John Prefer

Provided strategic oversight of operational and financial functions for this Technology and Telecom Company, along with its sister companies which at their peak had over $50M annually in revenues. Fully responsible for all aspects of the business including P&L, cash flow analysis, human resource functions, regulatory compliance, legal / accounting matters, and engineering integration.

Key Accomplishments

• Purchased two failing long-distance companies, turned them around, and made a significant profit ($4 million) while running them.
• Numerous contracts with international providers to market and promote their products in the United States. Found hidden profit areas and implemented procedures to increase profitability by a factor of 3.
• Created and launched consumer prepaid long-distance products to major chain stores (over 100K individual stores throughout the US). Solely responsible for the inventory, automated systems, and profitability of these products. Products accounted for 20% of our revenue but amounting to 60% of our profit.
• Wrote numerous web-based applications to make data entry secure and mistake proof; with the resulting data, produced custom reports in real time that gave cash positions, profit analysis, and customer risk factors which required a staff of 50% less people compared to other companies of similar revenue.
• Implemented an in-house route system that distributed our product locally throughout the state of Florida. This 500-store route saved 15% of our profit margin by skipping over the wholesalers.
• Oversaw a software development team in Pakistan. Imported talented labor on H1-B visas from India. They produced custom applications for us and other businesses. Besides “translating” the business needs into language a programmer could understand, I managed across time zones, gave design opinions, and made sure the project-management was timely.
• In consulting for the country of Honduras, I designed custom software that found $3 million a week in fraudulent activity. The report which covered months of transactions (hundreds of millions of transactions) was delivered directly to the president of the country.
• Managed sister consulting division which catered to businesses that needed expertise in technology and finance. Improved most businesses’ bottom line by at least 10% by using many years of experience in running and keeping companies profitable.
• Also had consulting contracts with medical practitioners where we evaluated, updated and oversaw their Revenue Cycle Management; turning at least 3% of their gross revenue into profit.
• Oversaw web marketing division which handled all aspects of digital advertising (Facebook, Google AdWords, Twitter, and Instagram, and SEO), e-commerce (custom carts, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magneto) and web related ventures (websites, cloud computing, security, custom APIs, application development and AWS intergration).

In this three-phase job: Built a company from start-up that became the second largest privately held paging company in the United States.

• Phase one consisted of finding office space, designing / building a state-of-the-art communications network, hiring employees, and launching the system.
• Phase two required managing / mentoring a staff of 75+ employees with 740,000 paging subscribers, serving the entire state of Florida. Oversaw all aspects of the business including technical, sales, finance, legal, and human resources. This company had the lowest employee-to-customer ratio of any paging company.
• When pagers became virtually obsolete, directed phase three and established a successful exit strategy, which benefited everyone

Key Accomplishments

• Ran the successful day-to-day operations of this multi-disciplined organization which had many satellite offices and well over 1,000 distribution points.
• Managed the supply chain at peak efficiency saving company 20% in cash flow by not tying up inventory.
• Partnered with MTV and Motorola to create, design, produce, distribute and promote the “MTV Pager,” (USA Today’s Best Christmas Gift Ideas)
• Saved the company over $5 million by negotiating contracts with all major vendors and lessors (over 150 leased sites).
• Automated every aspect of the business, keeping 30% less staff as compared to our competitors.
• Retained superior staff and prided myself in the launching of an efficient, comprehensive, knowledgeable, and award-winning customer service. Whether an in-office center or out of the country call-center, the seat count was kept at an optimal rate to keep customers happy at the lowest cost.