Background
Our Corporation was formed as the result of the combination of two separate platinum consulting service providers, Dirk Liepold and Cal Castleberry. Their combined years of SAP R/2 and R/3 implementation and data processing experience is over 30 years. This unique combination allows RowSix LLC to provide clients with solution teams that deliver the entire life cycle package for the Human Capital Management module in SAP. We are truly the SAP HCM module consultants.
As the result of the increasing client demands for our elite level of experienced consulting services, RowSix LLC is growing into a nationally recognized brand for the marketing of highly trained and deeply experiences SAP consulting service providers. The cornerstone of the foundation upon which RowSix LLC is built is our ‘Membership by Invitation Only’ policy. This simply means that we will only invite SAP consultants as candidates for RowSix LLC membership if they meet our extremely stringent skills criteria, and have a proven history of successful SAP implementation experience.
We are not driven by profit margin and only driven by proven SAP implementation success. We do not have costly overhead and work in virtual offices or at the client side and therefore can offer attractive rates to our clients but yet pass the lion share of the profit to our members. Cutting out the ‘middleman’ provides benefits for our clients as well as our members and makes contract management easy. We also provide all of our members and associates access to our extensive knowledge base and list of project accelerators.
Our RowSix LLC members, in combination with RowSix LLC associates, allow us to provide the best possible SAP solution teams for HR/Payroll, Time, Benefits, ABAP/4 development, Basis, Security and HR Cross module integration (Finance and Cost Accounting) support.
These ‘elite’ quality solution teams provide project life cycle services for private and public sector entities across the United States as reflected by our extensive successful implementation client list.
Founding Partners
Cal Castleberry
Cal Castleberry’s SAP career began in the spring of 1995 at which time he was working for American Airlines in Tulsa OK. He was at the time consulting for American Airlines implementing the PeopleSoft HR/Payroll software solution. As American Airlines was participating with SAP to co-develop the U.S. payroll solution for SAP, he was chosen by American Airlines and the Board of Directors of SAP-AG in Walldorf Germany to be the R3 U.S. HR/Payroll solution development delivery manager. Therefore, he then spent six months in Walldorf Germany working with the developers and management of the SAP HR/Payroll solution to meet U.S. requirements and deliver that solution back to the U.S. When the 1st version of R3 was released to the U.S. in October of 1995, he came back to the U.S. and agreed to a consulting arrangement with Accenture (Anderson Consulting at the time) to implement the new SAP HR/Payroll solution for Georgia Pacific in Atlanta Georgia. This was the 1st successful nationwide U.S. implementation using the SAP HR/Payroll solution.
It was during this time period that he co-founded Sage Consulting Inc. with the team of 1st generation U.S. SAP HR/Payroll implementers all born out of American Airlines and the SAP co-development agreement for the U.S. HR/Payroll solution. Since that point he has successfully implemented the SAP HR/Payroll solution for many major private and public entities including Eastman Chemical, Anheuser Bush, Lockheed Martin Aerospace and Defense, Compass Vending, Cable and Wireless, Interstate Bakeries Corporation (Hostess, Dolly Madison, Wonder Bread, etc.), and the State of Washington. This has involved his solution architecture of the technical and functional system (blueprint), his configuration of the system to meet their companies and union contract requirements for the human resources aspect (employee data), the configuration to comply with Federal, State, and local governmental and tax compliancy as well as union contracts, ), the processing of the payroll (gross to net calculation), the printing and distribution of the payments / advice to the employees, the posting of the payroll results to the integrated SAP Finance Cost accounting solution, the automated remittance of payments to all vendors, and the posting of the payments to the vendors to the SAP Finance & Cost accounting solution.
Cal earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 1986 from Missouri State University in Springfield Missouri and has worked in the data processing industry for twenty-one years and specifically in the HR/Payroll area for eighteen years. He and his family live near Branson, Missouri in beautiful Saddlebrooke Missouri. He enjoys hunting, fishing, canoeing, horseback riding, and successful SAP implementations. But, most of all he enjoys simply spending time with his beautiful wife Kathy and their son Levi.
calc@rowsix.net 417-848-2077
Dirk Liepold
Dirk Liepold started his SAP career in 1988, when he joined ABS-Team GmbH, a German SAP consulting start-up firm and SAP partner that comprised of 6 SAP specialists, who themselves had closely worked with the original founders of SAP in the late 70s. He learned SAP R/2 on the job from the founding members of ABS, starting out as an SAP developer on several R/2 SD projects. He learned the basic SAP architecture, developing custom ABAP programs and troubleshooting and enhancing R/2 ASSEMBLER SAP programs. Besides supporting several R/2 projects as a developer and functional consultant for SAP R/2 implementation projects at companies like ALCAN, AEG, ARGUS, DETA, SICK and LUFTHANSA , Dirk developed a custom ‘sales force automation’ system in SAP dialog programming technology as part of a R/2 SD implementation. At that time CRM did not exist as a standard SAP module and Dirk learned how to ‘unleash’ the power of the SAP development tools by developing this custom application that was based on customer requirements and tightly integrated with SAP standard. Dirk regularly participated in SAP functionality testing for new releases at the SAP headquarters in Walldorf/Germany.
His first R/3 project was an SAP HR/Payroll implementation for TELENOR in Oslo/Norway. The implementation project was a joined effort between SAP and ABS Team and included the development of the Norwegian HR country version which is now part of the SAP HR standard version. Dirk was the Time Management team lead and during this project he learned the technical ‘roots’ of the HR module by developing custom infotypes, schemas, personnel calculation rules features and custom operations and functions. Although offered a partnership at ABS-Team, his passion for travel and experiencing different countries and cultures brought him to the U.S in 1995, when he was hired by Price Waterhouse (now IBM) to strengthen and build their SAP practice in the U.S.
Several days after he ‘landed’ in the U.S, Dirk was assigned at INTEL, where he was the project manager and SAP SME for the first U.S. R/3 2.2 SAP HR/Time management implementation. During his time with PW Dirk has worked on numerous other full life cycle SAP HR/Payroll implementation projects for clients like MOTOROLA (one of the first successful U.S. SAP payroll implementations), MICRON, COORS and Hyundai Electronics to name some of the U.S projects. He became an internationally recognized SAP HR SME at PW and, besides acting as an SAP advisor for several U.S. projects, like American Airlines and PUBLIX, he also supported projects outside of the U.S., like EDC Caracas/Venezuela and Supermercados Unidos/Costa Rica.
His biggest and most complex project was the global SAP HR/Payroll implementation for Disney, where he was the SAP HR Project manager. The scope of the project included the integration of 8 business units and implementation of 42 countries, 8 languages with a total project team size of over 300 resources. In addition to his day-to-day project work, Dirk was the Director of the PW SAP HR Center of Excellence, being responsible for managing the SAP HR consultants and SAP HR business development work. He helped develop SAP training material and taught SAP classes at the PW training center in Philadelphia. In his first years with PW he provided input to the development of the PW SAP Implementation methodology and helped develop SAP HR implementation accelerators which were used on numerous projects.
In 2002 Dirk left PWC founded ExD Consulting LLC and worked on several SAP HR projects like BLOUNT/Portland, INTEL/Santa Clara and the State of Washington/Olympia as an independent consultant.
Dirk brings a unique combination of skills and experience to the client that is hard to find on the market.
He has worked for the different types of SAP consulting firms, from small start-up to Big 5. He has learned from the different business models and SAP implementation approaches and methodologies, different client industries and cultures and he has ‘lived’ through the SAP evolution from R/2 to Netweaver.
dirkl@rowsix.net 415-609-2509