Give us a call and we'll tell you if we are the right folks for the job.
Tel: + 650.968.8300 · Fax: + 650.618.1906 · Email: info at spanstrategies dot com
Address: SpanStrategies, 2513 Charleston Road, suite 203, Mountain View, CA 94043. Support office in Mumbai, India.
Sameer PatelDirector
Show Bio Hide BioSameer is a principal at SpanStrategies Inc., responsible for business execution planning and operational design for our clients.
With deep roots in process and operational efficiency, Sameer has worked with leading clients, typically in sales and marketing, to enable them to execute on their business objectives.
His client advisory work has contributed to the creation of portals and outsourced relationships for the following initiates, among others:
- Business Intelligence for Direct Sales Force for a Fortune 500 high-tech company.
- Field Marketing Communication and Collaboration for a leading high-tech company.
- Unified Customer and Partner Interaction for an entertainment and media start-up with $350 million in funding.
- Marketing Collateral Management and Global Fulfillment Sourcing for a Fortune 500 hi-tech company.
- Global Marketing Spend Forecasting and Reporting for a Fortune 500 hi-tech company.
- ROI sales tool for global sales force of a leading hi-tech company.
- Sales and Marketing Business Intelligence for Channel Sales for a Fortune 500 high-tech company.
- Employee Collaboration and Communication for a Fortune 500 healthcare company
- Enterprise Knowledge Management for a Fortune 500 consumer products company.
Sameer's client roster has included ZapTXT, BitTorrent, Sun Microsystems, McKessonHBOC, WR Wrigley Jr. Co., The Sabre Group, Grupo Televisa (Mx), and Cardinal Health. Prior to SpanStrategies, he also helped build technology-enabled business execution consulting practices for Liquid Thinking and for marchFIRST (formerly USWeb/CKS).
Sameer holds a Bachelors degree in Corporate Finance and Economics from Babson College in Wellesley, MA and a Masters degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) from Boston University's School of Management (Masters thesis in Knowledge Management), in Boston MA. He is also a certified Associate in Risk Management (ARM) by the AICPCU.
Sameer can be reached at [Sameer at spanstrategies dot com]
Xavier VanvlasselaerDirector, Production Engineering
Show Bio Hide BioXavier has worked for large web-development and technology consulting companies, including USWeb and Liquid Thinking in San Francisco. Xavier serves as Director of Web Production at SpanStrategies where he manages a team of web producers.
Xavier's competencies extend across a broad set of presentation layer and other technologies. He leverages his hands on knowledge of (X)HTML, DOM, JavaScript, AJAX, Cold Fusion, PHP, ASP, JSP, XML, XSLT, SQL, etc, to tailor his solutions to user requirements as well as technical realities of the underlying system.
Xavier has led presentation layer engagements for leading clients including:
BitTorrent, Ingres, Certicom, The Information Week Portal, J.M. Wrigley Jr. Company, Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Cypress Semiconductor, The Computer World Information Portal, The James Irvine Foundation, Octane Ventures, Mirion Technologies and Global Dosimetry Solutions.
Xavier was educated in Belgium with a degree in graphic arts from HIGRO (High Institute for Graphical Arts).
Xavier can be reached at [Xavier at spanstrategies dot com]
Jane DevonCreative Director
Show Bio Hide BioAn established and innovative web site creator and designer, Jane has worked with many brands, large and small. She is an expert in both brand creation and caretaking. Jane led creative groups at CKS, USWeb/CKS, Liquid Thinking and Pearson Branded. She has worked with the SpanStrategies team for over 5 years as Creative Director.
Jane was Creative Director/Partner at USWeb/CKS where she was best known for her web site creations, including Timberland, Fujitsu, Macromedia and Clinique. The Clinique site in 1996 was one of the first to incorporate database-driven content and personalization. Another account she and her team of designers were responsible for was Mazda, including two complete redesigns of mazdausa.com, as well as numerous on-line marketing initiatives.
During this time she helped brand egg.com, an innovative U.K. bank. She was also worldwide creative director of the USWeb/CKS team responsible for the creation of the on-line European trade magazine, Trader.com. To do this, she led creative teams in Paris, Geneva, Belgium, Cupertino and Seattle.
At Liquid Thinking she helped grow the agency to 98 people including a strong creative and UI team of 24. There she helped many start-up companies brand themselves from the ground up, as well as established companies such as Asera, Cypress SemiConductor and Wrigley.
At Pearson Branded, Jane was hired to build a creative team that would compliment the technical and strategic teams already there. During this period she worked primarily on Hewlett Packard accounts and internal marketing. One of these marketing efforts recently won an Addy Award.
Jane's earlier experience includes designing multi-media projects in London for American Express, Conde Nast, Omega, and Pentax.
She received her B.A. (hons) in graphic design from Humberside University in England.
Jane can be reached at [Jdevon at spanstrategies dot com]
Alex WrightInteraction Designer
Show Bio Hide BioAlex is a user experience architect who has led projects for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, IBM, AOL, Macromedia, frog design, Sun Microsystems, Rollyo, the University of California and the Long Now Foundation, among others.
His work has won numerous design industry awards, including a 2006 Webby nomination, Cool Site of the Year award, American Graphic Design award, Yahoo! WebInnovation award, and IBM Chairman's letter. His design work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, among other publications.
Formerly, he was Vice President of User Experience at Phoenix Pop, a San Francisco Web development firm (acquired in 2000 by Liquid Thinking). From 1995-1999, he was Senior Manager of User Experience at IBM.com, where he led the 1999 redesign of IBM's 3 million+ page Web site, resulting in a 400% increase in online sales.
A popular speaker and lecturer, Alex has lectured on information architecture and related topics at Gartner Group, Time-Warner, UC-Berkeley, the Institute of Design-Chicago, Seybold, the ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit, Web2001/Web2000, AIP, Creating for the Web, and numerous IBM conferences. He has also taught classes in information architecture at IBM and the University of Richmond.
Alex also writes regularly for national publications including Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Magazine, Boston Business, Utne Reader and Library Journal, among others. He is currently writing a book about the history of the information age, to be published in 2007 by the National Academies Press.
Alex holds a B.A. in English from Brown University, an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. He has also completed graduate coursework in journalism at Harvard, and in usability engineering at UC-Berkeley.
Email: info at spanstrategies dot com
SpanStrategies is an integrated consulting firm focused on Product Usability & Design, and Marketing Execution. We have expertise in corporate brand execution, identity, interaction and visual design, technology strategy and web production engineering. We also bring a network of on shore/off shore development teams to compliment our work when needed.