Advisory Council

:: Jaesung Cha, Ph.D., Assistant Research Scientist at the NQRC
:: Russ Merz, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing - Eastern Michigan University
:: Anatole Ostrovsky - Director of Information Technology - CFI Group North America

Jaesung Cha, Ph.D., Assistant Research Scientist at the National Quality Research Center (NQRC)
- The University of Michigan Business School

Jaesung "Jae" Cha is an assistant research scientist at the National Quality Research Center (NQRC) at The University of Michigan Business School where he is in charge of all the statistical analyses for the national customer satisfaction indices. He is a leading national analyst in customer and employee satisfaction programs, including strategic modeling projects linking the results of the survey-based studies to corporate performance measures such as revenue, profit and ultimately shareholder value. His experience includes working with the Korea Productivity Center (KPC) to establish the National Customer Satisfaction Index for Korea.

Jae is also a Chief Research Scientist for the CFI Group. In addition, he is Director of Research and Analysis for the company and runs their Seoul office. He has managed numerous customer and employee satisfaction programs for a wide variety of clients, including companies in telecommunications, retailing and service industries such as AT&T, Nortel, One2One, British Petroleum, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Sears. His responsibilities include management of the Research Analyst Group, Research and Development and Quality Control within CFI.

As an expert of causal and predictive modeling methodology, Jae plays a key role in the development of industry-leading modeling and analysis techniques for the company and the proprietary [patented] CFI Group system (patent pending). Jae's work has been published in many major journals, books, and conference proceedings. His paper, "Crossing the Threshold: Some Customers are Harder to Please Than Others" (Marketing Research, Vol. 8, No. 4), won AMA's David Hardin Memorial Award in 1996.

Jae received a Ph.D. in marketing at The University of Michigan in 1994, an M.B.A. from Seoul National University with a concentration in marketing, and a B.A. from Sung Kyun Kwan University with a major in English language and literature.

Russ Merz, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing
- Eastern Michigan University

Russ Merz, Ph.D., is a professor of marketing at Eastern Michigan University, where he teaches marketing strategy and maintains an active research program investigating the role of measurement systems in managerial decision-making. Russ's research focuses on the design, execution and use of customer and employee satisfaction measurement programs within service industries.

Russ is also Director of Research and Analysis for CFI Group North America. He is responsible for the design, analysis and delivery of measurement services, and for provision of subject matter expertise related to customer and employee asset management systems, and enterprise performance modeling. His expertise focuses on (1) understanding the roles of consumer, employee and management behaviors in the improvement of organizational performance, (2) measuring the effect of human and managerial resources on the implementation of business strategies, and (3) the use of perceptual modeling techniques as tools for organizational performance management.

He developed and managed the employee satisfaction measurement practice within CFI, developed the first enterprise-level models for CFI, and was a co-leader on the team that developed the Sears employee-customer-profit model. Before joining the CFI Group, Russ was an independent consultant in the health care industry providing consulting and research services to hospitals, HMOs and related associations in the profit and nonprofit sector.

He has published in the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of Advertising, The Journal of Small Business Management, and American Marketing Association Conference Proceedings. His credentials include a B.S. from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an M.B.A. in marketing from Miami University, and a Ph.D. in marketing from Michigan State University. He is also a member of the American Marketing Association.

Anatole Ostrovsky - Director of Information Technology
- CFI Group North America

Anatole Ostrovsky is Director of Information for Technology with CFI Group, where he is responsible for the design of the CFI Group's network infrastructure and software system, which is utilized by CFI Group and its international offices.

He was previously a consultant and then as the full-time Director of IT for the company.

Before joining CFI Group, Anatole was responsible for the design and implementation of numerous mid-size business systems. Among these were automated quoting and claims adjudication systems developed for insurance companies, sales automation and telemarketing systems, and print production systems for electronic publishing.

Anatole earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1987.