CRS Business Associates, Inc. was founded by an experienced entrepreneur who saw a need for measuring and improving business performance. With the advent of analytical platforms and predictive modeling software, he has expanded the company’s direction toward making these analytical capabilities available to all organizations including small to medium businesses (SMB).

The company’s marketplace identity has changed to CRS Business Analytics to reflect the new emphasis. His talented staff and alliance partners also have extensive analytical and SMB expertise.

Creig Foster – CEO and Founder

CRS Business Analytics, a division of CRS Business Associates, Inc. (CRS), was founded by Creig to help large and SMB access and analyze data so that the resulting information can be used in making better informed decisions.

In addition, Creig is the Associate Partner at Marketing Operations Partners, leading the team associated with Marketing Analytics services.

Creig uses data mining, business analytics, predictive modeling, and communications software to build the company’s Platforms and Portal for his customer’s use. Creig has incorporated these analytical techniques into pre-built models to address a wide variety of business issues such as:

• Marketing campaign management
• Customer loyalty and retention
• Lead generation and qualification scoring
• Marketing mix allocation and ROI analysis
• Fraud detection (insurance, AP, warranty claims)
• Sales forecasting and customer profitability
• Working capital management and cash flow forecasting

He assists clients in identify, extracting, analyzing relevant company data to gain deeper insights into their customer-product-level behavior and activity as well as using the data to identify patterns used in predicting future outcomes.

Creig brings 15 years of experience as a former Senior Manager with KPMG Peat Marwick (now Bearing Point) and senior project manager positions at leading technology companies including TRW, IBM and Siebel (now Oracle). With his consulting work, he is experienced in using predictive modeling and statistical tools to analyze and forecast a wide variety of outcomes including marketing campaigns, sales programs, fraud instances, and cash needs.

One of his most recent experiences in modeling marketing and sales data was a year long project at Warner Bros. and Warner Home Video. The project included the analysis and preliminary design of a Data Warehouse system for the company’s vast film library of 40,000 plus titles and the forecast of royalty payments.

Other predictive modeling projects included the development and implementation of cash forecasting systems for a $3 billion Agri-business and a large regional auto supply store chain. Work in the fraud detection area included a project for a large regional telephone company where phone card fraudulent was a big issue.

Creig’s experience also includes over 15 years in commercial banking where he was a Vice President at Northern Trust (Chicago) and Bank of America (San Francisco). From this experience, his expertise includes financial analysis, corporate finance, corporate credit analysis, financial modeling, financial planning, investment analysis, corporate cash management, and international treasury management.

Creig headed up Bank of America’s Global Cash Management Services group and established KPMG’s Treasury Management Practice after he left Bank of America. His pioneering work in Free Cash Throw-off had its origins during his numerous lending relationships while at Bank of America. He has evolved the technique into an effective management tool for companies to monitor their liquidity needs, cash flow and working capital assets.

To round out his business profile, Creig has participated in founding a start-up software company, hired professional managers, raised investment capital, merged the entity with a publicly traded “shell company” and sold his position for a sizable profit.

Creig is a member of a number of business associations including American Marketing Association and the BPM Forum. He is an adjunct professor teaching marketing and sales management courses at University of Phoenix and formerly taught at Golden Gate University’s MBA program. Creig holds a MBA degree in Finance from DePaul University and a BSBA degree in Marketing and Mathematics from Northwestern University.