Tom Beck is a Vice President with Gartner Executive Programs, leading the Midwest team of Executive Partners supporting and advising CIO's and senior technology leaders across a wide variety of industries. Mr. Beck's focus is on enabling Executive Partners assist CIO's in their ever changing and evolving role. His personal experience is strategic planning and execution, business/IT and digital transformation, technology innovation, leadership development, cultural transformation, and forming efficient high-performing organizations.
Mr. Beck has led organizations in technology strategy and planning, organization design/transformation, outsourcing/vendor management, process improvement, applications development, technology operations, enterprise PMO, enterprise information management and IT deployment, and led multiple large-scale ERP implementations.
Most recently he served as the Consulting Partner with Blue Star Partners. He led the transition strategy and the project team for separation of a $6 billion organization, driving design and implementation of all Transition Services Agreements, and post-separation technology, operations, and financial processes. In addition, he led another $3 billion client through Shared Services strategy formation and implementation, including IT organization design and the cascade of strategy/measures throughout the organization.
Prior to consulting, he led the Office of the CIO as VP, IT Shared Services with W. W. Grainger, Inc. a $10 billion industrial distribution organization. He led strategic planning and execution for an 1100 person IT organization, implemented a continuous improvement discipline and improved IT process efficiency driving millions in waste out of core technology processes. He also served as VP, Application Development leading all aspect of Grainger's customer-facing applications. During his tenure at Grainger he also formed an Enterprise Information Management function and was President and General Manager of Grainger Parts Division.
Blue Star Partners, Consulting Partner, 3 years
W. W. Grainger, Inc., Vice President, Office of the CIO & Shared Services, 25 years
Grainger Parts Division, President & CEO, 4 years
MBA, Lake Forest Graduate School of Management
B.A. Economics, University of Wisconsin, Parkside