Steve Parker has a B.S. degree in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland and a Masters degree
in Physics from Washington University. He also studied Statistical
Mathematics at the University of Maryland Graduate School.
Hiroshi Parker has a B.A. degree in Sociology from
the University of Virginia.
Since 1994, Steve Parker has focused on
retirement administration systems in both in-house and outsourced/enterprise
configurations. Steve has worked with most of the major players in the
retirement industry including banks, accounting firms, actuarial consulting
firms, life insurance companies, and investment houses. From these
years working with retirement systems, Steve has gained extensive ERISA,
IRS, and pension industry knowledge. This coupled with his career long
systems development experience enables him to be a vital and effective
contributor to projects involving the development, implementation, and
conversion of business systems.
Steve has also developed several software applications geared toward back
office processing including double-blind payment data entry, data conversion
and quality control, and rehire/eligibility processing.
From 1994 to 2004 while at Lynchval Systems
Worldwide, Inc.,
Steve Parker created and led the business unit associated with their proprietary defined benefit
administration system for which he also led the design and development.
Steve led the implementations of this system and was involved in all project
aspects including requirements analysis, conversion/implementation, testing,
training, and ongoing support.
Hiroshi Parker has been with ParkereSSe since 2008, providing business
analyst and implementation/conversion support. He has been heavily
involved as the lead architect, designer, and developer for automated
Trustee Interface applications that significantly reduced errors and costs
associated with payment processing.
ParkereSSe has gathered a strong group of defined benefit and total
retirement experts within ParkereSSe that provide cost-effective,
value-added services to augment existing staff capabilities in both the
Systems and Operations arenas.
Since 2004,
ParkereSSe has been working as systems architect and business analyst to
enhance enterprise total retirement outsourcing solutions that combine
benefit systems (defined benefit, defined contribution, non-qualified
benefits) across multiple vendors. We were the lead designer on a
dynamic (real-time) data infrastructure that combines payroll,
user-initiated (via web and application front-ends), and adhoc data updates
with data reconciliation/synchronization across all systems. Clients
served by this system range from small (100’s of participants) to jumbo
(millions of active/termed participants) with traditional accrual, Cash
Balance, and integrated Grandfathered formulas. Over this same period,
ParkereSSe has been the lead implementation/conversion analyst for this same
client base for both data and plan design.
One of our key
roles has been to work with conversion and on-going administration teams to
review business practices, procedures, and tools to identify ways to reduce
effort and errors while maintaining if not improving service levels.
In many cases, we have recommended enhancements to existing systems and new
software applications to augment the core enterprise systems.
The nature of
group benefit administration, from systems to implementation to ongoing
support, is to apply experienced resources to build up an administrative
capability for a Plan Sponsor, then turn over the responsibility to a lower
cost operations team. Key success elements are:
·
Genuine group benefit expertise.
·
Skills and vision that bridge technology and business/operations.
·
Balanced solutions that incorporate enterprise systems, external
applications, and operations processes for a best of all worlds business
fit.
Because the need
for this specialized expertise is sporadic, tied to events such as
enterprise system upgrade/replacement, new client implementation, and
restructure of operations (to include outsourcing), sustaining an internal
team at the ready can be costly. Because the skills are unique,
finding the right skill sets can be difficult.
ParkereSSe has that team and has been successful at providing that sporadic
but highly skilled support to create sustainable, high-quality, and
reasonable cost administration services to their clients.
Steve Parker began his career as an electrical
engineer, developing flight simulation test facilities for military aircraft
systems including reconnaissance, tracking, weapons guidance, mission
computers, and cockpit instruments. Steve spent several years
developing instrumentation radar systems for defense department stealth
initiatives. He developed software packages that performed
automated command-and-control, data collection, and real-time data
processing/analysis.
For defense, intelligence,
and emergency management organizations, Steve Parker has participated in
studies and analyses of weapons, defense, and communications systems with
special emphasis on survivability and endurability. He has studied the
physics of weapons effects and strategies of war to produce both software
and hardware systems to predict and avoid direct and collateral weapon
damage. Steve developed computer simulation models that supported
strategic and tactical operations studies with emphasis on mission
effectiveness of both systems and planning.