SSB Consulting Group Expands to Nashville with New Partners

NASHVILLE, Tenn. --(Business Wire)--

SSB, a Denver-based Microsoft (News - Alert) Partner providing management consulting, technology services, and analytic products for multiple markets including sports, healthcare, real estate, travel and entertainment, announced today that it is adding database marketing experts Jay Graves and Bobby Whitson as partners.

Graves and Whitson, who will work out of the company's newly established Nashville office, will help both national and Nashville-based clients with customer database marketing and business intelligence strategy, products, and services.

"Jay and Bobby are proven experts and pioneers in the database marketing and digital space," said SSB president Andrew Brodie. "This is important news on two fronts for SSB. Adding Jay and Bobby to the SSB team better enables us to serve the needs of new and existing clients, and marks our first expansion into a new market."

Graves joins SSB after establishing the digital marketing team at Boulder, Colo.-based Wiland Direct. Graves is a 20-year database marketing professional who in the 1990s co-founded Nashville-based SmartDM, the first database marketing company to gain significant penetration in the sports and entertainment industry. A well-known leader in the digital marketing space, Graves has worked with multiple leading digital agencies, such as Acxiom (News - Alert) (ACXM), Merkle, and Wiland Direct, and has held leadership roles in direct-to-consumer companies. A Vanderbilt University graduate, Graves is also an establshed leader in the arena of "content-driven commerce," an emerging market for the sports and entertainment industry.

"This is the most exciting time in history to help businesses have direct, meaningful, and profitable interactions with their customers," said Graves. "This applies not only to sports and entertainment clients, but to every category of business. Our job is to help clients understand their data, convert it into information, and extract knowledge. That is data as a business strategy."

Bobby Whitson, founder and CEO of Whitson Sports, is a database marketing veteran who has worked with well over 100 teams, venues, colleges, and sports leagues in his 12-year history in the sports and entertainment space. Widely recognized as one of the central figures in accelerating the sports industry's adoption of advanced sales and technology platforms, and best practices, Whitson remains focused on helping sports teams, colleges, and leagues maximize revenue through greater management, understanding, and utilization of available data assets. Whitson has played multiple business development roles for organizations including SmartDM, Acxiom, and Veritix.

"With SSB's data management and business intelligence expertise, we will be positioned to provide teams and venues with an unprecedented view into the health of their customer base and provide solutions to impact sales," said Whitson. "At a time when most organizations are simply trying to get data into a CRM platform, it has become increasingly apparent that managing effective customer relationships requires a true data warehouse to which all platforms across the organization connect. This cost-effective, centralized platform will then empower sports marketers to get the most out of their CRM solution while providing advanced reporting and analytics designed to help organizations sell more effectively. We're truly establishing a new level of expertise that will redefine how teams and venues manage data and market to their customers."

About Strategic Solutions for Business

Strategic Solutions for Business (SSB) is based in Denver, Colorado. Our mission is to develop quality relationships with our clients by inspiring passion through our work ethic and enthusiasm. Our focus is to deliver high value to our clients with our software, skills, thought leadership, and involvement in the worldwide business community. SSB was born from the idea that consultants should be experts in what they do. Technology and management consultants should focus on one thing: helping their clients succeed. As such, we focus on the needs of our clients first and foremost. For more information, visit SSB.