As a child, Barbara A. Marcks suffered from ADD and did not do very well in school. She took a test given by a guidance counselor and realized that she tested very high in logic and reasoning. She was then taken to a program, which helped develop her skills. That is where she came across information technology and realized she found something she loved. Since her departure from McKesson in 2019, where she spent 17 years of her professional career, she has returned to her own consulting program Barbara Marcks LLC.
In her current role, Ms. Marcks works with companies who are looking to automate or integrate acquisitions. She looks at current business processes and tries to normalize and make them more efficient, apply them, and help the team get the new business processes into an existing or brand-new ERP implementation. As a consultant, she has a duel role, looking at the business processes and making sure the consultants working with her on the project are implementing efficient processes and project management to achieve the corporation’s goals. She manages very large ERP implementations. Prior to this, she was vice president of information technology at McKesson, and prior to McKesson she spent 12 years in her own consulting business and working for other consulting firms.
Ms. Marcks developed a methodology for project recovery, helping companies to turn around projects quickly that were over budget and behind schedule. She delivers value in an agile type approach. Her area of expertise is in large acquisition integrations, project recovery and JD Edwards implementations. Prior to the start of her professional career, Ms. Marcks pursued a formal education, earning an Associate of Arts in information technology and scientific data processing in 1972.
Outside of her professional career, Ms. Marcks served on the scholarship committee for the Reading Buccaneers Drum and Bugle Corps and maintains involvement with the Order of the Eastern Star. In light of her accomplishments, she received the President’s Award from McKesson in 2008, which she considers a major career highlight. She received this award for business process redesign, which resulted in normalized business processes across all distribution centers and highly successful large acquisition integration. Ms. Marcks’ other career highlight has been mentoring women, which has brought her great joy watching them grow both personally and professionally. She notes that one of the most important things that anyone can do in their career is mentor people.
In terms of mentors, Ms. Marcks’ parents never finished high school because they had to go work. Her father and mother always told her she could be anything she wanted to be and that she had to have a good work ethic. Her mother and both of her grandmothers were strong women and as a girl growing up, they were always very encouraging. Additionally, Ms. Marcks credits Sandra Brady; Gary Paff, one of her first IT managers when she went back to work and who gave her very good guidance; and Terry Pfab, who always found ways to help her and mentor her, resulting in her promotion to vice president at McKesson.
Ms. Marcks is a firm believer in building teams that complement one another in strengths and weaknesses. This builds such a great environment for learning. The other factor that she believes drove her success in her areas of expertise is listening. Her two favorite quotes are, “The only thing constant is change” and, from President John Adams, “Facts are stubborn things.”
Moving forward, Ms. Marcks will continue to consult, but will be semi-retired to spend time with her six grandchildren and travel to see the world. She is the proud mother of two wonderful children, Frank and Jennifer, and enjoys listening to classical music in her spare time. Jennifer has followed in her footsteps in ERP implementations on the software side after receiving her bachelor’s degree and Frank saw how much she loved doing project management; he went back to school at 35 and received two bachelor’s degrees, and is now a director in a commercial construction company. Both of her children have thanked her for their work ethic, which she learned from her parents.