Dennis R. Sims

**** ****** **.

Westchester, IL *0154

708-***-****

Summary:

. Responsible for the development of a detailed Business Requirement

Document (BRD) which includes process & data mapping, functional and non-

functional requirements, needs/solutions assessment, investment ROI,

milestone plan, risk mitigation, launch/communications plan etc...

. Directly involved in analysis portion Business Solution initiatives where

I was responsible for the identification of impacted functions/systems.

This was used in the development of core teams that I led.

. Successfully facilitated these teams in developing requirements for

modification of enterprise systems, data models that included UML use

cases, 'as-is' and 'to-be' states, traceability matrix, user stories

etc...

. Created design documents used in the migration to the Guidewire

replacement Policy issuance system (Property and Causality) from the

existing OS2 works stations and supporting systems.

Education:

B.S. of Science, Business Education, Certified Secondary Level, Chicago

State University, Chicago, IL

MEMBERSHIP: Project Management Institute (PMI)

Technical skills:

Websphere, MQ Series, .Net, C++, Cobol, JAVA, JAVA Script, J2EE, HTML,

DHTML, Mainframe z/OS, SQL, MS SQL Server, TCP/IP, Guidewire, IBM Varicent,

IMS DC, CICS, XML, ETL, SDLC (linear & sequential, Waterfall, Agile), Six

Sigma Green Belt, ITIL v3 Foundation, Microsoft Office products, Visio,

Canonical data structures, Affordable Health Care Act - 834 and 820

transactions.

Databases: IMS DB, DB2, Oracle, Informix.

Professional Experience:

BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD ASSOCIATION

(Experis Consulting Group)

1/2014 - 6/2014

BUSINESS ANALYST

Blue Cross Blue Association is responsible for the development and

implementation of national programs that support some 44 Blue Cross Blue

Shield state organizations.

As a Business Analyst my responsibilities included working with each of the

state plans. This support was to insure their infrastructure and

development areas were properly prepared to create and deliver new files

for the new Payment Innovation claims processing system.

Responsibilities:

. At each location, support the installation and testing of Direct Connect

and PGP (or equivalent) encryption software

. Created agenda for weekly meetings, open issues etc. with each active

state organization

. Execution of internal and external client requests

. Client (internal and external) analysis, training and support

. Assist with Analysis Report development

. Handle ad hoc client requests

. Directly involved in analysis portion of Business Solution initiatives

. New Client Installations

. Business Solution Analysis Development and Objectives

Health Plan Services

5/2012 - 10/2013

IT MANAGER/BUSINESS ANALYST BROKER COMMISSIONS

Health Plan Services provides end-to-end sales, administration and

technology solutions to fully insured health plans, self insured employer

groups, insurance companies and unions. The company supports more than 30

insurance carriers that utilize its technology and service solutions to

help grow and retain their members, and reduce their membership

administrative costs in the individual and small business markets

Responsibilities:

. Work with Sales and Finance analysts, managers and IT resources to

identify inefficiencies, manual workarounds and functional gaps with

existing commission's processes. Develop a detailed project plan (process

& data mapping, functional requirements document, needs/solutions

assessment, investment ROI, milestone plan, risk mitigation,

launch/communications plan, organizational impact/resource assessment,

etc in support of this major initiatives.

. Provide primary program support to other cross-functional teams. Provide

recommendations and act as program manager for coordinating broker

commission compensation designs, plan governance and change management

with Sales/Finance executives.

. Directly responsible for Commissions systems transformation with the

implementation of IBM's Varicent Commissions software in support of the

Enterprise transaction based model. It provided rule driven processing

which eliminated coding changes when updates to the commission's

algorithms were needed.

SEARS HOLDING COMPANY

JUDGE Consulting Group

9/2011- 5/2012

PROGRAM MANAGER/BUSINESS ANALYST

At SEARS Holding Corporation, I was responsible for multiple online

business units. A newly written online product enrichment system allows

users unprecedented ways to enrich their product's content which includes

making those enriched products available online quickly.

Responsibilities:

. Responsible for multiple online business units (Home Appliances, Apparel,

egift cards and searsoutlet.com) product migration to the new system.

Ensured that all migrated products were properly published online

. Online product characteristics varied by the type of products in each

business unit and were expressed as attributes. This new system allowed

for numerous additional attributes for each product which required the

collection of their values by working with business partners and product

manufactures. The values were uploaded to the appropriate product using

the systems new 'bulk upload' functionality

. The customer's online experience/navigation was controlled through the

use of online taxonomy settings which could be altered to satisfy

business user requirements for how product image and attributes were

displayed - i.e. show sales items first or display them in order of

retail pricing etc.

. Responsible for monitoring the problem tracking system (JIRA) in an

attempt to identify potential production problems by reviewing the

results of rejection reports for items being moved to the online

environment

. Responsible for determining root cause of problems that were assigned

(via JIRA) to Project Mangers based on who was responsible for the

business unit encountering the outage

. Responsible for escalation of problems/outages to appropriate development

teams which included notification to business partners

IBM Strategic Global Outsourcing Delivery Center

2/2010 -3/2011

PROJECT MANAGER/BUSINESS ANALYST

Delivery centers use the combination of offshore, onshore and near-shore

resources to help transform business operating models. Beyond cost

advantages of labor arbitrage, companies can use global integration and

delivery to enter into new markets, expand production or services to 24x7

operations.

A portion of services provided include integrated communication,

maintenance and technical support, middleware services, server services and

storage and data services.

Responsibilities:

. Working with IBM's customers who have outsourced their infrastructure to

IBM in support of their global operations

. Responsible for the evaluation of customer service orders ranging from

upgrading existing and implementation of new networks

. Identified and engaged resources needed from other global Delivery

Centers from United States, Brazil, China, India and Argentina to

establish requirements at the direction of the customer

. Developed project plan used to align Service Level Agreement that

included implementation date

. Responsible for 'Change Controls' and all customer communications

CNA Insurance, Chicago IL

6/1997- 10/2009

CNA products include standard commercial lines, specialty lines, surety

marine and other property-casualty coverage. CNA services include risk

management, information services, underwriting, and loss control and claims

administration.

3/1998 - 10/2009

SENIOR ARCHITECT SPECIALIST - Responsibilities of Business Analyst and

Project Manager

. Applied Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process in a Service

Oriented Environment (SOE) with business partners, development staff,

quality assurance analysts and infrastructure resources

. As Subject Matter Expert (SME), coordinated activities needed to

implement systems and process improvements as identified by the company's

strategic direction. These improvements were to the Property and

Causality, Auto, General Liability, Workers Compensation policy issuance,

Claims, Billing and data feeds to State Regulatory agency systems.

. Based on the system modification request, worked with business partners

and IT management to

. identify appropriate resources that would be available throughout the

project/program duration

. Successfully facilitated these teams in developing detailed functional

and non-functional requirements for modification of enterprise systems

and data models that included UML use cases for clarity. Also, the

Infrastructure teams were always consulted during initial phases to

determine if their areas could be impacted and whether they should be a

part of the project/program definition

. Engaged all impacted business partners, development and qualitative

analysis resources to review and approve requirements done in a team

setting. This was required prior to the development of Detailed Designs

and Qualitative Analysis test cases. Also, submission of IT Development

and Testing time estimates were required to be within 20% of the actual

effort

. Responsible for Approval of all Detailed Designs and Qualitative Analysis

test cases. Questions resulting from these reviews were discussed with

impacted teams. Commencement of the Development phase occurred once these

approvals were achieved

. User interfaces and reporting systems were improved by identifying and

correcting inconsistent requirements. This involved rigorous negotiating

and building consensus with all impacted partners

. Responsible for all phases from requirement clarification through

development and deployment in addition to reviewing and approving any

Change Controls. These could be the result of requirement changes,

addition of functionality or development time overruns

Application Improvements:

Successfully developed and implemented major system improvements as

demonstrated by a few of the following examples:

. Created a common Quote letter replacing over 60 variations by allowing

for the ability to dynamically customized various sections based on

customer input

. Supported CNA's Agency customers that sent policy data to CNA processing

centers for manual entry a secured access to OS2 Workstations was

provided. This agency access eliminated several steps providing better

service to our customer and made working with CNA more competitive

. Directed the implementation of new small business insurance products that

impacted 30 plus IT systems but had a projected premium growth of over 80

million dollars yearly

. Following hurricane property losses in costal sates, Sagent's MapInfo

Professional mapping and geographic analysis application was implemented

that allowed business partners to visualize the relationships between

data and geography. Downloading U.S. Army Core of Engineer state maps to

this tool allowed the identification of areas within 1000 feet of water.

During the insurance policy processing the insured zip code was sent real-

time to its API. A risk indicator was returned to the calling application

that could indicate the insured property was within the 1000 feet. Those

policies would be referred to an analyst for review

. Analysis of existing OS2 Series III insurance system in creation of the

applications current state, data mapping and job streams. Outlined

functions, screen layouts to be incorporated into the new Guidewire

portal

. Designed documents used in the development of Guidewire that supported

the end-to-end underwriting and policy administration process

. Developed Quality Assurance test cases with projected results.

. Involved in Policy Center implementation, defect management and Change

Control requests

. Partnered with Business during their acceptance testing

6/1997 - 3/1998

PROJECT MANAGER (CONTRACT)

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