Tidemark Co-Founder Tony Rizzo Rises to Chief Product Officer

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Tidemark, the cloud-based enterprise analytics company, today announced that Co-Founder Tony Rizzo has been appointed Chief Product Officer, effective immediately. This appointment ensures Tidemark's future product direction will continue to be shaped by the voice of the customer, which Rizzo has listened to closely for more than three years as head of the company's Customer Success team. As Chief Product Officer, Rizzo will lead Tidemark's Engineering, DevOps, Quality Engineering and Product Management teams for the company's cloud-based business analytics, financial modeling and operational planning applications.

"Since Tidemark's first moments, Tony has been closest to the problems customers are facing with legacy systems and a key contributor for identifying the ways we can provide relief," said Christian Gheorghe, founder and CEO, Tidemark. "As we scale our operations and extend the reach of our cloud-based applications, his customer-first perspective will continue to drive Tidemark's product development and future roadmap."

Rizzo started his career more than 20 years ago as "a customer of bad technology" – an unforgettable experience which taught him that for applications to be successful, they must adapt to the natural workflows of customers rather than asking customers to conform to the application. That realization fueled a relentless interest in helping customers successfully implement business performance management solutions. Rizzo began work at IMRS (later Hyperion Solutions), where he held a number of key roles in QA, product development and consulting. He then co-founded OutlookSoft, where he served as Vice President of Services leading nearly 700 successful customer implementations worldwide before transitioning his team through an acquisition by SAP. Rizzo then served as Senior Vice President at HCL Axon, where he launched a new enterprise performance management practice.

Rizzo was asked by Gheorghe to join Tidemark as a co-founder in 2009. The company spent 18 months in stealth mode with Rizzo dedicating the first six months to interviewing more than 100 companies to determine where their current enterprise environments were failing to meet their needs. Listening to the voice of the customer before ever writing one line of code helped shape Tidemark's vision for providing easy-to-use, mobile-first performance management and business analytics applications that bring every stakeholder into the planning, forecasting, and analysis process.

"Tidemark has been successful by putting customers in the driver's seat and letting them tell us where our applications need to go," said Rizzo. "As we grow into a stronger global force in the industry, I'll ensure that laser focus on customer needs is reflected in every release, every new feature, and every new capability. To serve the new breed of CFO who is accountable to the needs of business owners, we have to be accountable to the needs of that CFO. Those are our marching orders."

Tidemark's customer focus is evident in its Fall 2013 release, also announced today. Tidemark has packed its Fall 2013 release with 25 new features and several new applications for managing labor and planning expenses, modeling and analyzing profitability, planning initiatives, managing IT spending, and forecasting sales. The new release also includes capabilities for process-aware modeling at "cloud scale," which allows companies to configure performance-related analytic processes that drive engagement and empowerment across their business.

Scott Fitzharris to Head Customer Success
Tidemark also announced today the appointment of Scott Fitzharris as its new Vice President of Customer Success. Fitzharris joined Tidemark in February of 2012 after nearly five years as an award-winning account executive at SAP, where Fitzharris focused on ensuring successful deployments of enterprise performance management and business analytics solutions. He also spent nearly three years managing customer engagements and partner relationships at OutlookSoft Corp. (prior to its acquisition by SAP), and held senior positions at S3 Matching Technologies, SSG Limited, Stonebridge Technologies and Breckenridge Software.

"Scott combines deep technical knowledge with the ability to meet customers right where they live, and that makes him a terrific choice to lead our Customer Success group," said Rizzo. "I look forward to teaming with him as Tidemark creates products that land squarely in the bull's-eye of customer needs."

About Tidemark
Tidemark helps companies foster a culture of performance with cloud-based enterprise analytics that engage the entire organization in business transformation. Tidemark's apps involve multiple lines of business in core enterprise performance management processes, such as planning, forecasting and analysis, for greater collaboration and context. Leading companies transforming their businesses with Tidemark include Chiquita, Hostess Brands, Chuck E. Cheese's, HubSpot, ServiceSource and Brown University. Tidemark is funded by Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Tenaya Capital and Dave Duffield. To learn more about Tidemark, please visit www.tidemark.net or follow us on twitter @TidemarkEPM.

Additional Resources
Fall 2013 Release – http://www.tidemark.net/our-latest-innovations
Analytics Re-imagined – http://www.tidemark.net/enterprise-analytics-reimagined
Tidemark Storylines – http://www.tidemark.net/success-delivered
Our blog – http://www.tidemark.net/blog/   

SOURCE Tidemark