Kaufman Hall Hires Tom Walsh as CEO of Software Business

Kaufman Hall Software is now Syntellis Performance Solutions

SKOKIE, Ill. – May 3, 2016 – Kaufman Hall, a leading provider of management consulting services, and enterprise performance management and decision support software, today announced that Tom Walsh has joined the company as chief executive officer of its software business. Walsh brings extensive software leadership experience to the company, including 20 years with Thomson Reuters, where he led several significant global software businesses.

Walsh will play a critical role leading the Kaufman Hall Software division as the company prepares for its next phase of growth. Demand for performance management and decision support software has surged in recent years as organizations strive to leverage financial and operational data to inform better decision making in a competitive environment.

Continuing Growth to Meet Increased Market Demand

After significant investments in sales leadership and product development, including a best-in-class SaaS offering, software bookings increased by 45 percent in 2015. With more than 2,500 organizations using its software products, Kaufman Hall continues to maintain its business imperative of top customer satisfaction scores for its Axiom Software, as measured by industry analysts Gartner and BPM Partners. Leading organizations – such as Ascension Health, the largest non-profit health system in the United States; Golden 1 Credit Union; Mesirow Financial; Incase; Tufts University and University College London – are using Kaufman Hall’s Axiom Software to optimize planning, analytics and reporting in their organizations.

To meet growing demand, Kaufman Hall has expanded operations both organically and through strategic investments. After the Axiom EPM acquisition in 2014, Kaufman Hall received private equity funding from Madison Dearborn Partners in 2015, enabling increased technology innovation, while further enhancing customer operations. In February of 2016, Kaufman Hall announced the acquisition of Total Benchmark Solution to provide enhanced data benchmarking and analytics for healthcare customers. Kaufman Hall has also continued to increase its employee base over the past two years, and plans to hire an additional 45 software employees in 2016 in order to continue to earn the industry’s highest customer satisfaction ratings while expanding operations.

“I am honored to join Kaufman Hall and to guide the software business in the next phase of customer-focused growth,” said Walsh. “With an award-winning, cloud-optimized product, and the company’s unique combination of software and consulting expertise, I’m excited about the many opportunities before us to deliver the next generation of enterprise performance management and decision support solutions to the marketplace.”

“We are thrilled to have Tom join the company and lend his extensive experience and industry knowledge to help us achieve our goals,” said Therese Wareham, managing director and chief executive officer of Kaufman Hall. “With Tom’s natural customer focus and keen ability to identify new markets for products to drive top-line growth, we are confident that the future looks bright for our expanding software business and also for our clients, who rely on our software to help them achieve their strategic performance management goals.”

Walsh succeeds Jason Sussman, managing director at Kaufman Hall and acting CEO since the acquisition of Axiom EPM in April of 2014. Sussman will continue in a software leadership role at the company, serving on the software committee of the board of directors, and continuing to lead the strategic financial and capital planning management consulting practice.

About Tom Walsh

As a seasoned general manager with more than 25 years of experience in the enterprise finance and regulatory software space, including 10 years of P&L experience leading global businesses for Thomson Reuters, Walsh brings deep software and commercial channel expertise to the Kaufman Hall Software division. Walsh holds an Accounting degree from the University of Wyoming and brings decades of software sales, product management, and operations experience from U.S. and EMEA-based software businesses experiencing rapid-growth trajectories.