Technology >> CEO Interviews >> January 13, 2003
MARK A. STIFFLER is Founder, President and Chief Executive
Officer of Synygy, Inc. As one of the fastest growing privately
held companies in the United States, and with over 400 employees,
Synygy is the largest company focused exclusively on enterprise
incentive management (EIM) solutions. Mr. Stiffler's
accomplishments at Synygy include recent recognition by Inc.
magazine by naming Synygy it to the Inc. 500 Hall of Fame,
reflecting Synygy's fifth consecutive inclusion on the Inc. 500
List. In addition, Synygy EIM software was awarded the
prestigious 2002 Crossroads A-List Award, given each year by Open
Systems Advisors, Inc. (OSA) to identify the best new products
and services that meet today's critical business challenges in
the enterprise. Synygy was incorporated in January 1991, and the
first customer commitment came in December 1991. By the end of
1992, the company had three Fortune 500 clients, with one of
these new clients asking Mr. Stiffler to help manage its
incentive compensation plan (since this work involved the same
sales data that was being analyzed for each salesperson). Mr.
Stiffler gained management consulting experience at the Strategic
Management Group (SMG) in Philadelphia and Pugh-Roberts
Associates (now PA Consulting) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr.
Stiffler received an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Bachelor
degrees in Civil Engineering (Project Management) and Management
Information Systems from MIT. While at MIT, Mr. Stiffler worked
at the MIT Media Lab, which is where he first began thinking
about the creation of mass-customized, actionable information to
help people make sense out of large sets of data. Profile
TWST: Could you please give us a brief overview of Synygy today,including a bit of history?
Mr. Stiffler: Synygy is the largest provider of a class of
software known as enterprise incentive