Our Story Featured in The Sheet News

The story of Systems Process People, and our CEO, Kerry Peterson, has been featured in TheSheetNews.com! Learn our story below…

It was spring 2021 when Kerry Peterson retired from her role as Director of Finance Strategy & Operations at tech startup ServiceNow. By then, she’d spent more than 20 years in leadership positions for several rapid-growth multinationals, which had taken her from places like Singapore to Switzerland, and Amsterdam to Paris. She was a problem-solver: the person sent in to figure out a business snag and find the solution, fast. 

It was the culmination of a career in the fast lane, which started with Peterson putting herself through SDSU while working full time, and then never really slowing down. She’s a CPA as well as a Six Sigma Black Belt – a rare and prestigious certification that uses data and statistics to solve business problems. 

But those who knew her well weren’t really buying it. 

“So I retired, and started golfing, had a lovely summer and then my friend asked, ‘When are you going to be done with that fake retirement, because I need you to help my business?” laughed Peterson. 

Soon thereafter, she low-key launched a consulting business, helping a few companies improve their processes and better integrate their software systems. 

Low-key didn’t last long. 

Her company, Systems Process People (SPP), has grown to more than 10 employees with revenue projected of more than $2 Million for 2025. 

Her building the business dovetailed with her 2022 move to Mammoth, and while most of her business is conducted outside the area, she has worked with several businesses in town. One local success story is Distant Brewing, where she coached Distant to make small changes in marketing and systems that helped the local brewery boost its online sales by almost 500% the first year and then another 140% on top of that, in the second. 

“We love working with small businesses,” said Peterson. “Our approach is to understand their processes, then we optimize their systems and teach their people how to operate more efficiently.” 

“Our clients are either a rapidly growing business and the CEO needs to scale; a business that wants to make that next big revenue jump and doesn’t know how to get there; or a business with a short-term problem it can’t solve with their own resources.” 

On a typical day, SPP may simultaneously lead a seven-figure marketing program for a well-known law firm, help a local Mammoth company catapult sales of its unique, craft-made product lines, and wean another business (or half dozen businesses) from archaic bookkeeping and management practices. 

Like most people in Mammoth, Peterson’s core passion is for the mountains. That love affair started early: as a kid growing up in San Diego, her parents would take her and her brothers to Big Bear, where, said Peterson, “they threw us out of the car with lift tickets and said, ‘we’ll see you in six hours.’”

No better way to teach self-reliance. 

But for Peterson, Mammoth has also become much more. Through her volunteer work as Treasurer for the Mammoth Lakes Chamber of Commerce, her days on the snow, and running two outdoors groups (totaling 45k members), she’s formed friendships and acquaintanceships, found business colleagues and ski buddies. It’s that sense of belonging that has been the most meaningful (even if not always opportune). 

“Even though I’ve only been here a few years, Mammoth is my home,” said Peterson. “My business is here, my friends are here, my activities are here. I help with the parade every year and that time when the floats are all lined up and ready to go and I look around and I just think to myself, ‘I can’t believe how fortunate I am.’” 

If you’d like some help with your business (who doesn’t), give Kerry a shout at kerry@SPP-Ops.com or better yet, meet her at Chamber After Hours (which she is co-hosting with Distant Brewing this upcoming Tuesday (Feb. 25) from 5-7 p.m. Distant’s address: 568 Old Mammoth Rd.

View the article at TheSheetNews.com, page 8 of Feb. 22, 2025 Edition:  https://hubs.ly/Q039fM3Q0