Robert Angel, MBA, CA is president of the Gilford Group Limited, which he founded in Toronto in 1985. Bob has built a reputation as a consultant and pioneer in marketing and organizational performance, helping major organizations put innovative strategies into practice. He specializes in social networks, service delivery, and brand - understanding customers as individuals, performance strategies, and culture change - as well as value chains, risk, business intelligence, and enterprise performance.
Bob collaborated with early customer strategy adopters in the 1990s. At Digital Equipment Corporation he was Americas Services Industries Marketing Manager, then consulting practice leader creating rapid sales support and dashboard application development. With NCR, he was a thought-leader in analytical CRM, optimized communication, and customer value in its Teradata division. Earlier in his career, he was Chief Financial Officer of three international companies, working in North America and Europe, and started one of the first treasury management consulting practices in Canada for a leading consulting firm. He was also with a multinational packaged goods company in Montreal and Boston. More recently he has been on the Schulich School of Business' Marketing Faculty teaching Strategic Market Planning in the MBA program.
He believes strongly that customer strategies are all about the customer and not the organization. This requires organization and employee goals to be compatible and supported by tangible actions - with an innovation culture of customer and employee dialog, priorities, and actions based on defined outcomes plus a knowledge and learning organization. A cornerstone of his approach is planning changes in small steps that are self-funding.
He speaks and writes on these topics. Recent publications include Ivey Business Journal, Canadian Banker, CAmagazine, Canadian Marketing, Canadian Underwriter, The Banker (UK), and Corporate Executive Board Council on Financial Competition. He was the keynote speaker and chairman of MarcusEvans Travel Industry Marketing Conferences in Amsterdam (2005), Barcelona (2006), London (2006), Madrid (2007), and London (2008). He is a winner of the Canadian Business Press Kenneth R. Wilson Award.
He is a committee member of the Financial Executives Institute. He is a past Board member of the Strategic Leadership Forum (Toronto Society for Strategic Planning) and member of the Canadian Association of Management Consultants and the Strategic Capability Network.
Bob holds an MBA degree from Suffolk University in Boston, Mass. and CA designations in both Canada (CA) and England (FCA).
