Photography is Tom Niccum’s avocation. And it’s taken him to many parts of the world to learn from world-class photographers and to shoot his own splendid photographs. But perhaps Niccum’s most salient images are those un-captured images of the successful business climate and the impressive client service area that he helped create at Lancet Software Development. There, for purely legal reasons, like the rest of his fellow Flounders, his company title as "President" is a more of a footnote. He wears many hats in the company.
A partial architect of Lancet’s loose, lively and highly efficient “open book” work culture, Dr. Niccum, whose University of Minnesota Ph.D. thesis is titled “Declustering Aware Parallel Join Algorithms and their Optimization,” is an astute business person applying the latest business intelligence applications for some of the most newsworthy companies in the country today. Niccum’s hands-on leadership has helped shape Lancet’s crucial first three years. As a leading supplier of e-business intelligence products and services, Lancet has built its reputation on those at the company like Niccum who have extensive academic and real-world computer skills in Information Systems, including such specialties as Data Warehousing and Database Management.
Even though Niccum today sometimes teaches Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, he initially dropped out of college in 1977 with a balding 2.5 grade point average while a sophomore. His reason: “I wanted to work in the real world of computers.” Ten years later, he “went back with a vengeance” to achieve his Bachelors’ degree from the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota in 1990 and graduated magna cum laude. An M.S. in Computer Science from the U of M followed in 1992, along with a number of Honor Society Memberships, extensive publishing in various journals, at different conferences and many technical reports.
His "real-world" computer plays include TCB Incorporated (1977-80) where he was a Data Processing Manager, responsible for IS operations in the company. He next moved to a Vice President position at A.R. Shaw, Inc., (1980-85) where he oversaw new software development, working closely with sales and marketing efforts, before moving on to R&D duties for health care records management at Alpha Timeshare Consultants (1985-90).
For the next four years he served as President of Liaison Systems, providing contract programming and consulting for a variety of clients. The next two years at LifeRate (1995-97) were critical, since it is there that he met his fellow Lancet Flounders while working as a Vice President of Development for Product Development focused on healthcare and medical records targeted to Cardiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery. That experience sealed the fate of the four Flounders, and Niccum emerged as the foursome’s president, almost by default, once the company sets its wheels in motion in 1997.
Besides holding professional designations as a Microsoft Certified Professional and MicroStrategy DSS Gold Certified Consultant and professional memberships in the Data Warehousing Institute and the Association for Computer Machinery, Niccum remains an accomplished photographer who has studied and traveled with photographers such as National Geographic’s Steve McCurry, Rick Sammon and others while traveling around the world.
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