Manager Project

* ****** ***** • Washington Crossing, PA *****

Alex Merkher Mobile: 215-***-**** E-mail: ********@*****.***

LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/merkher

Executive Leadership: Information Technology, Operations

Goal-oriented, entrepreneurial technical executive with extensive experience in leading technical and operations

departments and teams in companies ranging from start-ups to global industry leaders. Emphasis on setting up

structured internal technical cultures that promote high quality and productivity.

Summary

Director of Web Operations for an e-Learning company: envisioned and implemented the strategy for the hosting

infrastructure evolution to support rapid growth and scalability, implemented web analytics and optimization

initiatives, developed the Business Intelligence infrastructure, and customized NetSuite ERP implementation

(SalesForce CRM migration).

Engineering Manager (VP Level) for a leading Business Hosted VOIP provider: managed the Applications

Development, Networking and Systems Administration groups. Set the strategic direction, established priorities and

led the development of the internal ERP systems, customer facing applications development, and advanced

solutions. Deployed an industry leading web-based Enterprise VoIP management portal, within a highly accelerated

schedule using Agile development, to support a major marketing initiative. Accountable for maintaining 99.999%

voice systems uptime.

Director of Technology and Operations for an Expertise Management ASP company: conceived, implemented and

managed the company’s operational infrastructure, consisting of multi-vendor hosting, blended in-house and

outsourced (offshore) development, and two contact centers. Architected and led the implementation of the Data

Warehousing/Business Intelligence component of the service at 60% of the cost and 45% of the time of outside

vendors’ proposals.

Software Development Manager: managed design and development of a prepaid billing product for wireless

carriers. Reduced staff turnover by 90% by introducing staff development and training programs to improve morale

and retention. Improved software quality by reducing the number of defects by 60% per release, by improving

coding and testing procedures through implementation of the SDLC principles.

As a Product Manager for Telecommunications Services, deployed new services, built billing, data warehousing and

support infrastructure, integrated with existing offerings – all on time for a severely accelerated schedule. Achieved

a $16M EBIT in first year, recovered $3M in “un-booked” revenue – received several awards for outstanding

achievements and ingenuity.

Key Strengths

Strategic Technical Planning Systems / Database Architecture Agile Development

Cross-Organization Collaboration Software Design & Development Web Scalability and Performance

Project / Product / Vendor Management Data Warehousing Operations Management

Process Development & Improvement Business Intelligence Training & Staff Development

Professional Experience

Achieve 3000, Lakewood, NJ 2007 - Present

Director of Web Operations

Achieve3000 is a leader in web-based differentiated learning, serving K-12 Schools in over 30 states. While at

Achieve 3000, I oversaw the Web Delivery and Hosting operations for our learning platform.

• Driven by our aggressive growth and need for more robust scalability I oversaw the selection of a new hosting

provider for our infrastructure and managed the transition of the environment. Designed infrastructure changes

for scalability and redundancy requirements.

• Selected and deployed Akamai CDN solution for Web performance enhancement – Improved end-user

performance by 30% and reduced hosting bandwidth requirements and number of servers by 40%.

• Implemented Gomez Web Performance Monitoring and Analytics– received Gomez Web Performance

management certification. Introduced a number of enhancements to performance resulting in 80% better web

performance.

Designed and implemented a Business Intelligence framework for marketing and financial analysis.

•

Participated in introducing NetSuite ERP into the organizations. Assisted with designing NetSuite-based

•

operational processes for all areas of the business – Sales, Implementation, Accounting, Marketing, etc.

Implemented data migration from SalesForce.com.

Designed and implemented several external utilities integrated with NetSuite – ODBC and SuiteTalk to support

•

company’s unique requirements not supported by NetSuite:

- Revenue Recognition Journal Entry module

- Commissions Module

- BI reporting environment for NetSuite data

- SalesForce.com transition

Received NetSuite certification.

Implemented a series of development lifecycle process improvements: Source Control, Release Management

•

Life Cycle, Integration QA testing, etc.

M5 Networks Inc., New York, NY 2006 - 2007

Engineering Manager

M5 Networks Inc. is a leading Hosted VoIP company and a provider of “Voice as a Service” solutions. While

reporting to the CTO, managed the Engineering department, supporting applications development, service delivery,

operations support, network and systems infrastructure, monitoring and alarming.

• Responsible for establishing strategic direction, prioritizing and delivering solutions for all support systems

(sales, provisioning, technical support, billing and reporting), customer facing applications, and advanced

solutions.

• Implemented a series of development lifecycle process improvements: as a result of establishing regular

development schedule, integration testing and QA procedures, significantly reduced downtime of support

systems and improved the quality of delivered applications.

• Led the development of Enterprise VoIP management portal utilizing Agile development – an innovative web-

based tool for managing voice services. Responsible for all aspects of the development effort, including the

layout, functionality, navigation and performance. Designed and built the data warehouse infrastructure to

support the high-volume, high-availability Business Intelligence (BI) analytical component for on-line reporting

(soup-to-nuts: from ETL to optimized queries). Entire project completed within 3 months to support a major

marketing initiative.

• Managed the day-to-day operation of the Engineering department, including hiring and employee development.

XpertUniverse Inc., New York, NY 2001 - 2006

Director of Technology & Operations

XpertUniverse Inc. is an Application Service Provider that offers Internet-based, real-time expert location,

collaboration and business intelligence solutions. As a member of the executive team of XpertUniverse:

• Participated in the initial planning stages of the business inception: product definition, marketing strategy,

operational infrastructure, scalability plans, competitive analysis, etc.

• Conceived, designed and implemented the operations infrastructure of the organization to support the

Application Service Provider (ASP) operational model. Developed and deployed: staffing plan, business

requirements, development needs statement, Technical and Customer Support functions, and vendor

relationship procedures. Established the operational processes for all business Operations functions: customer

support, production support, provisioning and configuration, systems monitoring and alarming, etc.

• Defined and implemented call-center infrastructure, and managed daily operations for two contact centers.

Identified roles and responsibilities, recruited, interviewed and hired all operations staff.

• Designed and implemented the Business Intelligence (BI) analytical component – XpertInsight, a Data

Warehouse-based analysis and reporting application that provides drill down reports, charts, and analysis tools.

HNC Software, Inc. (currently Fair Isaac, Inc.), Cranbury, NJ 2000 - 2001

Manager of Software Development

Managed the software engineering group supporting “Home & Away” Prepaid Wireless Billing service.

Implemented numerous process improvements in the software development cycle for support of the legacy product,

developed strategic technical direction, and subsequently oversaw the development of the next generation version

of the product, while repeatedly producing higher quality maintenance releases for existing customers.

• Oversaw the design and development of the next generation real-time Prepaid Wireless Billing engine. Using an

in-memory multi-threaded and multi-processing C/ C++ rating engine with an Informix RDBMS, the application

was able to achieve 125 rated CDRs (Call Detail Records) per second (per CPU), consisting of complex non-

homogeneous rate plan conditions.

Developed an effective strategic technical direction for the new development, balancing existing staff’s skill set

•

and expertise against technology trends and customer needs, as well as available training and capital budgets.

Established mandatory unit and integration test procedures, introduced design and code reviews.

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AT&T Business International Voice Services, Bridgewater, NJ 1995 - 2000

Product Manager, AT&T Concert Voice Service Distribution

Cross-functional responsibility for deploying a new Voice Service product in the international marketplace, with

extremely short time-to-market timeline. The service was deployed and operational in less than 3 months.

• Established and led several cross-company implementation teams to design, develop and implement the

product. Provided technical requirements and managed implementation of additional features as the Product

matured and evolved. Led the team through development and implementation of Product Integration, Ordering

and Provisioning, Maintenance, Fault Handling, Customer Care, Billing, Data Warehousing, Account Inquiry and

Reporting processes.

• Proposed and implemented an unconventional Billing Solution that allowed a feature-rich billing offer to be

deployed in time for the Product Launch. The billing solution included in-language, in-currency capabilities, as

well as multi-regional and hierarchical structure features. Received a performance award.

Project Manager, Planner, Systems Engineer – Segmentation Directory

Responsible for end-to-end management and technical leadership on a project involving introduction of a new

Network Database Element into multiple process flows of the Business Network Provisioning Division (NIS).

Provided overall Project Management across 4 development and test groups. Significantly contributed in technical

planning and systems engineering capacity to all aspects of the project. Established and maintained 100% on-time

delivery performance in a difficult and dynamic environment.

Previous Experience

Federal Reserve Bank, New York, NY - S/W Dev. Manager/Senior Systems Analyst

Grumman Aerospace Corporation, Bethpage, NY - Software Engineer

Educational Background

Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ MS Telecommunications Management

Polytechnic Institute of Technology Brooklyn, NY BS Computer Engineering

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