People
Management Consulting for Small and Mid-sized Companies
Bryan Mason – Principal
Mr. Mason founded the firm in 2008 in New Jersey and moved its domicile to Rhode Island in 2014. Mr. Mason brings over thirty years of corporate, consulting and entrepreneurial experience in a variety of industries. He possesses skills in general business management, analysis, strategy development, marketing, finance, operations, pricing optimization, workflow optimization, process reengineering, information technology, complex database design, software development, project management and public speaking. He is a regular speaker addressing a wide range of business topics of interest to small and mid-sized companies, a prolific blogger and an author and contributor of monthly articles published in the Rhode Island Small Business Journal, both in print and on-line.
Mr. Mason is a vocal critic of applying standard formulas to solve problems and believes instead in using data to correctly identify the problem to be solved before trying to solve it. Using out of the box thinking in addition to breakthroughs, insights and techniques acquired in the many industries he has worked in and consulted for, Mr. Mason has proven to be extremely effective at solving seemingly intractable problems by applying these learnings to new industries and situations.
He recognized early on that while small and large companies share many problems, the appropriate solution at a small or mid-sized company is typically very different from the solution for the same problem at a large company. This is mainly due to the reduced availability of financial resources and staff in smaller organizations. Mr. Mason has pioneered innovative approaches to the solutioning of problems in organizations with very limited resources.
With this in mind, Mr. Mason developed the uniquely effective Apollo Profit Acceleration Technique™. It is the fastest way to identify and realize the best actions a company can take to improve profitability. This maximizes the return on investment and typically results in a 20% to 40% increase in profitability.
Mr. Mason is a big believer that most companies are completely overlooking one of the most powerful tools available to them to drive top line revenue and bottom line profitability. He has developed specialized expertise in using pricing strategies to drive customer behavior into profitable patterns. His application of this expertise to small and mid-sized companies is without precedent.
After “Thank you for making me successful.” the most often heard comment from clients about Mr. Mason is “I have been in my industry for over 30 years and I never thought of that.” Mr. Mason prides himself on bringing approaches and methods that he has learned working in many different industries to new situations and industries. It is part of what makes him so effective. He is both multi-disciplinary bringing a vast array of complementary skills and multi-industry having working across many types of companies. See Industries Served page.
In the News
Bryan Mason – Advocate for Small Business in Rhode Island
See the 30 minute interview of Bryan Mason by Llewellyn King on the program White House Chronicle taped on September 25, 2018 and shown on PBS from coast to coast. The audio of the program was also broadcast on over 200 radio stations. In the program, Mr. Mason discusses common problems facing small and mid-sized businesses.
Experience
Before forming Apollo, Mr. Mason was a Senior Vice President and Program Manager at Citibank. He was brought in as an IT Management Consultant to assess the challenges facing the continued development and deployment of a new $109 Million state of the art retail banking system and then subsequently hired to affect a turnaround which was accomplished over a three and a half year period.
Previous to Citibank, Mr. Mason was President and CEO for ten years of Newport Software Corporation, a full service technology advisory and software development company. At Newport Software, he managed the consulting, sales and other functions of the company. On behalf of clients, he personally managed large and complex software development projects, provided interim management of systems organizations and advised on matters of technology strategy.
Prior to Newport Software, Mr. Mason was a Vice President of Application Development in the financial services industry. Prior to that, Mr. Mason was co-founder of Interactive Financial Services Corporation which developed an innovative portfolio management and trading system for money management firms.
Previous to Interactive, Mr. Mason was the Chief Information Officer at two financial services companies, the first of which he attained at the age of 31.
Mr. Mason began his career as an Economist, where he worked on a comprehensive econometric model of the U.S. economy and developed extensive financial and business models of companies in many different industries.
Education
M.A. in Economics, New York University
B.A. in Economics, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey
Certifications
Project Management Professional (PMP)®
Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®).
Volunteering
Mr. Mason was a Volunteer Mentor for the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RI-CIE). RI-CIE was a public-private partnership with Brown University to help Rhode Island-based entrepreneurs, researchers and existing companies effect the commercialization of their ideas. This was accomplished by providing incubation space, mentoring by experts in their field and with assistance to obtain capitalization.
Professional Memberships
Institute of Management Consultants USA
Association for Strategic Planning
Ocean State Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI)
Scrum Alliance
Edwin (Ed) Holmquist – Vice President, Marketing Analytics
Mr. Holmquist is a seasoned analytics professional with more than 20 years of experience in marketing analytics in both client and ad agency settings. He has a successful track record in developing and managing advanced analytics projects using statistical methods in advertising research, digital analytics, media mix modeling and marketing campaign analytics as well over 30 years’ experience in data mining, marketing analytics and economic analysis and modeling across multiple industries and data/modeling platforms.
With respect to the marketing analytics practice, this involves the combination of developing and managing client data on sales, marketing activities by channel for both digital and traditional channels, as well as other relevant data. A wide variety of statistical analysis techniques can then by applied to transform the data into actionable insights that can be leveraged to optimize marketing operations within a business. Mr. Holmquist has successfully applied this process to companies of all sizes for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business situations of various sizes in a variety of industries, including consumer packaging goods, telecommunications, retail, and financial services.
Specialties include advertising research, media mix modeling, pre/post campaign analytics, direct marketing analysis, project/people management, multivariate statistical modeling, data mining, and economic/econometric analysis.
Experience
Previous to Apollo, Mr. Holmquist worked for MXM, a digital agency within Accenture, one of the world’s largest consulting organizations. As Director of Analytics, he was responsible for all analytics reporting, modeling and analysis relating to the account for one of world’s largest food processing companies, either managing or contributing directly to all analytical reporting and statistical modeling projects for both the CRM retail and business-to-business segments of the business. Significantly, he and his team played a role not only in driving tactical results from specific campaigns but also in establishing the strategic direction that the planning and creative teams at MXM used to continuously improve the quality and efficiency of the program for email as well as other marketing channels. This included recommendations on changing/adding specific tactics to ensure monthly volume goals were delivered to the client. He also managed relationships with external vendors providing analytics support to marketing channel programs.
Prior to MXM, Mr. Holmquist was Partner, Director of Business Science at Mediacom, where he was responsible for managing the development and execution of advanced analytics methods to answer questions regarding media effectiveness and optimization of media investments for an array of clients across multiple industries. The marketing mix approach quantifies the sales impact of media and marketing levers, from which return on investment (ROI) can be estimated by media type. The models help make media planning accountable and justify marketing budgets to non-marketing people. He consulted with client and internal media teams on a number of issues arising both from the core work and ad hoc requests, such as “what-if” simulations and optimizations based on alternative media plans and optimal budget scheduling across media types. He was a contributor to developing new and different solutions for Mediacom’s clients based on the latest technology and statistical techniques available.
Before that, Mr. Holmquist spent several years at Hill Holiday as Associate Director of Analytics, where he perform advanced analytics as well as statistical reporting and general project management on both online and traditional advertising media channels across a broad array of industries such as wireless communications, food service, retail, insurance, health care and manufacturing industries.
He also spent time working for Myron Corporation, a privately held direct marketing leader in providing personalized business gifts, mainly to small and medium sized companies, where he was responsible for all analytics-related work for the business.
Finally, Mr. Holmquist spent over 20 years at Verizon Corporation, where he distinguished himself in several areas of economic and marketing analysis, including more than 10 years in the area of marketing analytics. This including managing KPI reporting for both landline and mobile communications metrics as well as statistical modeling for propensity to buy specific telephone features as well as feature pricing and customer defection.
Education
Master of Arts, Economics, State University of New York at Buffalo
Bachelor of Arts, Economics, State University of New York at Buffalo
Certifications and Training
Google Analytics Immersive – Imparture Training
Professional Memberships
Digital Analytics Association
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