ABOUT SPX
Practitioner-led.
Diagnostic-first.
Built for the market consulting is becoming.
We change the perception of consulting from a cost center to a growth accelerator — by doing the work, owning the outcome, and putting our reputation on every engagement.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
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Consulting is being remade.
SPX is built for that market.
Consulting is being remade — by AI, by PE-driven operational transformation, and by buyers who refuse to commit to a major project without a defined-scope diagnostic first. SPX is built for that market, not the one consulting firms were built for ten years ago. We exist to change the perception of consulting from a cost center to a growth accelerator: by doing the work, owning the outcome, and putting our reputation on every engagement.
who we are
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Practitioners, not sales people
Practitioners with PE-portfolio operating experience and platform-specific delivery expertise across Salesforce, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Tableau, Snowflake, and Databricks. Not salespeople. Not a body shop. Not generalists hiding behind a brand.
LEADERSHIP
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Cedric Thomas, Founder & CEO
Cedric Thomas founded Strategy Planning Execution, Inc. (SPX) and runs every engagement personally. Over a 25-year career, he has led strategic programs, operational transformations, and corporate transactions — including operating roles at companies such as Apple and Symantec (now Broadcom), and a management consulting tenure at a Big Four firm, where he delivered transformation and M&A engagements for enterprise clients.
He pairs operating-partner-class strategic judgment with hands-on platform implementation skill, and brings AI activation into every engagement as standard. Across his career he has led 19 acquisition integrations and divestitures and dozens of enterprise system implementations and business-transformation programs.
Professional summary
25 years of operating and consulting experience
Strategy Planning Execution (SPX) Founder & CEO
2016 – Present · Santa Clara / Atlanta
✦ Developed the acquisition strategies and drove Due Diligence efforts of multiple acquisitions for middle market clients
✦ Drove the acquisition integration efforts of multiple acquisitions for enterprise-level and middle market clients at the IMO and functional-level
✦ Designed and drove the implementation of ERPs (such as Oracle, NetSuite and Rillet) for various middle market clients
✦ Designed and drove the implementation of Tableau and various Salesforce.com upgrades for middle market clients
Carnegie Learning Senior Vice President, Operations
2021 – 2025 · Atlanta
✦ Led all M&A integration, including the first phase of migrating 537 digital products from 7 environments to one unified platform.
✦ Ran IT, Business Applications, Facilities, Customer Support, Customer Service, and Product Operations — over 10% of the workforce.
✦ Drove an Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade, Salesforce enhancements, and generative AI in Customer Support.
Symantec (now Broadcom) Director — Product Operations; Engineering Program Management; M&A Due Diligence & Integration
2011 – 2016 · Mountain View
✦ Led the integration of four acquisitions and due diligence on 8 targets; authored major components of the firm’s due-diligence and integration methodology.
✦ Led a global team of 12 program managers across 18 releases for a $400M business unit, and drove a Waterfall-to-Agile transition that cut release cycle time from 325 to 260 days.
Apple Senior Program Manager
2009 – 2010 · Cupertino
✦ Drove iTunes App Store release updates that lifted developer payment accuracy from 81% to 98%, and automated back-office royalty processes for a 72% reduction in manual work.
✦ Reduced the monthly accounting soft-close from 7 days to 3.
Deloitte Manager / Senior Consultant, Strategy & Operations
2005 – 2009 · Los Angeles / Cleveland
✦ Led a business transformation and system implementation for a $1B technology client, yielding an estimated $40M in annual savings.
✦ Led Day 1 planning for finance (insurance merger) and go-to-market (a $3.6B, 8,000-employee technology merger); delivered Oracle and SAP programs during PE-backed transactions.
Mellon Bank (now BNY Mellon) Portfolio Management Assistant / Buy-Side Equity Analyst
2000 – 2005 · Cleveland
✦ Managed 52 portfolios and over $30M in assets, with strategies that consistently exceeded benchmarks; built valuation and regression models to estimate intrinsic value.
Ameritech (now AT&T) Manager, Cost Analysis1998 – 2000 · Cleveland
✦ Reported product profitability and regulatory compliance to executives, managed a team of cost analysts, and handled due-diligence data requests for AT&T’s acquisition of Ameritech.
Education
MBA, Finance — Case Western Reserve University
BS, Accounting — Case Western Reserve University
Certification
Project Management Professional (PMP)
MISSION
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What we’re here to do
To elevate what middle-market companies should expect from a consulting firm: practitioner-led execution, candor over choreography, AI embedded as standard, and personal accountability for results.
VISION
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Where we’re going
To be the practitioner-partner that PE operating partners call first when a portfolio company needs a digital transformation done right — and the boutique that founder-led CEOs trust to do the work without the overhead of a larger firm.
HOW WE WORK
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Our Values
Candor over choreography.
When we disagree with you, we say so. When something goes wrong, we own it before you ask. We never hide behind a brand, a methodology, or an ambiguous deliverable.
Practitioner-led, every engagement.
A named senior practitioner runs every engagement. We scale only with trusted practitioners — never trading quality for volume.
AI embedded as standard.
We activate the AI you’re already licensing, configure it for your data and make sure your team adopts it — measured on outcomes, not buzzwords.
Built for this client, not the last one.
No rinse-and-repeat templates. Every engagement begins with a diagnostic that produces a roadmap specific to your data, systems, and people.
Measurable, not aspirational.
Every recommendation maps to a quantified outcome, and every engagement closes against the baseline set in the diagnostic.
Reputation is the asset.
We say no to engagements we shouldn’t take and finish every one so you’d hire us again. Reputation is the only durable advantage a boutique has.
FOR THE RECORD
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What we will never become.
A body shop. A Big 4 advisory practice. A regional generalist firm. A consultancy that hands over a deck and calls it transformation. A firm that hides behind methodology when an engagement misses the mark.