CEO Archie Black named to MSPBJ’s Most Admired CEO List

by | May 23, 2016 | TeamSPS

SPS Commerce’s CEO, Archie Black, has been selected by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal to join their first ever Most Admired CEOs list. When you understand what Archie has done for this company and the community, it’s easy to see why.

A few years ago, Archie Black was our CFO, when we were a $4 million private company bleeding $24 million a year. In 1998, he became CEO and was charged with saving the company.

Since becoming CEO in 1998, he’s transformed SPS to become Minnesota’s largest publicly traded technology company — with 61 consecutive quarters of revenue growth and 1,000+ employees. SPS is the state’s first $100 million technology company, and its on track to become its first $1 billion technology company.

That’s because in 1998, he led the changes to prepare the company for the future by embracing cloud-based communities, a full six and eight years before Facebook and Twitter were launched, respectively.

The community he helped build is now a cloud-based retail network with more than 65,000 customers in 60 countries around the world.

Thanks to his vision and leadership, SPS Commerce is able to embrace the digital era, and help transform the entire retail industry, by making it possible for retailers to meet consumer demand whenever and wherever they want products.

But it’s not all about work for Archie. He works just as hard to give back to the community. One of his goals is to turn Minnesota into a technology hub to rival Silicon Valley and Boston. He supports local and statewide technology groups such as DevOps, Girls in Tech, AWS MN, Minne* and more. He also encourages staff to take on leadership roles within these organizations and opens the SPS downtown Minneapolis office to host many of their events.

Archie is also a supporter of the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School Hire4Ed Program, which enables high school students from low-income families to attend college prep classes and get real-world work experience. SPS has supported 38 students at Cristo Rey, including six this school year.

And on most Friday afternoons, Archie and his family can be found playing chess at the Catholic Charities’ Northside Child Development Center, where they even started a kids’ chess club.

With this kind of leadership and vision, both at work and in the community, it’s easy to see why SPS has become the kind of company that reflects the leadership he models for us. SPS Commerce has received the Best Places to Work award 10 times from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal and the Minneapolis StarTribune named SPS as number 1 on their 2015 Top Workplaces list.

Archie will receive his award when he, and several SPS colleagues, attend the awards event at the Nicollet Island Pavilion in Minneapolis, on Wednesday, September 14.

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SPS Commerce Blog Team
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