Smallwood Maike & Associates Expands Team with Addition of Kyle Odermann

As Managing Director of Advisory Services, Odermann to lead Smallwood Maike’s Strategy & IT Value practice offering.

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas, May 6, 2008 –Smallwood Maike & Associates, Inc. (Smallwood Maike), a strategic advisory firm, announced today that Kyle J. Odermann, a leading expert on strategy development, business valuation and IT value analysis has joined the organization as a Managing Director, Advisory Services.  With the addition of Odermann, Smallwood Maike expands their strategy consulting practice, focused on helping clients develop business strategies and linking those strategies to informed technology investments. 

In his new position, Kyle is specifically responsible for the development of Smallwood Maike’s Strategy & IT Value practice area.  This core service offering for Smallwood Maike assists clients in bringing clarity and structure to their technology investments decisions making and tracking through a holistic consulting approach.

Kyle was most recently with the investment management firm, American Century Investments, where he led their merger and acquisition activities.  His responsibilities included finding and evaluating potential acquisitions, securing executive committee and board approval, and managing the integration of acquired businesses into American Century’s existing businesses.  Prior to that role, Kyle was a member of the firm’s IT leadership team where he played a key role in developing the company’s IT strategy and was responsible for restructuring, optimizing, and managing the firm’s technology budget.  Kyle began his career at IBM, where he worked for Cindy Maike, Smallwood Maike’s co-founder, as a member of her Management Consultant practice. 

Commenting on Kyle’s hire, Cindy said “I am excited to work with Kyle again - he brings a wealth of experience and a broad skill set while sharing our vision of delivering a unique blend of research advisory and management consulting services.” 

Cindy continued, “Our research and experience indicates that many insurers are spending an extraordinary amount of time justifying and explaining IT budget and investments to senior leadership.  This delays technology decisions and is extremely counterproductive – particularly when agility and speed to market are critical to business success.  Our Strategy and IT Value Practice offerings and toolkits are a great asset for our clients to quickly establish a common IT investment framework that ties a new set of metrics to business strategies and makes decision-making and monitoring more effective.   

Bob Sauvageau, a retired CTO at a large financial services organization added, “Kyle understands how to articulate the value of technology investments; he created several unique and meaningful metrics that allowed me to better articulate the business value of IT to my peers at the executive level.  This was vital to effectively linking our IT strategy to the overall business strategy.”

In addition to his professional experience, Kyle holds a BA in Economics from Concordia College (Moorhead, MN) as well as an MBA from the University of Kansas Graduate School of Business.

About Smallwood Maike & Associates, Inc.

Exclusively servicing the insurance industry, Smallwood Maike & Associates is a new breed of strategic advisory firm offering a unique blend of research, advisory and consulting services to both insurance companies and solution providers.  By leveraging best practices from both the management consulting and research advisory disciplines, Smallwood Maike’s advisory service offerings are actionable business-driven  and prime for companies eager and ready to embrace change and achieve business success. Their suite of advisory offerings include: advice, consulting, research, and education as well an arsenal of products such as accelerators and jump start kits.

Additional information on Smallwood Maike, its founders, and its services can be found at www.smallwoodmaike.com.

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Solomark Associates
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