Mike Johnson
Mike Johnson brings to the Page
Technology team a wealth of network infrastructure and programming expertise,
well grounded in their application in meeting the very real needs of business
today.
Mike’s main focus early in his
career had been software development while working in the financial industry
for First Premier Bank, the largest sub-prime lender in the United States. At
this time, he also began providing support for small to medium networks.
As Mike gained more experience, in
senior technical positions in state government and manufacturing, he added project
management and business development to his skill set.
In recent years, he has applied his
experiences harnessing technology to the financial and print industries,
creating market-driven solutions that are delivered on-time, and under budget.
Richard Spencer
Richard’s entire career in the
print industry has been an impassioned quest to expand the abilities of
printers by embracing and infusing internet technologies. His depth of
technical knowledge and always creative approach to problem solving
consistently delivers a "We can do that” perspective to every challenging
opportunity.
Richard began his career in Chicago
in 1997 where he provided the essential technical knowledge needed in the
creation of a new Internet Services Department. His depth of knowledge was
critical in the acquisition of every internet customer, including top-tier and
Fortune 500 customers like First Premier Bank, Grainger, and Sears. These
experiences fueled his passion to constantly expand the limits of what was
thought possible in the industry.
By 2005, Richard’s role expanded
beyond the web to encompass all of the technical challenges of the print
company, including and especially, web-to-print. As the CTO, he implemented
automated systems to deliver variable web-to-print services to 100% of its
customers. This included development of "lights-out” processing of mail
for the USPS in conjunction with Click2Mail. By this time, the tools that
Richard and his team of programmers had created were producing and mailing over
one million pieces of mail each month. At this point, Richard realized that
building custom solutions was only half the battle.
So, in 2005, Richard transitioned
the company to Pageflex. Using the power and expandability of Pageflex, Richard
acquired several large customers including Verizon, Pop Warner, Don Russ, and
The Newport Group. By 2006, Richard’s team, using a Pageflex foundation,
expanded its storefronts to integrate every facet of production from automated
printing of pick-tickets in the Warehouse to automated production of multi-page
financial statements with reporting and job tracking.
Today, Richard shares his
experience with the print industry through Page Technology by offering Pageflex
hosting and custom development to printers with a cost-effective and
results-oriented solution.
James Jacobson
After graduate school, James Jacobson began his career in
direct mail marketing with Dakota Gold Marketing in Sioux
Falls.
Working closely with the
company’s owners, James quickly established a strong reputation for excellence
in project design, planning and implementation. He later bought out the company
and quickly expanded the client base and operations, raising output from less
than 100,000 pieces of marketing mail per month to over 4 million, becoming the
third largest mailer in South Dakota after the Citibank and Target credit card
operations.
After selling his portion of the
business to his partner, James became state co-finance director for
then-Congressman Tim Johnson’s successful Senate campaign. After the election,
he became Senator Johnson’s staff assistant for economic development issues in
South Dakota.
Returning to the private sector,
James moved to Chicago to head the direct mail division of RGC Communications.
He helped expand and diversify the marketing client base for this printing
firm, overseeing the implementation of several large ongoing projects that
required new pieces of equipment and technology.
Returning to his hometown of Sioux
Falls, James became the director of new business development for PREMIER
Bankcard, one of the country’s largest privately owned credit card
companies.
Upon joining PREMIER, James
undertook a comprehensive review of current direct mail marketing efforts, and
through changes in process, achieved an annual reduction in mail cost of over
$1 million, while increasing response rates.
Later, James began his first of
many companies in the financial services sector.
The initial companies focused on personal
lending, and later firms expanded to marketing, non-profit fundraising and
technology services.
Today, James looks forward to using
his diverse background in marketing, printing, and finance to help other firms
maximize their return on investment utilizing the wide range of products and
services offered through Page Technology Group.
Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks' career thus far has
given him a great overview of the whole of the offset and digital printing
industry, including its inevitable migration to, and adoption of, web-enabled
technologies. During the past seven years, he has worked with James on their
own businesses in the financial, e-commerce, and printing verticals.
In 1999, while with a mid-sized
commercial and digital printer in the Chicago area, Albert Brooks created the
company’s first ever Internet Services division that brought the power of
web-to-print to its customers, and its sales force. This new capability, along
with Albert’s role on the sales team, was instrumental in the company acquiring
its first major web-to-print clients, including the MRO company Grainger, and
the advertising agency Archer/Malmo and its client, Valent USA. Soon other
print companies, smart enough to see the possibilities, but without the
resources Albert Brooks and his team had, attempted to follow. Albert Brooks’
first outside hire for this team was the cross-discipline expert Richard
Spencer (see above).
While there, Albert was also on the
print and e-commerce project teams for Motorola, First Premier Bank, and the
initial roll-out of the Postal Service’s Mailing Online product, NetPost, as
well as many others.
Prior to this, Albert got his hands
dirty on the print production side of the business, as a Special Projects
Coordinator. In this role, Albert worked with all stages of the offset and
digital production process, from design to mail, as a troubleshooter and
process efficiency expert.
Before moving to Chicago, Albert
began his career at a design start-up in Chesapeake, VA, designing and writing
the first generation of Motorola cell phone user manuals to be printed, on
demand, on digital equipment.