4 of 8 classes towards degree
Western Michigan University

Masters , Computer Science , 1986 — 1991

THESIS: "Time Delay Neural Networks and Speech Recognition: Context Independence of Stops in Different Vowel Environments"

Started and ran for 2 years the local ACM chapter of the Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence.

Deployed an Expert System for identifying unknowns for an asbestos removal company.

Activities and Societies:

HONORS: Member of WMU Chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon Computer Science Honor Society,GPA 3.64/4.00

Additional Information

Greg Makowski’s Websites:

Greg Makowski’s Interests:

* Running, finished 2 marathons (raised a total of $8,000 for cancer research with Team in Training), downhill skiing, ski racing level 6, camping, back packing, digital photography, some weight lifting, audio books, other chairity work.