Upon successfully selling SagaSolutions.com, I embarked on an exciting new phase of my professional journey. The initial destination on this path brought me to CIBER, where I eagerly assumed the role of National Practice Leader and Pre-Sales Architect.  This opportunity granted me valuable exposure to enterprise-level deals and the firsthand experience of working for a large company. It marked a significant milestone in my career, providing invaluable insights into the inner workings of the corporate enterprise level. The first deal I worked on was with AARP in Washington DC, where I learned the true meaning of discipline and customer service. Our focus during this engagement was on upgrading their CRM system from Version 3 to Version 2011.

During that period, most of the work was strictly on premises, so we didn't face any major obstacles except for the fact that the system was heavily customized. In my book, customization referred to anything that deviated from the out-of-the-box functionality (OOTB). Quite often, we found ourselves in situations where we had to pick up the pieces after a solution provider had failed to deliver.

As the lead architect, I had the privilege of working alongside a remarkable lead developer who possessed exceptional skills in upgrades and coding. Our goal was to roll back the system, replacing a significant amount of custom code with OOTB solutions, and perform two iterations of the upgrade: one from V3 to V4 and the second from V4 to V2011. Together, we meticulously designed an implementation plan and a work back plan, ensuring that we delivered the project on time and within budget.