A. Kevin Francis
President and Chief Executive Officer
A. Kevin Francis joined CenterBeam as president and chief executive officer in 2002. Since then, he has significantly improved operations and sales. Francis implemented a total quality process throughout the company that has resulted in increasing customer satisfaction to 95%. He scaled CenterBeam's operations, opening a technology operations center in Saint John, New Brunswick, to serve CenterBeam's quickly growing roster of customers. And Francis re-invented the industry-standard terms of the multi-year outsourcing contract to one simple, month-to-month agreement: Total Satisfaction Guarantee.
Prior to CenterBeam, Francis was president, chief executive officer and director of Accelio Corporation, a leading global provider of Web-enabled business process solutions. Under his leadership, Accelio earned fiscal 2001 revenues of more than $100 million (Canadian), created a distribution network spanning the world, and reached 8.5 million users. The company was successfully acquired by Adobe Systems in 2002.
Before joining Accelio, Francis held a variety of positions with Xerox including chairman, president and CEO of Xerox Canada, a $1.6B (Canadian) organization. He joined Xerox Canada in 1972 as a sales representative and held leadership positions in marketing, customer service, process re-engineering, strategic planning, administration, information systems, general management, customer satisfaction and quality.
Francis has been involved in a number of organizations and demonstrates a long standing commitment to sharing his time and talent. His current appointments include serving on the Board of Directors of SoftChoice Corporation in Toronto as well as a member of the CEO Council for the Entrepreneurs' Foundation in San Jose, California. He has also served as a member of the Executive Committee of The Conference Board, Governor for St. Francis Xavier University, Chairman of the Board, 4 Ever Sports Inc., Governor of the Richard Ivey School of Business – University of Western Ontario, Director of The National Quality Institute, Director of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business Information Technology Association of Canada, the Public Policy Forum and campaign cabinet for United Way.
Recently, Francis was named the Best Turnaround Executive by The 2006 International Business Awards. In 2005 Mr. Francis was named Industry Leader of the Year at New Brunswick, Canada's Knowledge Industry Recognition and Achievement (KIRA) gala.
Francis was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. He earned a B.Sc. from St. Francis Xavier University and a B.Ed from St. Mary’s University. He completed Executive Development Programs at Queen’s University and the Senior Executive Program at the University of Western Ontario. In October 1999, Mr. Francis received an Honorary Doctorate in Commerce from St. Mary’s University in Halifax.
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