The Pedestal Group

Our Managing Partner, Kathy Breitenbucher, CPC, has been in business for almost 20 years.  The lessons learned throughout her career have brought her to a place to offer businesses her expertise and understanding of how people get the job done.

Kathy began her career at Adia Personnel Services, a temporary staffing company.  Working in the largest Adia franchise at the time, Kathy learned a great deal about how different offices of the same company can be both the same, and yet very very different.  She worked her way up quickly from a Service Supervisor to a position created for her as the Special Projects Coordinator.  In this unique role Kathy coordinated the technology for all 16 branches, managed and created the advertising for the offices, and created the time management mechanisms for the system’s largest client.  When the system needed to grow, she worked with the programmer to ensure this application was everything the client needed.

Leaving Adia, Kathy went to Micro Electronics, the parent company of Micro Center retail stores.  As a Help Desk representative, Kathy learned everything there was to know about the hardware and software sold in the stores.  Having had a limited technical background, it was a great challenge to master the hardware side of the business.  On her first day, the trainer walked into the class and said, “Before I forget – PLEASE tell customers to change the switch from master to slave or it will never work and we’ll have repeat calls.  Thanks.”  Having no idea what that meant, Kathy vowed to make the training program less intimidating and more effective.  Within six months she was promoted to Team Leader which was the fastest that had ever happened at the Help Desk and before her first year was up she became the lead trainer.  She designed the Troubleshooting Guide that became the basis for a new training class focusing on how to make sure every call was resolved as quickly and effectively as possible.

Kathy was then recruited to Definitive Healthcare Solutions.  DHS created and maintains a leading software in the home infusion industry.  Again, walking in having no experience with compounding IV medications, Medicare billing, how insurance companies work, but armed with her customer service skills, Kathy was soon in charge of quality control, product development and all documentation.

After four years with DHS, Kathy’s husband got a job back in Cleveland and the family moved back home.  Kathy was then able to get the Help Desk Manager role at the College of Wooster responsible for 3,000 users, 3 staff and 18 students.  At the time, the Help Desk reputation was not good. Kathy was charged with turning it around.  Within the first six months, despite a complete email program changeover that didn’t go well, the Help Desk started receiving better press.  After her first year, faculty were attending conferences and bragging on the Help Desk to people at other schools.  When Kathy left the College, she was responsible for six staff and 35 students running three help desks and a digital imaging center.

Most recently Kathy has been with SRA International, the parent company of Sanford Rose Associates.  As a franchisor, SRAI has an interesting balance between compliance with agreements and helping the franchisees build their businesses.  Kathy was able to decrease the time to first billing from nine months on average to four.  In addition, in her first year as the head of Operations, Kathy grew revenues 29% and received an appreciation award from the Owners – something that had never happened in the 30+ years the company has been franchising.

Overall, Kathy’s experience has taught her that you have to make sure the people have what they need, when they need including the skills, goals and vision to accomplish what needs to be done.  She has been uniquely positioned to help companies identify those areas and make them happen.