Meet Mark – Kingsgate’s Vice President of Technology

As Kingsgate looks at our growth and continues with our strategic investment in transportation technology, the need for a strong leader with a robust history in the tech space has become apparent. Today is Mark Keller’s first official day as a member of the Kingsgate Family and we’re so happy to have him on board.

If you saw our news release about our partnership with DAT last week, you know Mark couldn’t be joining at a better time. As Mark gets to know the team at Kingsgate, we want you all to get to know him. Without further ado, meet Mark:

1. TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF

I’ve spent my whole career directly helping people and businesses utilize technology. I pretty much joined the PC industry near the beginning (1983) and started my career at the first ComputerLand Store in Cincinnati. Using my acquired knowledge of accounting while I was a Radio Shack store manager, I quickly gravitated towards helping small businesses transition their paper-based accounting to computer systems. After a few years, it seemed obvious I should have my own business servicing the clients I had accumulated. I spent the next 20 years growing and operating that business. We moved with advances in the market through selling and supporting several different systems and I was fortunate to see and help may different kinds of interesting businesses across many industries. After selling the company I went to work in logistics leading software development teams and spent 10 years there. I led a major development project that automated the freight billing and payment process. It processed 80% of the billing and payment automatically that previously was completely manual. I also led a project for an application that prioritized, distributed and logged information for after-hours check calls made by the carrier services team. 

I then joined a reseller and solution provider in the barcode scanning, printing and ID card industry. For them, I provided development and operational support for their CRM, ERP and customer web portals. That company was acquired by its largest competitor and after working on the technical details for the acquisition I joined a sister company. The sister company was launching a cloud-based system that helps caretakers monitor seniors trying to live independently in their own homes. My responsibility was to maintain and advance the infrastructure along with planning for future growth. That company was acquired and absorbed into a much larger company. Now I’m back in logistics with Kingsgate and happy to be here!

2. HOW LONG HAVE YOU WORKED IN THE DEVELOPMENT/IT/TECH SPACE? WHAT GOT YOU INTO IT? AND WHY DO YOU LIKE IT?

I’ve spent 37 years in technology and my experience has been very mixed but always centered around directly providing whatever solution or service the customer needs. Even though I haven’t had an opportunity to work as a developer consistently, I’ve always enjoyed the development discipline the most and I love to gravitate there. I guess it feeds my inner engineer/mechanic. Software development allows you to start with nothing and build a “machine” that does something of value and see it work but most importantly, see it improve lives by advancing business goals or just make it easier for someone to do their job. To me, it’s exciting to identify a complex business problem or an inefficient non-scalable process then envision a system to make it work elegantly. In today’s world there are so many tools, frameworks and methods to build amazing software and they are always improving. That excites me. Probably the most rewarding thing about being associated with technology is after a large project where you’ve really stretched your vision, worked really long and hard to overcome obstacles to finally get to deployment, you get to see a user be genuinely thrilled at how the system is helping them and know you have made a difference or fundamentally changed the game. It doesn’t get any better than that. If you’re in technology, you live for those moments.

3. HOW DO YOU HOPE TO BOLSTER KINGSGATE’S GROWTH WITH YOUR INVOLVEMENT HERE?

It sounds very obvious, but technology is key to our business model. Technology-based solutions are the key to us providing maximum value to our customers and carriers along with enabling our people to serve them better. I think we best compete, which in turn enables Kingsgate’s growth by focusing on maximum value. To do this, we’re going to need to constantly stretch our vision. We’ll then be challenged to prioritize the outcome of that vision to what provides the most value because we won’t be able to execute all of our vision all at once. In short, it’s my belief we should always stretch our vision and keep our focus on the priorities. I think that will be the best way to meet the challenge to be innovative. I want to work closely with the leadership at Kingsgate, with the technology team and with all of the Kingsgate Family. I think everyone has a stake in the vision. I hope you’ll find I am a good listener. 

4. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS/FEELINGS ABOUT HEADING UP THE TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT? WHAT EXCITES YOU? WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU SEE AHEAD?

I’ve met all of the technology team members and even though only briefly at this point I can feel the energy, excitement and commitment. I’ve viewed some of the project summary descriptions and I’m impressed with the straightforwardness and evident knowledge of detail and engagement along with the progress that’s being made. Anyone who has ever led a team knows these things are a huge blessing. I’m excited that the is also relatively early in its formation. Tom arranged a lunch meeting a while back so I could meet the team. I made the comment, “let’s build this team and our solutions the right way.” All the heads were nodding on that one and I too am excited to be able to do things the right way from the beginning. What does the “right way” mean, well it’s a lot of things, too many to list here. But just watch us and you’ll see what I mean.

As for challenges, I think they will be the typical ones for any technology team. Typically, there is not an abundance of resources for everything we would like to accomplish. No doubt we must always take care of day to day operations and supporting the systems in place and we have to do so with excellent customer service. We also must change and advance all the technology to be innovative using the resources remaining after the day to day. Being innovative is the key to ultimate success. We’ll need to work closely with leadership at Kingsgate to be sure we’re advising them and understanding their goals and priorities. We’ll need to have them help us prioritize our plans for resources remaining such that we are advancing projects with the highest value to the business as a whole. We’ll then need to proactively communicate with the business as a whole so everyone understands the planning strategy and, even if they might not agree, they at least understand why some things are being done before others. I’ve seen many examples where communication isn’t clear or is incomplete about the overarching strategy and that creates tension. I think we should try to avoid that pitfall. So really the challenges will come down to being sure we’re working on the most important things first and doing our best to be sure we’re proactively communicating the strategies and priority choices.

5. WHAT’S ONE THING YOU’VE LEARNED ABOUT KINGSGATE THAT SURPRISED YOU?

I think it’s been the genuine feeling of welcome, support and enthusiasm I’ve felt from everyone at Kingsgate I’ve encountered so far. As I write this, since I haven’t yet started and only had brief meetings, I would likely have a lot more to say later, but I guess the surprise is in how I feel now before I am even there. It might sound corny, but I can feel the spirit already! I can tell the culture is great and it seems like everyone supports and encourages each other universally across the business. I’ve spent the most time with the technology team and I know they are great, but I think everyone will be great. I also love the “Restless” in the core values statement. I haven’t seen “Restless” before, but it is a good one to be. It will be great to be part of an engaged, supportive and positive team.

We can’t wait to see how Mark bolsters and grows our IT team.

All the Best,

Jeff Beckham