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Thursday, November 21, 2002

By Joyce Gannon, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Say you possess a one-of-a-kind recipe for pizza that friends assure you will be a sure sell. But would you open a pizzeria without a sign outside or a listing in the Yellow Pages?

Probably not.

	Suzy Teele, who spent years in senior level marketing and management positions, is co-founder and chief executive of Aceda, a Fox Chapel consulting firm that provides fledgling companies with temporary executives to help manage their sales or guide them through new business initiatives. (Lake Fong, Post-Gazette)

That's the bottom-line message Suzy Teele preaches to her clients: Even the most innovative technology companies need a strong infusion of marketing and business skills to get their products or services into customers' hands.

Teele is co-founder and chief executive of Aceda, a Fox Chapel consulting firm that provides fledgling companies with temporary executives to help manage their sales or guide them through new business initiatives. Teele, who spent years in senior level marketing and management positions at local high-tech firms, believes that many Pittsburgh start-ups suffer from what she calls "the 'Field of Dreams' perception."

"They think if you build technology products, people will just buy them," she said.

No matter how unique the gadget, no one will buy it unless savvy managers properly position and sell it, Teele said.

"I have a passion for trying to help Pittsburgh companies know that technology is only half the solution. That's a hard lesson for them to understand."

Teele, 42, didn't expect to end up as a consultant nurturing young entrepreneurs.

The New Kensington native graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1982 with a business degree and was recruited for Mellon Bank's management training program.

Five and a half years later, her former boss at Mellon persuaded her to become a product manager at Duquesne Systems, a flourishing Pittsburgh software company that would later become Legent Corp.

"It took a year for me to decide whether to [leave Mellon]. It was a big decision going from a big established company to a small one."

The switch also involved Teele entering a new career niche: marketing.

But the move paid off.

Teele loved the challenge of developing and positioning Legent's software products to help mainframe computers perform better. In 1992, at age 32, she was named general manager of operations, overseeing a team of 225 Legent employees in the United States and Europe.

Part of her job included steering Legent through 25 mergers and acquisitions as its revenue grew to $500 million.

In 1995, Legent named Teele vice president of human resources, the first female and youngest corporate officer in the company's history.

That's the job she held when industry giant Computer Associates acquired Legent in 1995. For months after the deal was announced, she typically worked daily from 9 a.m. to midnight to process severance, transition and benefit issues for Legent's 3,000 employees worldwide.

When the transition was done, Teele turned down an offer to join Computer Associates and in 1996 was recruited by another local software firm, ServiceWare Technologies, as senior vice president, marketing.

That Oakmont company later hired Ted Teele, her husband-to-be, as vice president of sales. He eventually became president but was let go in a management shakeup in early 1999. Suzy Teele left, too, and the pair launched Aceda under its original name, "E-biz consulting." "We are not a group of lifelong consultants. We've been in the trenches and learned a lot of things to do and a lot of things not to do," Teele said.

Aceda has helped launch eight new technology companies and worked with 20 others on a project basis. Local clients have included RedSiren Technologies, a computer security firm that wanted to revitalize its management, as well as Treehouse Software, NetTec Services and TurningPoint Systems.

She won't disclose revenues but said Aceda is profitable.

Earlier this year, Ted Teele left to take a full-time position as chief executive officer at one of Aceda's clients, One Coast Network, a national organization of sales professionals in the gift and home industry.

Now Aceda has four consultants including Suzy and an administrative assistant.

She runs the business from a basement office in her home -- an arrangement that helps reduce overhead costs and allows her to stay closely involved with the activities of the Teeles' six children ranging in age from 18 months to a 19-year-old college freshman. She had two children before she married Teele, who had three; they have had one together.

As if juggling her career and family aren't enough, Teele has a dizzying lineup of outside commitments in the local business community. She sits on the advisory boards of the Pittsburgh Technology Council's Marketing Network and Seton Hill University's National Education Center for Women; is a mentor for the University of Pittsburgh Katz School's Entrepreneurial Fellows Center; is an adviser to the Allegheny Chapter of PowerLink, an organization that counsels women-owned businesses; is a member of Pittsburgh Regional Champions, a volunteer group of ambassadors who promote the region; and is a member of the ImageGap committee that is trying to develop a new promotional campaign for Pittsburgh.

She's determined to lend her time to those groups because she believes that the region has "a fundamental problem" in taking the necessary risks to attract investors and business people with the right skills to grow big, successful technology companies.

"We had Legent, which was acquired, then Fore Systems before it was acquired [by Marconi PLC]. Now we have FreeMarkets, but we should have 20 FreeMarkets.

"We need to find a way to get people to visit here, move here and stay here."

As for squeezing all her activities into her schedule, Teele admits to relying on a hand-held computer organizer.

"I'm happiest when there's too much to do. I'm always learning, and I think that's better for my children."