The Company
Carnes Group LLC was founded in 2003 in Franklin, Tennessee, with a practical goal: help organizations solve difficult problems, make better decisions, and put solutions in place that actually work.
Today, Carnes Group operates across three distinct areas: Technology Leadership & Advisory, Competition Services, and the Normalized Scoring System (NSS). While the work is different in each area, the approach is the same — understand the problem, get the facts, develop a practical plan, and help move it forward.
How Carnes group Evolved
Carnes Group began as a technology consulting company, drawing on Ed Carnes’s background in technology leadership, business operations, infrastructure, systems modernization, and organizational transformation.
Over time, the company’s work expanded beyond traditional technology consulting. Ed’s decades of experience competing, judging, organizing, and operating music competitions created a second area of expertise centered on competition design, operations, judging, scoring, scheduling, and event management.
Those two backgrounds — technology and competition operations — eventually came together in the development of the Normalized Scoring System, created to address scoring problems observed repeatedly in judged competitions.
That evolution is why Carnes Group today works in three areas that may appear different on the surface, but share the same foundation: solving complex problems in practical, workable ways.
Technology Leadership & Advisory
Carnes Group provides experienced executive technology leadership and independent advisory services for organizations that need help with strategy, modernization, infrastructure, cybersecurity, vendors, major projects, or difficult technology decisions.
Competition Services
Carnes Group helps organizations improve existing competitions and develop new ones. Services include competition reviews, rules and procedures, judging processes, scheduling and timing, event-day support, budgeting, planning, staffing, and competition development from concept through launch.
Normalized Scoring System
Carnes Group also develops and supports the Normalized Scoring System (NSS), a scoring, registration, timing, and competition-management solution designed to improve fairness, consistency, transparency, and efficiency in judged competitions.
Experience Behind the Work
Carnes Group is led by Ed Carnes, MBA, whose background includes more than 35 years of technology leadership and consulting experience, international executive responsibility, and decades of experience competing, judging, organizing, and operating competitions.
His experience spans business, technology, finance, operations, nonprofit leadership, and competition management — giving Carnes Group a practical perspective that goes beyond theory.
Our Approach
Carnes Group does not believe in making things more complicated than they need to be.
The goal is to provide practical, independent advice based on the organization’s actual needs, resources, risks, and priorities. Whether the issue involves technology, competition operations, or scoring, the focus is on clear thinking, realistic solutions, and measurable improvement.
Let’s Talk
If you have a technology, competition, or scoring challenge and are not sure where to start, let’s have a conversation.