About

I'm Anthony Gonsalves, an enterprise applications leader. I build the systems companies depend on and manage the vendors who help run them.

Most of that work has been inside IT at Starbucks and Honeywell, on the systems that pay people, schedule stores, and keep plants running. When those systems break, everybody notices. When they work, nobody does. I've spent my career delivering the second outcome.

What I've worked on

HR, payroll, and workforce management. At Starbucks, I led the $51M replacement of Kronos Workforce Central with Blue Yonder, rolled out to 10,000 stores and 250,000 employees in four months. I moved those same 250,000 employees off SAP ECC HR and onto SuccessFactors Employee Central. When the Employee Central Payroll reporting work fell behind, I took it over with 20 of 4,500 reports done and got 2,000 ready for day one. In addition, I managed hypercare for the full payroll launch. After the first payroll run, there were no high-severity issues. Along the way: payroll integrations into the Oracle EBS general ledger, a company-wide tips program, and release management across six HR technology teams.

SAP and enterprise ERP. At Honeywell, I was the SAP Service Owner for 30,000+ users and a $17M portfolio, from the shop floor to finance. I led the move to SAP HANA in the cloud over a holiday plant shutdown. It came in on time and $200K under budget, and cut the wait on the plant floor from about 10 minutes to about 1. I also wrote and ran a three-site disaster recovery program. Our first real failover took 12 hours; quarterly runs got it consistently under 7. Later I owned Honeywell's HR application portfolio, more than 15 applications for the same 30,000 users.

Customer data and applied AI. Most recently, I led the Customer Data Hub at Starbucks, the real-time platform behind customer identity, profile, and loyalty data for more than 35 million loyalty members. I've also spent the last few years putting AI to work inside enterprise platforms: AI-built training content that cut build time from three weeks to two and a half days, and a pilot using AI agents in development and testing that took coding work from three days to two hours.

Across all of it, I've led teams of 70+ and the systems integrators and vendors that do much of the work. I'm usually brought in when something is late, messy, or both.

What I've learned

The gap between a good technology strategy and successful execution is almost never technical. It's a people problem. Alignment, prioritization, ownership, and trust. That's what this blog is about.

About Vision to Execution

Vision to Execution is where I share what I've learned, and keep learning, about leading technology at the senior level and beyond. You'll find long-form posts on enterprise systems and transformation, go-lives and what comes after them, IT strategy, and the management skills that aren't taught in any certification program.

If you lead technology teams, manage complex programs, or are working toward a broader leadership role, I hope something here is useful to you.

Off the clock, I coach youth soccer. It turns out to have a lot in common with managing adults.

Based in the Seattle area.
Connect on LinkedIn or subscribe on Substack to follow along.

Experience

Credentials

• MBA, W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University
• PMP | ITIL Expert | Six Sigma Green Belt | Certified Scrum Master | Prosci
• Anthropic: AI Fluency, Claude 101, AI Capabilities and Limitations
• US Soccer D License