In the late 1980s, a joint project between the states of Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and the Dallas office of KPMG Peat Marwick was conducted between Scranton, PA, Oklahoma City and Dallas, being that the workers compensation laws of the 2 states were similar enough to make a joint project feasible.
Author Archives: Steve D.
Oklahoma State Workers Compensation
With the workers compensation laws of the states of Pennsylvania and Oklahoma being as similar as they were, our Dallas KPMG Peat Marwick consulting practice won a joint contract. The work was done in 3 locations, Scranton, PA, Oklahoma City, OK, and Dallas, TX.
Bright Banc Savings
HR “Bum” Bright was a local Dallas businessman who, at the heighth of his career, owned a bank, an oil company and the Dallas Cowboys. By 1990, he was one of the richest men in the state of Texas. Then the oil crunch hit, the real estate market crumbled, savings and loans needed to be rescued by the government and the Dallas Cowboys experienced a lull with the firing of legendary coach Tom Landry.
Coopers & Lybrand, LLP
Coopers & Lybrand was a member of the “Big Eight” accounting firms as they were known in the 1980s. They have since merged with Price Waterhouse, also “Big Eight”, to form Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), a “Big Four” accounting firm.
Excel Communications
Founded in 1988 by Dallas entrepreneur Kenny Troutt, Excel Communications was a long distance reseller. It began selling franchises using a multi-level marketing (MLM) business model, eventually selling over 200,000 of these franchises, or an average of 1 franchise for each 20 customers. In seven years, it became the fourth-largest long distance carrier in America and the youngest billion-dollar-annual company in history (8 years as compared to the second fastest growing, Microsoft, which took 15 years).
Boy Scouts of America
Boy Scouts of America corporate offices are located on Walnut Hill Lane in Las Colinas, Irving, Texas. Throughout 1995, I was a Consultant in Magazine systems, Boys Life being its largest and most well known publication. As BSA was in the process of outsourcing their mainframe processing, my tasks included support and maintainance of legacy magazine systems until the cut-over to the new network based system using Paradox Database in January of 1996.
Mountain Bell Telephone
The Catalyst Group in Chicago, a division of KPMG, conducted a pilot project for Mountain Bell involving Catalyst’s re-engineering tools ReACT, PathVU and Retrofit to transform an aging subsystem from Assembler (ALC) to COBOL.
Forrest Ford Consultants, Inc.
Based out of St. Louis, Forrest Ford was a full service consulting company which started a Dallas branch in 1988.
CIBER Inc.
Based out of Denver, Colorado, CIBER (Consulting in Business, Engineering and Research) maintained a Dallas branch of between 30 and 50 employees.
MBNA America
MBNA America purchased Southwestern States Bankcard Association (SSBA) in the late 1980s and eventually grew to become one of the largest credit card processing organizations in North America. MBNA America was acquired by Bank of America in 2006.