Thomas J. Cissell – President and CEO Tom is responsible for Cistek's practices involving Six Sigma, Product Management, Program Management, and Product/Application development initiatives.
Tom founded The Cistek Group in 2003 following a career spanning 30 years in which he gained experience in field service, training, engineering, project delivery, product marketing, consulting, sales and sales management. Throughout his career, Tom has consistently improved operating performance through the practical application of best practices.
As Vice President of Operations for Glomark Corporation, Tom oversaw Glomark’s product development, marketing, sales and consulting staffs in addition to personally providing consultation to key clients on the application of best practices to their decision making processes and sales operations. Prior to joining Glomark in 1999, Tom worked for ABB and its predecessor companies where his last assignment was the reengineering of a $10 million R&D operation to increase productivity and predictability. Tom used a five-step approach to redesign processes utilizing best-in-class benchmarks, established a theme of “Quick-to-Market”, and achieved a 65% increase in revenues from products introduced the previous three years while at the same time decreasing warranty expense and customer complaints. Also, as Director of Marketing for ABB, Tom developed a project evaluation tool providing a uniform method for determining return on investment and strategic fit of potential new product developments, and implemented a Market Driven Planning Process incorporating market segmentation, a formal customer interview process, and technology studies to develop and maintain a product road map.
Experienced in international business development, Tom has worked across cultural boundaries to develop effective business and technology partnerships with Asian, European and North American businesses. These relationships have included sales and marketing agreements, joint ventures, technology licensing and acquistions. He has first hand experience of the best practices that quickly and cost effectively expand markets by acquiring technology and taking advantage of the leverage offered by partnerships with third parties.
A Master Blackbelt in process improvement, Tom was trained in Six Sigma by its architect, Dr. Mikel J. Harry and in process mapping and performance improvement by Alan Brache of The Rummler-Brache Group, renowned developers of business performance systems.
Tom has an engineering degree in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University, is the author of a number of articles, and the holder of multiple patents involving new product developments. Donald M. Hart– Executive Marketing Consultant
Don is the Cistek practice manage for product/company positioning and naming, product launches, and channel marketing initiatives.Don brings to The Cistek Group a successful marketing track record over a period of more the 15 years. Don has identified and capitalized on opportunities to drive revenue, profitability and market share growth in highly competitive markets. Prior to joining The Cistek Group Don worked as an independent consultant with a wide range of clients. He helped a startup company associated with The Ohio State University Research Park establish a go-to-market strategy and assisted the communications network division a multi-national company train their sales channels on how to sell the value of their solutions.
In less than two years, Don rose to Vice President of Product Marketing and later Vice President of Strategic Marketing with Sterling Commerce a $600 million wholly owned subsidiary of SBC Communications, Inc. Starting out as International Marketing Manager for Indirect Channels, Don successfully directed the go-to-market launch plans for partners in Mexico, Japan, South Africa, Greece and Australia. After implementing a streamlined marketing process that reduced time-to-market by 50%, Don was promoted to Director, Solutions Marketing – Channels and Industries were he directed the development and implementation of one-to-one marketing strategies for Sterling’s 154 Global Strategic Accounts which resulted in increase customer loyalty and w account revenue growth of 20%.
Don first developed his marketing expertise during his 23 years with the $18 billion multi-national ABB and its predecessor companies. Product Manager was his first marketing position where his successful introduction of new products made him the obvious choice to lead the Product Marketing department responsible for worldwide marketing the AccuRay brand of quality control systems. Prior to leaving ABB in 1999, Don was Marketing Director for ABB’s entire Process Automation Business Area headquartered in Zurich Switzerland and generating $1.1 billion in annual revenues.
Don has a BSBA Marketing and International Business from The Ohio State University.
The Cistek Group
info@cistekgroup.com
3105 Adena Point Ct.
Columbus, OH 43221
614-771-0378 | 
