Program/Project Manager
Resume:
GREGORY Jay GRAY - Additional Work in Detail
Linfield, PA 19468
**********@*****.***
PROFILE
Information Technology Program/Project Manager professional with 20+ years of experience in project requirements analysis, plan development, risk mitigation and project execution. Expertise lies in day to day program management, budget analysis and conformity, reporting and TCO and ROI development. Successful leadership demonstrated in companies from established Fortune 500 market leaders to start-up environments. My skills employ a unique blend of team building with the business and IT to ensure solid communications and bridge building and easily walk in both worlds and speak both languages. Ensures that clear expectations and set and that throughout the process and into “Hyper-care” everyone is on the same page and surprises and risk are minimized and alternative solutions are in place well in advance to avoid crises moments.
CORE STRENGTHS
Requirements Gathering / Analysis Risk Analysis / Reporting / Mitigation Program Budget Development Total Cost of Ownership / Project Return On Investment Mergers and Acquisitions including Financial, Technical Migrations and Cross Organizational Cultural Immersion Program Leadership Resource Allocation and Scheduling Task – Effort Management Phased Delivery Incremental Delivery / Stand Alone Value Reporting Variance Analysis Vendor Management Contract Development, Management and SLA System Implementations and Conversions Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) GDPR SOX Compliance Multi-tasking and Time Management
CAREER EXPERIENCE
All of my project’s duties include the following responsibilities that are continually updated documentation:
●Managing and publishing the budget and variances
●Project Schedule
●Risk Register and Communication Plans
●Change Management (Scope, Schedule and Budget documentation).
GROM Associates and COO(February 2017 - Present)
Program/Program Management
New England Food Manufacturer - 2 US based plants and Parent Company in Germany
High end Greek Yogurt, public/private label
●Managed the Kickoff of the project with input gathered from onsite SME
●Maintained all project documentation on SharePoint.
●Collected status updates (weekly) from all project participants and rolled it up to a weekly status report/meeting and monthly stakeholder meeting.
●Scheduled all project related meetings and workshops coordinating with Vermont, Arizona and Germany.
●Worked across multiple companies to engage resources as needed and in conjunction with the project schedules.
●Developed detailed project plans to track effort, cost, schedule and communicated to project members and business sponsors.
●Completed several change requests to ensure schedule and budget targets remained on course. These included scope (increase and decrease), resources and associated skills and budget estimates.
●Facilitated workshops at the technical and business level to identify and agree on scope, schedule and detailed delivery expectations.
●Coordinated project specific effort between their Vermont and Arizona sites with both having slightly different SAP landscapes and coordinated with the parent company in Germany to set alignment goals where permitted based on legal and business restrictions.
●Worked closely with Subject Matter Experts to document use cases attributed to desired process, functionality or business goals.
●Documented release schedules and follow-up hypercare.
●As different phases were completed I closed each project with documented accomplishments, updated case studies and finalized physical sign-off from project sponsors.
Midwest Food Manufacturer
Chicken manufacturer, 40+ Products, 3 plants
Projects included Material Ledger, Company Code, Pricing and Plant Expansion.
Large $ 1.2B chicken processor with a supply chain from farm to retail and government (US DOD). Activities included the following:
●Kickoff preparation scheduling and meeting facilitation with 4 different physical locations for each project.
●Worked directly with project sponsor to identify critical paths, resource allocation (client and contractor).
●Developed coordinated project plans to accommodate limited technical and business resources.
●Set weekly project status reporting and meetings and monthly stakeholder meetings.
●Lead multiple workshops coordinating between three physical locations.
●Scheduled lead Fit/gap and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) working sessions in a timely manner to ensure project maintained the published schedule.
●Managed the schedule and coordinated with the right teams to present Gap/fit and RCA findings to the project sponsor.
●Used an Agile approach for gathering project requirements.
●As the project(s) grew in nature (additional approved scope) brought in an additional project manager to take over some responsibilities for two reasons, the overall workload and to reduce project costs (lower cost resource) while maintaining project control.
●Documented release schedules and follow-up hypercare.
North American Automobile Tire Manufacturer
●Solutions Manager 7.2 Implementation - 3 month project on time and under budget.
●Managed the implementation of Solutions Manager 7.2 to support ITIL for Incident, Problem and Change.
●Managed all scheduling (resources and stakeholders), status reporting (weekly) and change management (two increases in scope 1 reduction in scope) and all associated financial project elements.
●Facilitated several scope related workshops.
●Lead the deliverable review with project team members and stakeholders.
COO - Additional Responsibilities
Actively managing the day-to-day Operations associated with staffing/recruiting and HR reviews I identified the experience and capabilities of current staff and lead the development of annual job reviews, mentoring and coaching goals and training requirements. This resulted in a stronger understanding of responsibilities of the staff and improved knowledge by 20% over the past year. Additionally each employee now has KPI metrics that are used for accountability and performance reviews.
Managed all vendor contracts and reduced operational expenses through contract renegotiation and annual payment structures freeing up capital for new projects. This effort resulted in a 30% overhead reduction in vendor payments and improved SLAs.
Overall responsibility to align internal and project resources and IT Infrastructures with a path to GDPR, including data hack accountability action plans to formalized procedures for initiating, requirements gathering and mapping to governance procedures and update analysis. This effort regarded internal and external data security as part of a holistic approach in-order to meet EU regulations for our international clients.
Tokio Marine North America TMNA - Former Philadelphia Ins. Co. (June 2016 - January 2017 - Consultant)
Program Manager - IT and Operations
Took over the management of an offshore contractor was building technical functionality to enhance the core platform and “sending” it to TMNS for patching and upgrades. The quality of the offshore partner was so poor that the system would fail and internal resources would have to uninstall the patches and remediate the code prior to each new implementation. It was determined that no testing had taken place and that the delays in upgrades were due to offshore resource attrition.
●To accomplish this required me to reboot the project by facilitating multiple sessions with business sponsors, stakeholders and technical team members to establish an agreed upon scope.
●Setting and scheduling multiple status review meeting and facilitation of what was accomplished in the prior day, what was to be accomplished that day and how it related in terms of overall schedule. As each team member got into the cadence and accountability the project began to see real progress.
●Weekly status reporting and individual contribution reports ensured effort met project expectations.
●Performed all project scheduling, resource allocations (availability and skills) and managed project documentation.
Oberthur Mobile Technologies (March 2015 – May 2016)
Program Manager – Operations and Technology
Oberthur’s significantly missed on-time delivery of plastic cards (EMV, Debit, Magstripe and PLCC) to it’s largest global client (First Data).
My responsibilities included the following:
●Scheduling and facilitating daily and weekly production requirements.
●Work with Quality to identify and document trends in “failed quality”.
●Produce Daily Production KPIs and ensure they were communicated verbally and physically in key production areas.
●Coordinate with secure carriers for the shipment of cards to final card personalization centers.
●Held daily planning meetings with production staff regarding forecasting and supply chain constraints - as the facilitator.
●Document and distribute internal and customer shipments/transfers to eliminate production shortfalls.
●Developed processes and procedures to facilitate the pre-production of print and manufacturing to align production processes and increased output from 8 million cards per month to producing 17 million cards per month (valued at $ 72 MM).
●With a customer service focus on communications (verbal and status reports) I
GROM Associates (November 2012 – October 2014 - Consultant)
Program Manager – Air Products and Chemicals (Global Headquarters)
Program Manager for the development and enablement of a Hybrid Cloud (The Initial Azure AT&T/Microsoft endeavor) and an IT Service Enablement portal (ServiceNow) for tracking, delivering and cost recovery of IT products and services.
●Facilitated scope identification meetings for the service enablement portal project.
●Organized and scheduled vendor demonstrations for both the Hybrid Cloud and IT Service Enablement Portal.
IT Service Enablement Portal Project
●Developed and managed a scorecard process that identified which product (IT Service Enablement Portal) closely aligned to Air Product’s requirements. Facilitated the group in determining which solution was least costly to customize if needed.
●Kickoff the AR invoicing project - $10B in revenue invoicing project.
●Lead multiple requirements sessions documenting the requirements of an outside vendor to receive, print and post 2/3rds of Air Products invoices.
●Managed nightly vendor calls in Singapore and UK time zones with nightly meetings regarding quality, form alignment and SAP specifications.
●Documented and posted daily progress updates including issues, RCA, restrictions and new requirements.
●Documented termination requirements for multiple vendors in Spain, Germany, UK Poland. (all contracts in local language.
●Documented on-going scope changes and held regular scope meetings where I would lead the group through “what has changed” and what the new requirement meant for the project team. This was accomplished through a close working relationship with the SAP AR SME.
Hybrid Cloud
From design to delivery lead discovery and working sessions to identify and realize a new form of cloud computing. Interfacing directly with AT&T and Microsoft’s COEs we developed and delivered the first Azul AT&T cloud service platform. Driving the Air Product’s side of the equation were were able to identify data types and content that could be securely stored in the cloud without compromising national chemical and formulaic secrets. Additionally we were able to close 3 data centers reducing the total number of data centers by 15% saving $ 10,000,000 USD per quarter for the first year of the project. The overall timeline was kept to a 15 month schedule and finished on-time and under budget independent of expected cost savings.
●Scheduled meetings with Microsoft, AT&T and Air Products to review technology, scope, and schedule.
●Documented meeting minutes.
●Scheduled weekly status calls.
●Organized and maintained Gap/Fit in SharePoint.
●Maintained an on-going Risk Register.
●Work with leadership to publish a monthly program status update as part of the overall communications plan.
●Provided leadership updates by holding monthly Stakeholder meeting that included key technical resources, IT Directors and the CIO.
Through a collaborative process between the business and IT, the ITSM (ServiceNow) Implementation program, with over 60 project participants, reduced the total number of required servers by 25% per year. Throughout the past 2 years Air Products has saved over $ 3.5 Million dollars in reduced project expenses vs. initial financial expectations and all projects were on-time and under budget.
StadiumHost Corporation (February 2006 – November 2012)
Director of Development and Operations
Lead a team of engineers, developers and marketing professionals to design and build a fully interactive touch screen POS device placed in the backs of seats in stadiums and arenas from the ground up. Lead the development of the business model that included selling of products and services to fans. Upon completion of the business model, work began on designing the custom computer board, development of proprietary software and a user interface. By using Clarity customers receive an e- receipt email to smartphone, email address and online customer account. Successful product development including the following: e-commerce solutions including WebSphere Commerce Server operating on a Linux Database, supporting a Magento Web-store application, etc. For the purpose of transacting orders with various on and off site vendors. Oversaw 6 developers, 4 analysts, in the design, development and implementation of Cloud hosted Java eCommerce solution using Java/J2EE, JSP, Spring Framework, Hibernate, and Oracle 11g over a Linux platform. Managed the development of the User Interface in English, Spanish and French. Working with our design group we rigorously worked to identify how fans in their seats would most likely utilize the touch screen, thus increasing interaction and sales. This approach ensured an intuitive experience. French fans in Montreal Canada.
We also applied the following technologies:
●WAN, LAN, WLAN, Switches, Firewalls, Routers to connect each transaction with the corresponding retail outlet (food, merchandise, video streaming, polling, games and scores and stats).
●All of the information was kept on site on venue servers and and backup storage was kept off site on StadiumHost servers for secure hosting.
GSI (Global Sports International) Commerce (October 2004 – February 2006)
Senior Project Manager
Focused on International Business Systems development. Completed multiple projects bringing GSI’s e-Commerce platforms to partners desiring expansion into a global marketplace. Projects included: Successful management of the Linens and Things expansion into Canada by leading the technology team in modifying the Fulfilment Management System to support international delivery.
Architectural staff re-develop the “Web-Store” applications to support Canadian tender
Oracle DBA team corrected multiple recurring systems failures in the core catalogue
Achieved a highly successful upgrade of an unsupported version of Oracle to Oracle 9i. Transition was seamless and Macy's selected my team as team of the quarter.
Managed a key quick delivery project for GSI’s overall platform to correct key data deficiencies within cross-border transactions database with over 40 million records representing $500 Million in annual sales. entire project was complete in 12 weeks with no disruption to service and zero data integrity issues. (Canadian transactions, Visa, MasterCard processing, and convert back to US Dollars. Core to the issue was calculating various Canadian taxes (GST, HST QST)
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (August 2000 – December 2004)
Global e-Business Strategy Partner
The Nestlé’s e-Business strategy developed is currently in use and was developed for a 10 year period. Responsibilities of the 200+ resources included:
Nestlé achieved superior results in areas of B2B, B2C, and B2E by incorporating a logical and low cost technical solution, leveraging Nestlé’s current Information Systems infrastructure and the introduction of SAP as the cornerstone of their manufacturing and financial systems. Currency arbitrage system enabled Nestlé’s coffee purchasers to reduce the amount of spend converting from Swiss Francs to central and South American currencies. Gateway Computers delivered the critical in-store purchase application of Gateway products. The user-friendly UI design and integration to Gateway’s web-store via API interface provided seamless order status and delivery confirmation. Ordering information to distribution centers via daily data pushes. Swiss Re a global Reinsurance company that syndicates policies (bundles) for diversifying risk. The design and delivery an internal web-based insurance syndication program enabled analysts to spend less time creating the insurance package and more time evaluating risk and value.
Additional Projects
Citi-Group. Program Manager - (PWC)
Opportunity to deliver a proprietary “Leverage/Lend” system capable of identifying real-time capital on hand to reduce overnight Fed borrowing to maintain required cash on hand – AND – leverage the possible “Lend” capacity of the bank. Gained $100+ Million annual revenue increase.
Deutsche Bank. Project Manager - (PWC)
Deutsche Bank’s Agricultural Equipment Floor Planning application included dealership and bank requirements and inventory management to ensure Capital Equipment and payment structures were easy to manage and collect.
Computer Sciences Corporation. Project Manager (August 1996 – August 2000)
Business Strategy and Program Management Primary client – Autodesk with responsibility for business critical initiatives and the establishment of an e-business requirements executive group for a SAP R/3 implementation team for EU, Asia and a “retrofit” for the North America. As PM lead teams of up to 50 implementing R/3 by region starting with North America followed by Asia and completing with an EU implementation. Once complete, all systems were integrated to the AutoDesk San Rafael Global Headquarters.
Lockheed Martin (M&DS Division) (August 1993 – August 1996)
Manager – Consulting Service Transitioning from the Air Force skills acquired led to work with Lockheed Martin and the Air Force.
Using knowledge of aircraft and technical specifications, including management of software
development and project planning enabled the management of multiple projects at one time.
United States Air Force (1985 – 1993 Active and 1993 – 1999 Reserve)
Active and reserve Air Force
As a Major in the Air Force and Air Force Reserve responsibilities included Master Pilot – F16 and a Aircraft Maintenance and Munitions Officer in a support Role for the F-16 aircraft. Overall responsibility for ground safety and the training and scheduling of personnel and aircraft for combat ready status.
AREAS OF TECHNICAL PROFICIENCY
Database: SAP R/3 and R/4, Oracle, and Microsoft Data Center Management
Methodologies: Waterfall, Agile, SCRUM and Kanban
Platforms: ServiceNow, Microsoft Project Server, SalesForce, SharePoint, HP Quality Center
Software: SAP, MS Project for Windows and all Microsoft Office products
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND
University of North Carolina – Bachelors of Science – Forensic Sciences Graduated 1985
United States Air Force, Undergraduate Pilot Training Graduated 1985
Aircraft Maintenance and Munitions School – 1st of Class – Top Rank Graduated in 1991
SAP S/4 HCP Executive Course 2017
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