As a businessman with a passion to assist a local Georgia county welfare office in expediting the delivery of services through the use of technology, Mr. Stone founded SMI in 1971. Under Mr. Stone’s leadership, SMI continues to grow by providing innovative solutions for governmental agencies. Throughout the growth of SMI, Mr. Stone has maintained SMI’s focus of the company constant through personally working with and building a management team with an emphasis on providing valuable partnerships based on trust to governmental agencies.
Systems & Methods, Inc., Carrollton, GA
Founder and Chairman of the Board, 1970 – Present
Mr. Stone is founder and Chairman of the Board of Systems & Methods, Inc. He founded SMI during 1971 by providing time-share data processing services. Early on, he developed data processing services for local Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) agencies. SMI’s early roots began with his first contracts with Georgia DFCS providing Food Stamp Issuance lists and fully automating the previously manual process.
Over the years, Mr. Stone has been instrumental in expanding SMI’s product services specifically designed for the Health & Human Services area of governmental agencies. Through Mr. Stone’s leadership, SMI’s privatization efforts have delivered critical services such as:
- The delivery of over a billion dollars in food stamps to families in over 15 states. During the 1980’s and the 1990’s, SMI was the largest private issuance provider of food stamps in the nation.
- Information processing systems. Under Mr. Stone’s leadership, SMI has developed, implemented and currently supports information systems that track critical data for Health & Human Services agencies.
Over the past several years under Mr. Stone’s leadership, SMI has developed and implemented a new innovative approach to child support payment processing. Currently, this system collects and processes over 8.6 million transactions annually.
Consultant, 1970 - 1977 (Various Businesses)
In addition to teaching and promoting programs within the Business School at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia, Mr. Stone was very active with the school’s Continuing Education program and designed a number of supervisory management training programs for area businesses. Consulting soon led to specially designed courses for State of Georgia Human Services personnel.
State University of West Georgia - Professor in Business Management
Chairman of the Computer Center Committee
Director of the Business Internship Program, 1969 – 1977
After three years of coursework and field exams, Mr. Stone was ready for his first teaching assignment in his chosen area, Business Administration. Mr. Stone was interviewed and hired to teach management in the School of Business at West Georgia College. In addition, his background dictated that Mr. Stone also develop and teach courses in Production and Quantitative Methods, as well as chair the faculty committee that oversaw the fledgling computer center at the College. His years at WGC were filled with personal achievement and self-satisfaction for what was being accomplished.
Rich’s Inc. - Programmer Consultant, 1966 - 1968
While on the Georgia State University faculty, Rich’s contracted with Mr. Stone for consulting programming on its first Real-Time inventory control system. This system operated on an NCR mainframe.
Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia
Instructor of Quantitative Methods, 1966 - 1969
Within months of beginning work for Southern Railway, Mr. Stone had the opportunity to join the faculty at Georgia State University (GSU) as an Instructor. GSU was establishing a new Department of Quantitative Methods. He was one of four original faculty hired. His BS/MS degrees from Georgia Tech qualified him to teach statistics, probability and calculus to business majors. The job also allowed his pursuit of a personal goal - a Ph.D.
Southern Railway, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia - Programmer Analyst, 1965 - 1966
In the mid-to-late sixties, Southern Railway was rapidly expanding its data-processing capability. Mr. Stone was hired into a team of five people whose responsibility was payroll accounting for the company.
Lockheed Aircraft - Georgia Division, Programmer Analyst, 1962 - 1965
Mr. Stone was hired as a college graduate, to be a programmer trainee for the Spare Parts Support Group of the Programming/Systems Division of Lockheed-Georgia’s Data Processing Department. Mr. Stone was in the first group of programmers trained by IBM staff outside its New York headquarters in the then new COBOL language. At Lockheed, IBM had just installed one of its first commercially successful mainframes, the IBM 7080. His first programs were coded in both COBOL and BCD machine language. He was a senior programmer within three years. His projects included generating spare part support data for the C-130 Hercules, C-141 Starlifter and C-5 Galaxy aircraft programs.
Education and Credentials
Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
ABD
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Master of Science
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Bachelor of Science
Professional Affiliations
State University of West Georgia, Executive in Residence (1998 – 1999)
State University of West Georgia, Honorary Alumnus (1997), President’s Award (1997)
Georgia County Welfare Association, Life Association Membership (1988)
West Georgia Telecommunications Alliance, Founding Sponsor
Carroll Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Board (2001 – 2002)
Citizens Bank & Trust of West Georgia, Chairman of the Executive Board
Rotary International – Member, Will Watt Fellow, Past President