Bob Mark
LATEST: March 2005. Seems like Robert Mark does not like to mention Xamplify in his detailed resume. One example of it is Digital Sandbox, a risk management company listing Dr. Mark on its board of advisors but leaving out his Xamplify connection. Earlier in November 2004 Black Swan Risk Advisors, Berkeley announcedd a working partnership with Dr. Bob Mark.
Dr. Robert 'Bob' Mark, has worked for Black Diamond, CIBC, Coopers and Lybrand. He became the president and then CEO of Xamplify, after I left the company.
Dr. Robert Mark presented a talk including Xamplify, Inc related material at INFORMS conference held at Montreal, Canada. In that, he devoted at least 5 pages mentioning Xamplify and what its products could do. He represented himself as the president and the CEO of Black Diamond Risk Enterprises.
Naturally, questions arise about what was Bob Mark's exact relationship with Xamplify at that time and did he tell the conference attendees, how much work he did on Xamplify's products by that time to be able to mention that there, and did he know that his claims about Xamplify being able to use psychometric profiles to improve decisions might not be true at all? To answer this, I will state a few of my observations and let you decide on Dr. Mark's conduct.
I worked for Xamplify from June 2001 to first week of March 2002, when I quit the company. I didn't see him during that period. However, soon after I had joined the company, I was told by Sumer Johal that Xamplify was trying to recruit Dr. Mark and was in talks with him. Around January of 2002, I believe, Sumer Johal and Dr. Robert Oliver might have met Bob.
Checking the archive page one can see that Bob Mark's name was not there on the company's website on April 21, 2002 and May 31, 2002. ( May 31, 2002 website was a new one and it can be guessed that Dr. Mark was not formally employed by Xamplify at the time he attended the conference.
However, Dr. Robert M. Mark became a senior executive of the company soon after. Around September 2002 his name showed up as the president of the company after the company's website reappeared after a lapse of about 3 months. (There was a 'we will be back' notice during that period.) He was the president and then moved up to the CEO rank in February 2003. (Archive directory has the leadership showing Mark as the CEO, and an approach page built on one on the exhibits from his talk at INFORMS. Were those claims in February 2003 true?
During the period I was there I never saw Dr. Mark. I was the main person working on the models and I don't think he was involved with Xamplify's work. Dr. Thomas Emerson, my sole colleague in the Data Modeling group, was laid off the day after I quit. That was in the first week of March 2002.
While Xamplify was claiming to its potential customers and investors that it was being able to improve the predictive powers of model drastically by using psychological profiling, in reality, the psychological profiling was not used in the model because it was not working. The reasons were quite simple but details are covered elsewhere. Moreover, the company was trying to measure a few psychological traits but most of the traits illustrated in Dr. Bob Mark's speech were not.
Now let's see Dr. Robert Mark's presentation.
The following the entire pdf file (1500 KB) of Bob Mark's presentation at INFORMS conference at Montreal, Canada. Pages 41-45 are related to Xamplify and are listed below with their scanned images (about 120 KB each) and comments below them.
IMPORTANT: All the following material is property of and copyrights of Dr. Rober M. Mark. These are just to be viewed here under "Fair Use" and wide printing from this site and redistributing them is strictly prohibited. If interested in such activities, please go to the INFORMS site linked towards the top, and get access to the pdf file of Dr. Mark's presentation.
Xamplify Products
Just a few graphic of Xamplify's 'products.'
Observation Agents
Note the mention of the phrase 'Customer Touch Point' - an apparent favorite of Sumer Johal. It was so touching.
X-Seller
Standard fancy charts.
Psychometrics
Mentions psychometrics, I believe, were just put there. Also the claim about psychometric profiles, combined with demographics and transaction data, allow you to predict responses more accurately, while possible, was not true for Xamplify at the time I left the company about one and the half months earlier.
CVM
More jargon.
If somebody asked me about my conclusion based on the limited knowledge available to me, I would say that Dr. Robert 'Bob' Mark was being unethical - taking credit for a work he didn't do, not explaining properly his relationship with the company Xamplify, and stating results that any person using due diligence would have found to be untrue - especially a person of his caliber. He seemed to be trying to hype Xamplify. Did he behave ethically and professionally? Should INFORMS reprimand him and refund the registration fee to people who attended his 'infomercial'? You decide.
Additional references
Xamplify's description of Dr. Robert Mark
Dr. Robert M. Mark
President and CEO
Black Diamond Risk Enterprises
Tel: (416) 916-3398
Email: bmark@blackdiamondrisk.com
Analyzing and Enhancing the Extended Enterprise
Hilton Montreal Bonaventure
Montreal, Canada
Track 1: Monday May 20 (2002)
INFORMS Conference on OR/MS Practice
10:30 AM - 11:20 AM
(Last Updated: February 6, 2004.)
Xamplify Watch presentation.