Sql Server Management

Ralph Carter

** ******* *****, *********, ******, KT13 8QF

+44 (0-780*-****** ***********@**********.***

Profile

An IT Consultant with over 17 years experience delivering bespoke Business Intelligence (OLAP)

applications into a variety of businesses. Latterly (4 years) an independent Consultant in the UK

delivering Performance Management and Business Intelligence solutions into contact centres and

the wider enterprise for Aspect Software UK and Barclaycard.

As a lead technical implementer, takes responsibility for all aspects of system delivery from initial

requirements gathering through all project phases to user sign-off and production implementation -

including hardware architecture design, software design and code development. Proven delivery and

technical leadership; managing workloads and programme priorities.

Primary Technical Skills

Microsoft SQL server 2005/2008 R2, Microsoft Analysis Services 2005/2008 R2, Microsoft SQL Server

Integration Services "ETL" (SSIS SQL 2005/2008 R2), Microsoft Reporting Services 2005/2008 R2,

Dimensional Data Warehousing and Cube design (Ralph Kimball), SQL and MDX querying, Web

Service Querying and XML result handling in SSIS, Aspect Performance Management.

Secondary Technical Skills

Web technologies: ASP.NET, IIS, HTML, Forms, Javascript, VBScript, XML, CSS, LAMP (Linux, Apache,

MySQL, PHP)

Other technologies: Web Farm with Network Load Balancing, Microsoft SQL Server/Analysis Services

Clustering, Aspect eWFM Web services

Other Skills

Business and technical requirements gathering and analysis, Architectural system design, Team

leadership, Project task management, Sales Support.

Employment History

Aspect Software (Contract) April 2012 - current

Delivered projects into 4 customers (Home Retail Group, Arvato, ADT, Virgin Atlantic Airways) during

this period involving the full end to end delivery of Business Intelligence solutions for Performance

Management using the Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence technology stack (SQL, SSAS, SSIS,

SSRS).

Customer requirements were gathered over a number of meetings and turned into a functional

specification from which the project could be planned. The dimensional database and cube

architecture were designed and then implemented with occasional assistance from other developers

under my direction. Reporting was also developed and deployed to the customer with final training

in the use of the system to a few trainers and system support people before sign off.

I wrote the solutions which involved loading data (ETL) from numerous heterogeneous data sources,

sometimes querying web services and processing the XML result data in SSIS packages, and

combining them into a unified OLAP database with incremental processing, with hundreds of metrics

and calculations spanning an MDX script of a few thousand lines, that could provide meaningful

analytics and reporting to the hundreds of end users for their performance management needs.

I also assisted Aspect's sales force by attending pre-sales meetings as a technical specialist with very

positive feedback from the customers and from Aspect.

Barclaycard (Contract) June 2009 - March 2012

Most recently, assisted with their large, established Business Intelligence installation by

implementing a new suite of complaints related reporting. Having allocated over £1bn for

compensation (as part of the wider Barclays group) towards PPI settlement, it was crucial that PPI

complaints handling could be monitored effectively. Designed ETL, OLAP and reporting t o satisfy

these needs which involved aggregated complaints handling metrics as well as individual case status

reporting delivered in PDF format to the email inboxes of key managers.

Previously, based in the collections contact centre, provided advanced knowledge and

implementation skills to implement new performance MI and scorecards around delinquency cycles

and impairment, from advisor to business unit level. Upskilled the existing team with new

technologies using Aspect Performance Management and Microsoft Reporting Services, provided

senior development resource across the whole BI stack (DB, ETL, OLAP, Reporting) .

Barclaycard's installation involves hundreds of cubes, ETL processes and reports, many of which I

have previously been involved with during my time as a consultant for AIM technology.

Aspect Software January 2009 to June 2009

Aspect software acquired AIM technology on 1/1/2009. Aspect Software is a communications

solutions supplier who deals principally in contact centre businesses and associated technology such

as ACD, Workforce Management, Voice Recording and Quality Management.

Focused on Aspect eWorkforce Management integration into the Performance Management

product using web services and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Performed technical sales

support role covering:

Rapid knowledge transfer to US product development teams (hardware & software) for

requirements to implement the data warehouse and Performance Management product

Technical training tutorials to the support teams in London.

Writing Statements Of Work for client proposals.

AIM technology 1998 to 2008

AIM was a start-up company that delivered Performance Management and Business Intelligence

solutions, based on the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack, into contact centres and into the wider

enterprise. The first employee and one of the most significant public faces of the company taking the

lead role in all UK projects. Key clients included: Home Retail Group, Barclays Bank, Barclaycard,

Npower, MM Teleperformance

Sample projects / customers:

Home Retail Group

2004 Management Information System in the contact centres. Led that project

responsible for all aspects of delivery. Data is acquired from a number of data

sources including multiple Symposium ACDs (call handling and distribution),

Smartagent (an email handling system), QMAX (workforce management), various

spreadsheets containing forecast data and other internal sales databases running on

Microsoft SQL Server. The delivered application provides a unified portal heavily

reliant on OLAP technology to deliver KPI comparisons in dashboards and reports.

2005 Implementation of special calculation “Personal Time”. Challenging given reliance on

data from several of underlying data sources and was not additive. The resulting

managerial view of this metric needed to access several hundred million datapoints

on the fly which originally resulted in a response time of 30-40 minutes. Designed

and implemented a solution where the response time was reduced to a few seconds.

2007 “Performance and Rewards” scheme - to place a ‘live’ bonus statement on the

advisors desktops so that the advisors could self manage their work to achieve

across all areas of their bonus statement. Numerous calculations were required

across the technology stack (ETL, database, OLAP engine and reporting) to achieve

the end result. Created first design of the solution which was then implemented by

the customer.

2008-09 System upgrade. This included a new hardware infrastructure as well as a migration

to the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 stack including Analysis Services 2005, SQL Server

Integration Services and SQL Server Reporting Services 2005. Advised on options

during the construction of the business case, wrote the project plan and system

design and developed the new ETL packages, database schema and cube schema as

well as the migration mechanisms to transition from the old system to the new one .

The new system is a full 64 bit architecture active-active database and OLAP failover

cluster with web farm and network load balancer running the Aspect Performance

Edge Performance Management product (AIM Performance Suite) and was into

production in Q4 2009.

Barclays Bank – Direct Channels

1999-00 Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence system in the contact centres loading

data from multiple source systems and using dashboard and reports.

2006-07 System Upgrade from thick client AIMCall (Version 4) to thin client AIM Perfo rmance

Suite on a load balanced clustered SQL Server / SSAS data server environment.

2007-08 Project managed the Implementation of MIST (Mortgage Information Sales Tracker)

within the AIM Performance Suite using ASP.NET.

Barclaycard – Direct Channels and Collections

2001 Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence system in the contact centres loading

data from multiple source systems and using dashboard and reports.

2003 Upgrade from version 3 AIMCall to version 4 AIMCall involving extensive database

schema work.

2008 Upgrade from version 4 AIMCall thick client to version 6.5 AIM Performance Suite

thin client on a load balanced SQL Server / SSAS clustered data server environment.

Npower

2006 Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence system in the contact centres loading

data from multiple source systems and using dashboards and reports. They had a

particular challenge around their organisational hierarchy as individuals report to

multiple people. Designed a solution to cope with this involving multiple hierarchies

and security filters. This is transparent to the end user.

MM Teleperformance

2003 Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence system in the contact centres loading

data from multiple source systems and using dashboard and reports.

LBM

2005 Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence system system in the contact centres

deriving data from multiple source systems and using dashboard and reports. A large

number of AIMPerformance eForms and Workflow tasks were implemented to

support attendance tracking, time recording, holiday requests and sickness

recording.

Previous employment

Holistic Systems/Seagate software 1996 to 1998

Holistic Systems was one of the original OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing) Business Intelligence

vendors. They sold their HOLOS software to companies across all industries and implemented

MIS/EIS systems.

Key clients included : IMS (International Medical Statistics), MARS Electronics, Readers Digest, Apple

Computers and others.

WHSmith 1993 to 1996

WHSmith is a high street retailer focusing on books, magazines, stationary and DVD. I first joined

them as an EPOS system tester working in the test team and was then promoted to the EPOS3

Implementation Team Leader where I coordinated the head office functions of the rollout of new

EPOS systems into 274 stores.

Education and Training:

2011 Microsoft Certified Professional (MCITP) SQL Server 2008 Business

Intelligence.

2008 Project Management - Prince2 Practitioner

2008 Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist (MCTS) in SQL Server 2005 Business

Intelligence.

2009 Aspect eWorkforce Management Systems Management Essentials

1989-1993 BA (hons) Business Computing 2.1, University of Sunderland

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