Norb's History
Norb's History
After graduating from college with a business degree, Norb went to work in retail financial services, where he was unfulfilled. A friend who worked in technical support for Lotus Development Corp. helped him realize that he could have a career in computers.
He landed a job with Leading Edge Computers. The fast pace of a technical support call center helped Norb quickly learn about all of the company’s products including computer hardware, operating systems, programming languages and applications. He eventually becoming the network expert and liaison to the software development group.
From there he went on to work in corporate IT for a couple of banks (Indian Head National Bank & First Mutual of Boston) where he learned about networking and supporting users in IBM Token Ring & System 36 and Novell/DEC VAX environment.
The turmoil of the banking industry in the early 1990’s brought Norb to real estate. His initial position was with Capital Partners, a joint venture between 2 brothers. Here, he maintained a Texas Instruments 990 minicomputer running the Timberline system and eventually migrated the data to the OS/2 version of that popular real estate accounting system.
From there Norb was able to parlay his DEC and PC Networking experience into a position with Leggat McCall Properties. While there, he implemented several accounting systems to support the firm’s clients’ requirements. He secured a 3 letter domain name (at no cost to the firm) and implemented the company’s first email system. Several moves and hardware refreshes ensued before he managed a conversion of cc:Mail to Lotus Notes/Domino.
After 10 years, Norb moved on to Metropolitan Properties of America where he was the Project manager for Yardi Voyager, an integrated, cloud- based real estate ERP system including modules for Resident portal, Online Payments and Leasing, A/R, A/P, G/L, Revenue Management, CheckScan, Utility Billing, Investment Management and PaySCAN. This includes workflow/process analysis, database conversion, software upgrades, writing SQL scripts and Crystal Reports, training users and managing Microsoft SQL Server. Add-ons to the system included implementing a remote deposit banking application for resident rent payments integrated with Yardi A/R. ACH/credit card payments were collected via resident portal. Checks were scanned on-site using CheckScan, resulting in faster collections and availability of funds. Other cloud initiatives included moving credit checking, rental applications and lease document applications to the cloud. As the firm saw its portfolio shrink, Norb managed outsourced vendor relationships for network support and property security systems. In his time with MPA, he oversaw several technology refreshes in a Microsoft environment including Blackberry-iPhones, Nortel-Cisco Unified Communications, Dell servers, SAN, desktops, Cisco VPN and WiFi.
After 17 years at Metropolitan Properties, Norb was accepted a position with GID Investment Advisers. While at GID, Norb worked on the Office 365 migration, specializing in Sharepoint Online and Teams. He was also responsible for the second level support of corporate applications (including Yardi Voyager, SAP Concur) and the many data integrations between those applications including a substantial data warehouse. Norb and his team were responsible for creating new automated workflows and improved the efficiency of existing troublesome processes.
Today, he's helping companies get the most out of their technology to achieve their business goals. He's worked with Caritas Communities, Corcoran Management and the Sacred Heart/Saint Thomas Aquinas Collaborative. Contact Norb for a free consultation.
Norb Callahan
Technology Consultant
Norb Callahan
Technology Consultant