Mark Stiffler is just 35 years old, and he has already founded a huge company: Synygy Inc. of Bala Cynwyd. Stifler is obsessed with analytical processes, because he understands that information is what is needed to reach goals. He started to become interested in data analysis as an MIT undergraduate student, and kept going from there.
Following his undergraduate degree, Stiffler went on to complete an MBA. As part of his degree, he had to complete a thesis, which he entitled “Overcoming Barriers to the Effective Use of Simulation as a Strategy Analysis Tool”. What shines through, even just in the title, is his love of data analytics and his understand of its importance in terms of developing strategies. Indeed, upon graduation, he was immediately headhunted by Philadelphia’s Strategic Management Group, who saw in him something unique. While there, he started to develop technology that is now accepted as essential in terms of creating business planning simulations and tools, using data analytics to plan future actions, and to see how those work out.
During his time at the Strategic Management Group, Stiffler was consulted on numerous times, once being asked to create a presentation with various forms of media. In this presentation, he provided salespeople with required information, which they would then take to drive their own sales. However, he quickly understood that salespeople are good at one thing: sales. Sales and analytics are two very different things, and Stiffler quickly came to realize that this method of working would therefore never truly improve business outcomes.
It was this specific experience that drove Stiffler towards his next steps: developing technology that could analyze statistics. He started with pharmaceutical data, which is one of the more complex forms of data. Eventually, he left the Strategic Management Group and founded his own company: Simulate Inc. Recently, he renamed his company Synygy, although its processes continue to be the same.
What Is Synygy?
Synygy is a company that helps companies deal with their analytical processing of data. The focus is very strongly on the pharmaceutical industry, with clients including Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories. Their process is known as transaction processing, which analyzes the data that they provide. Whenever a transaction takes place, the data of this transaction is used to create actionable, usable data.
In so doing, Synygy helps companies to ensure their talent can focus on what they are talented on. For instance, salespeople can focus on selling, rather than having to spend hours poring over data they do not truly understand. The analysis, in turn, can help management to create a plan of providing salespeople with an incentive plan. Because salespeople do not have to spend hours on crunching numbers, they can work harder, and their incentives mean they will work even harder. As such, everybody wins, as more sales are being made as well. As such, Synygy charges itself with driving significant company growth for its clients by taking some work out of their hands and allowing the professionals to complete it instead.