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Projects

With a focus on clients' strategic data needs, projects tend to be both high-visibility and mission-critical in nature. The following is a cross-section of a few of these projects. For a comprehensive list of projects and clients, please refer to the full resume.

• Sirius XM Radio - Data Warehouse Specialist - 9/2009 - Current - Provide best-practice advice and process design for integrating XM and Sirius data following the 2008 merge of these companies. Project roles required extreme flexibility and spanned most traditional IT job functions, including project/staff managaement, data/business analysis, data base design, and complex query construction.
  
  One significant project area was the integration of diverse supply chain systems, which include all auto manufacturing partners, to a common application platform. In the role of technical lead for data migration, ETL processes were optimized to complete in hours instead of days.
  
  Responsibilities also included creating short-term interfaces back to legacy systems to provide a window for downstream business reporting to be converted to the new environment. Ultimately, these interfaces were replaced by data warehouse structures within Teradata that were sourced directly from the new supply chain application.
  
  from a technology perspective, the environment was particularly diverse, and also particularly well-suited to a career that has spanned so many systems and products. The data warehouse was hosted on 100+ TB Teradata DBC. Legacy supply chain systems were supported with SQL Server 2005, while the new supply chain application was built on Oracle 11g. GoldenGate was implemented to effect data replication from Oracle to Teradata, and WhereScape's Red product was used to create ETL processes for historical data migration.
• Porex Corporation - Data Warehouse Architect - 12/2007 - 7/2009 - Lead architect and developer for the design and implementation of a financial reporting data warehouse for an international plastics manufacturer. This successful project included multi-national support of forecast, budget and actual financials at the product and customer levels. In addition to vastly improving the data quality used for monthly reporting and forecasting, the system provided efficiencies of more than 10 staff-days per month by eliminating manual processes.
  
  Funding for this project was capitalized and approved by the client's top management. Personal responsibilities for this project entailed end-end ownership of all technical functions, including data analysis, data base design and all ETL and reporting coding. Quality assurance and sign-off was conducted by the business community in the May 2009, followed by final production deployment.
  
  The warehouse had three sources of data: Oracle Financials e-Suite, Sage general ledger, and Cognos Planning. Data cleansing, master data management (customer and product item), and preservation of historical dimensions were delivered using PL/SQL for ETL functions.
  
  A second area of responsibility from the data warehouse creation was the development and support of 24 Cognos Contributor applications hosted on a remote SQL Server platform, which comprised one of the sources for the data warehouse. This component allowed the capture of detailed revenue, COGS and expense forecasts which were updated on a rolling quarterly basis and evaluated against actual results for reporting to the Board of Directors and SEC.
• Sage Software Healthcare Division - Data Warehouse Manager - 1/2008 - 6/2009 - Managed technical team for the production support and maintenance of the financial data warehouse that had been purchased from Emdeon Corporation as part of a divestiture. Project and team management were primary responsibilities to ensure adherence to SLA and prompt resolution of issues. In addition, the data warehouse's capabilities continued to be developed during this period with custom reporting, elimination of manual data collection/reporting, and refinement of the forecast processes using Cognos Planning.
  
  A significant accomplishment during this period included the restructuring of all hierarchies to support new legal, organizational and accounting structures. Of note, the fiscal calendar was redefined, and Sage's legal structure required financial reporting customized for both US and UK charts of accounts. This capability was achieved with a minimum of interruption to the business process flow.
  
• Emdeon Corporation - Data Warehouse Architect - 3/2005 - 7/2009 - Lead architect for the design and implementation of a consolidated financial reporting system. This successful project provided the Board of Directors, CFO(s) and line managers with detailed insight to budget, forecast and actual financials. This dramatically reduced the number of off-line Excel/Access processes in place for calculating payroll accruals, AR reserves, DSO, and Sales Representative cost-effectiveness.
  
  The system was constructed using traditional data warehousing techniques (star schema, data cleansing ETL, dimension and hierarchy maintenance), as well as Cognos' Enterprise Planning suite for maintaining a rolling 12-month forecast. Reporting, analytics and business intelligence visualization were delivered through Cognos ReportNet, PowerPlay and Cognos Contributor.
  
  In 2006 Emdeon Corporation sold significant portions of their holdings to two separate companies. Evidence of the business value of this integrated financial planning and reporting system is shown by it being physically replicated and included in the terms of sale for both of these legal entities. In one case, this included the successful port of the full data base environment and ETL processes to SQL Server 2005.
  
  System Characteristics:
  - Source systems included Oracle Financials (GL, AP, AR, FA, PO), Oracle HR and ADP Payroll.
  - Oracle 10g distributed environment supporting 500 GB data warehouse, 250 GB data marts, Cognos ReportNet content store and Cognos Enterprise Planning repository.
  - ETL operations were designed and successfully implemented to provide "lights-out," event-based updates of core data warehouse and data mart structures.
• Macmillan, formerly Holtzbrinck Publishing - Data Warehouse Specialist (Oracle) - 1/2005 - 12/2007 - ETL development and data base support for a long-standing Oracle 10g data warehouse. Two high visibility projects during the noted timeframe illustrate the type of deliverables provided to this client.
  
  One challenge facing Macmillan in 2005 was to improve the cost-effectiveness of their supply chain in regard to secondary print/bind quantities. This was satisfied by creating weekly activity profiles, by title, for all active titles. Once the data from multiple sources (inventory, sales, returns, etc) was consolidated, Cognos ReportNet provided a focused view of the true enterprise-wide position for a title.
  
  A second challenge in 2006 centered on measuring title profitability while also eliminating manual procedures associated with the monthly financial close. These objectives were achieved in parallel by creating interfaces to a new implementation of Hyperion Financials HAL and the Solomon general ledger. Similar to the supply Chain effort, the data warehouse was leveraged to integrate and standardize financials from multiple sources, and provide these to both the Hyperion BI engine and the Solomon ledger in a fully automated process.
  
  Note that successful deliverables such as these have provided a foundation for on-going application and DBA support for this client, and this relationship continues through the present.
• Scientific American - Oracle DBA - 11/2007 - 2/2009 - On-going monitoring and support of Oracle data bases for a 24/7 website. Includes performance tuning, backup/recovery and software installation and upgrades.
• Arch Insurance - Data Warehouse Specialist - 11/2004 - 2/2005 - Arch's Senior Actuary required detailed ad-hoc query capabilities against a broad range of premium/claim data, spanning several years of history. The initially-implemented SQL-Server "flat" data base design had reached critical limits in its ability to support this need, and so a multi-dimensional Oracle schema was prescribed.
  
  A feasability prototype was desired, and a one-man project "team" was established, reporting directly to IT's Vice President and the Actuary. In a short time, a star schema was designed, dimensions were established and an ETL interface (Informatica, PL/SQL) was completed. Cognos Enterprise PowerPlay provided the BI mechanism to the Actuary.
• Emdeon Corporation (WebMD) - Data Warehouse Specialist - 3/2004 - 10/2004 - Corporate DBA role with responsibility for stabilizing existing data base systems, creating new applications and data marts, as well as crafting a strategic approach to long-term data management.
  
  Specific achievements include:
  - Created project approach and enterprise data model for capture of all health claim transaction data elements based on X12N 837/4010 standards.
  - Stabilized existing Operational Data Store to meet performance and availability requirements in the creation of real-time, daily and monthly customer reports.
  - Designed and implemented replicated data mart to provide self-service customer tracking of submitted files and claims.
  
  System Characteristics:
  - 2 TB Oracle 8i ODS
  - 750 GB Oracle 9i Data Mart
  - Procedural Replication via Advanced Replication Services
  
• Arch Capital Group Insurance - Technical Project Lead - 3/2003 - 3/2004 - Implemented 12 third-party interfaces to a legacy accounting system in an aggressive business-critical timeframe. Designed, coded and implemented claim and policy data feeds to a commercial insurance accounting system (WINS) to comply with auditor mandates. Performed functions of technical project lead, application DBA and designer, as well as hands-on coding of shell scripts, PL/SQL procedures and DataJunction conversions.
  
  This project was particularly notable for its high corporate visibility, its successful delivery of all data feeds/interfaces within required timeframes, and its completion without sacrificing operational robustness or data integrity.
  
  System Characteristics:
  Batch interfaces using korn shell, PL/SQL, DataJunction.
  Java/Oracle JDBC as wrapper function to augment DataJunction.
  Generic file handler built on ssh2 protocol for secure third-party file transmission.
  In-house developed PL/SQL procedures for process control, monitoring and tracking.
  100 GB Oracle 9i DBMS
  
• Prudential - Project Manager - 6/2002 - 3/2003 - Business analysis, design, development and deployment of application for tracking audit compliance of New York Regulation 60 requirements. Performed roles of project lead, business analyst, application DBA and system architect, with full responsibility for:
  User requirements analysis and definition
  Logical and physical data model and data base creation
  Data quality assurance
  
• Holtzbrinck Publishing - Data Warehouse Specialist - 1/2002 - 8/2002 - Performed extensive upgrade and overhaul to an existing data warehouse system, improving the tracking and reporting of title sales and profitability across publishing divisions and sales organizations.
  
  Specific tasks included:
  Cognos upgrade to Enterprise Series 7
  Consolidation of fragmented IWR catalogs
  Port of Oracle data base to larger platform and upgrade to 9i
  
  System Characteristics:
  80 GB Oracle DBMS
  Cognos Impromptu, IWR and PowerPlay
  In-house developed ETL procedures
• Prudential - Data Warehouse Specialist - 8/2000 - 12/2001 - Two separate engagements during this period.
  
  The first supported the monthly financial reporting and analysis requirements for the Guaranteed Products division. Within small development team performed lead role of data analyst, modeler and DBA. Delivered full system including data extraction, transformation and presentation layers.
  
  The second project was for the Life/Annuities division. Designed, developed and deployed ad-hoc reporting system to satisfy state and internal audit requirements for annuity payment streams. Performed role of Project Manager with full responsibility for identifying and satisfying current and future business information requirements.
  
  System Characteristics:
  Three data sources, spanning historical (sunset) and current systems
  40 GB Oracle 8i DBMS
  Oracle Discoverer to provide ad-hoc reporting capabilities
  
• Volvo Cars, NA - Data Warehouse Project Manager - 5/2000 - 10/2000 - Management consulting position requiring extensive technical data warehouse implementation knowledge. Led team of contractors and employees in creation of business case, project plan and requirements definition for Marketing data warehouse.
  
  Accomplishments included:
  Developed business justification for project funding.
  Led requirements definition phase based on regional input.
  Created project plan, staffing model and preliminary architecture and design.
  
  System Characteristics:
  5 initial sources spanning AS/400, OS/390 and AIX hosts
  120 GB Oracle 8i DBMS
  In-house front-end for delivery of initial set of standard reports
  WebIntelligence 2.6 selected for OLAP data analysis
  
• Liz Claiborne, Inc. - Data Warehouse Specialist - 3/1999 - 5/2000 - Stabilized a failing data warehouse application. Resolved critical issues included poor data integrity, inadequate hardware capacity and a lack of basic operational procedures such as error handling and performance monitoring. Within 9 months, all of these issues were addressed and resolved.
  
  Specific accomplishments include:
  
  Ported Oracle7 database to a higher capacity HP-UX V2200. This effort included upgrades to Oracle8 and HP-UX 11, as well as extensive reconfiguration of underlying EMC disk storage.
  
  Replaced 80% of the batch application code to automate scheduling, trap application errors and capture data integrity errors. Extensive coding and testing in Pro*C, PL/SQL and Korn Shell.
  

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