Management Team

Jim Mandarakas

President and Founding Partner

Jim Mandarakas is an experienced, versatile technology executive who is committed to creating and preserving true business value through innovative and reliable/scalable technology and business solutions. For more than twenty-five years, and in a number of Fortune 500 companies, he has demonstrated his proven expertise in bringing technology strategy and tactics together with financial and business goals. He is a co-founder of Geranos Solutions and serves as the President and Secretary.

Mr. Mandarakas specializes in software technology strategies, management consulting, business process reengineering and enterprise applications solutions that quickly increase a company’s revenue and reduce their overall expenses. Jim has a successful track record in managing the design, development and implementation of Web-based, mainframe and client server Technology and Business Solutions.

Jim has served as CIO and VP at some of the country’s largest corporations, such as CIGNA, Aetna, and Blue Cross.  Most recently, he was VP and CIO at MSC where he took a nearly non-existent programming and operations staff, running DOS (Dataease) applications on a Novell Server, and molded a leading-edge Information Technology organization of over 50 associates. His innovative techniques and management approaches allowed the company to grow from a $90M (revenue in 2001) a year to over $330M (forecasted annual revenue for 2006). Jim led the team in the development and installation of a SQL Server based Enterprise wide Order Entry, Billing and AR system; a state-of-the-art Data Center; An innovative EDI implementation team that increased the number customer connections by over 400%; Developed a Program Management Office and Executive Steering Committee; Designed, developed and implemented a customer-centric reporting and transaction processing eCommerce Web site; and Implemented a new AVAYA Telephony system utilizing Voice Over IP (VOIP). Jim was able to accomplish all of this and more in less than two years with MSC.  He is recognized as a key contributor to the enablement of the company’s phenomenal growth.

Before MSC, Jim was the Managing Director for the Insurance Solutions Division of PCCI. As Managing Director, Jim was responsible for New Business Acquisition and Client Project delivery. In its first year of operations he grew the division to over $2m in revenue.  PCCI’s Insurance Solutions Division worked with companies throughout the Insurance industry combining real-world insurance expertise with technical knowledge to meet the challenges faced in the revolutionary world of the Internet and Information Technology.

Jim received his Bachelor of Art’s Degree in Law and Justice from Rowan University. He also graduated in the top of his class at The CLC where he also served as the president of the DPMA local chapter.

Joe Buffington

CTO and Founding Partner

Mr. Buffington is the Chief Technology Officer and a Founding Partner of Geranos Solutions. With over 25 years of experience in building technology solutions, he leverages this experience as he manages, advises and mentors the technical consulting group. At Geranos, he is a thought leader for technology strategy, enterprise architecture, software development methodologies and project management services.  In addition, he acts as strategic consultant in engagements with Geranos clients.

He has a proven track record of quickly internalizing technology shifts and leveraging that technology to provide a competitive advantage. An experienced technology executive, he has consolidated his extensive software development experience into an effective methodology leveraging the best practices of Agile processes.

Mr. Buffington was formerly a VP of Technology Planning with GS1 US where he was responsible for all areas of IT, systems development and was an early contributor to the design of the EPCglobal Network.

Prior to GS1 US, he served as CTO for Prophet 21 (now Activant) where he led the strategic and tactical development efforts of the company. While at Prophet 21, Mr. Buffington architected their flagship ERP product as a logical n-tier, object-oriented application that is the market leader in wholesale distribution. He also designed and led the development of Trading Partner Connect (TPCx) – a early implementation of an Internet trading hub which utilizes web-services to connect technological disparate systems.

His success at Prophet 21 was the second major overhaul of architecture he accomplished in a short period of time. Prior to Prophet 21, he was VP of Software Development for Neptune Systems where he re-architected their warehouse management software product from a two-tier to n-tier client/server application.

Before Neptune, he was a consultant at Sybase, Inc where became their authority on Object-Oriented Programming and consulted many Fortune 500 companies on the effective use of technology and how to move to new technology platforms.

Mr. Buffington also served in a variety of roles at CIGNA corporation – primarily as Principal Consultant for both Domestic and World-Wide systems. One o fhis major accomplishments at CIGNA, was leading the development of a strategic application which was the first use of Personal Computers and LANs to develop mainframe applications. He also delivered the first client-server application for CIGNA.