Financial Architect

SHAILESH KARKHANIS

Cell: 732-***-**** ***.*********@*****.***

F I NANCE TRANSFOR MAT ION L EADER

Experienced Finance Transformation professional with demonstrable experience in analyzing,

redesigning and documenting complex Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, and Record to Report

p rocesses, including the design and implementation of large complex ERP programs using

established best practices. Expert in selling strategic vision and change management necessary to

senior FIS and Finance decision makers via concise presentations, ROI analysis, and change

management. “Roll up sleeve approach” with ability to negotiate and deal with business partners

and “C” level management Staff, COTS Vendors, development team, QA team, external vendors

and other key project stakeholders.

CORE CO MPETENC I ES

• Finance Transformation

• Finance shared services center & COE

• Financial System selection and ROI Analysis

• Financial Systems Architecture

• Financial Application Integration

• ERP System implementation

ADV ISORY PROJEC TS

He is key member of the 8-member core advisory practice group focused on analyzing

existing finance legacy applications and submitting detailed wri te-ups for redesigning of

applications including performing business process reengineering wherever applicable.

As a part of the N orth America Advisory Council, actively participated in the brainstorming,

developing and presenting Application Integration Strategy for merger of two major insurance

giants.

E RP Vendor evaluation was project done for the client to help them make a buy or build

decision. He led the Client’s initiative to make recommendations to the client whether to look for

COTS software that suits their business requirements or to build an application from scratch.

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R eti rement/reinstatement of Oracle F inancials was very critical decision that the client

wanted to make after investing 7 years & nearly $5 million dollars. He worked closely with the

C lient’s top management to present a confidential report to the Executive Deputy Commissioner

of Program area with the finding of the research to facilitate them make an informed decision.

He helped initial setup and laying down the procedures for g lobal support model for a Boston

based Financial Service Client.

P ROFESSIONAL EXPER I E NCE

Universal Technologies L LC, New York City, NY

J une 2008 to present

Job T i tle : F inancial Architect

He is currently working as a senior advisor in his organization providing management consulting

services to his clients in areas related to Automation of Finance function, information sharing &

exchanging (Service Integration) as well as Management & compliance reporting. He is

partnering with client’s finance leadership to understand business needs and providing

suggestions for next generation solutions. He is interfacing & collaborating with internal and

external customers and vendors for his client in an effort to streamline the existing operations and

help them improve processes or save tax dollars. Some of the key assignments that he has worked

on include the following:

P rojects with Bank of America: He is the single point of contact for all the projects in the

g roup with the Bank of America Escrow Management Group. He has successfully led several

assignments to successful automate the Bank Reconciliation, Electronic Transfer(EFT), EBT card,

Data Transmission, check imaging and several other projects.

Application I n tegration & Ente rp r ise Service Bus project : He led this high visibility

application integration project. He was instrumental in convincing the client to have a middle

layer or Enterprise Service Bus. The ESB administration was showcased as a best practice for

i nterchange and exchange of information and data within the client’s organization as well as from

external sources.

F inancial Focus is an in-house developed product that is currently being used by multiple

p rograms (line of business) to provide financial management services to their clients. The

T reasury, Receivables, Payables and General Ledger module was implemented in the FSCM suite.

Key highlights included implementation of Positive Payee Bank Account Structure, Revenue

Recognition & Fund Accounting; Funds Encumbrance & Payment Predictor. He is working on

several small and big enhancements Overpayment module, Scanning and imaging of documents,

daily automated bank reconciliation and redesign/realignment of Chart of Accounts.

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Access Focus is a budgeting application that was developed to enable multiple programs to

accurately forecast their budgeting needs. The expense budgeting includes planning and t racking

of forecast, top down allocation of expenses and building of what if scenarios for contingency

p lanning. I t also facilitates the capital Asset planning process with predefined depreciation

schedules & methods. The Revenue budgeting part has the Revenue recognition feature that

simplifies accurate forecasting of expected revenue during the year.

Con Edison eBilling project: He was instrumental in pursuing and implementing this eBilling

p roject with Con Edison. He worked closely with the Con Edison group to help them understand

h is client’s needs and created the WSDL for the development group to create the web service to

access billing and payment information from Con Ed.

Check Reconciliation and T racking System is t reasury software with capabilities of

generating an ACH file in NACHA format. The software is also capable of generating a positive

payee file in case the bank account has been setup as a Payee Positive payee account.

Scanning & I ndexing P roject : As a project lead, he worked closely with the Document

M anagement Group to develop and rollout a scanning and indexing application for 3 of the

p rograms that he is working closely with. He was able to demonstrate considerable cost saving

and effort with the rollout of this project.

F ocus Analytical i mplementation was successfully completed using WEBFOCUS – SAAS

software. The Web Focus application supports business intelligence and analytical. I t is built

using state of art technology and provides a single platform for BI, data modeling, and scoring.

V isual OLAP features allow users to do more than just slice and dice data. The application is

t ightly integrated with leading mapping solutions from ESRI, Google (Google Maps) to visualize

t he spatial component of your business data.

Security & Compliance (GRC) was implemented to ensure security and compliance. Key

activities include SODA analysis (Segregation of Duties Analysis), Continuous Auditing, Disaster

Recovery & Business Continuity Plans, SOX compliance under section 302 & 404, Implementation

of IT General & Application Suite Controls.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, Teaneck, NJ M ay

2003 to May 2008

Job T i tle : P rincipal Consultant

He provided process optimization, redesign, and integration services to numerous fortune 500

clients like MetLife Insurance, Ace Insurance, Wellington Management and Candle Corporation.

He provided leadership for several client engagements and worked closely with the Business

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Partners and the ‘C’ level executives. He was closely involved in the process of selecting the right

shoring approach – onshore, near shore or offshore for multiple client engagements. He was

contributor to the company’s effort to effectively collaborate with the client organizations to help

t hem achieve significant cost savings. He participated in numerous response to proposals, pre-

sales presentation and preparation of SOWs.

MetfFACS2 ( MetLife F inancial Accounting System) PeopleSoft implementation &

U pgrade was a flagship project for the institutional business and was used for premium

p rocessing. The functional challenges in the project involved building custom insurance domain

specific f lows for billing and accounts receivables module. Highlight of the implementation was

developing and deployment of Bridge Logic and Product Allocation.

Redesign of I ndividual Business sub-Ledgers (Accounting H ub) was implemented for the

I ndividual Business. More than 40 different systems would feed their entries to the sub-ledger

system. The sub-ledger in turn would feed information to the corporate ledger after applying

various business rules.

Metlink – eBilling & ePay application was the award winning eBilling Application Suite designed

and developed in JAVA. This Application Suite caters to online bill and premium payment needs.

F M R/DN U Rew ri te p roject was initiated from a technology stack approach where they wanted

to bring all the legacy application onto a PeopleSoft platform. The project objective was to rewrite

t he PB applications- Financial Management Reporting application and the Due & Unpaid

application in PeopleSoft.

F ile Control P roject was exclusive implemented by Cognizant in MetLife. The project was

i nitiated as part of the comprehensive effort initiated to make the project SOX compliant. The

PeopleSoft application in question has a total of 59 inbounds and Outbound. The project was

i nitiated to introduce headers and trailers and in some case talk to external systems to change the

layout or t iming for sending or receiving files.

R edesign of Cha rt of Accounts was a Project in “Red” with demanding t ime lines and strict

budget enforcement. Helped the client in redesigning the chart of accounts. Worked closely with

t he project team is defining and configuring the chart of accounts.

iGATE (Formerly Patni Computer Systems), M umbai, I ndia Sep

2001 to Apr 2003

Job T i tle: Functional Consultant

He was part of the CFO Technology enablement group. This group was responsible not only for

analyzing and recommending best practices for various finance business functions but also

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automating it. As a part of this Business process optimization and reengineering initiative, he

i mplemented following:

PeopleSoft Ente rp rise Pe rformance Management 8.8 was a key project implemented for

t he Budget Planning and the Management Accounting Group of the company directly reporting to

t he CFO. The key modules implemented included PeopleSoft Budgets and commitment control

PeopleSoft Ente rp rise Service Automation 8.8 project focused on business process

reengineering and implementation of PeopleSoft Contracts & Project Costing for the Contract

g roup and integration with the Billing and Receivables system. As a part of the rollout, a Global

Helpdesk was established in Mumbai, India.

Global I mplementation of PeopleSoft General Ledger & Asset Mgmt. (FSCM) was an

ambitious project which was implemented and rolled out in multiple continents – North America,

E urope and Asia.

Cognos implementation was completed to provide comparative reports to be used by the

B udget Planning and Management Accounting Group.

Tech Mahindra (Formerly MB T), M umbai, I ndia F eb

2001 to Aug 2001

Job T i tle : P roject Associate

He was the part of 16 member Oracle Financials implementation group. He worked in his capacity

as a functional consultant. Evaluated the project progress to mitigate risks and cost overrun

issues.

P rovided project financial details to content providers.

Dha ramsi Mora r ji Chemical Co. L td., M umbai, I ndia

M a r 2000 to Jan 2001

Job T i tle : M anagement Consultant -F inance P rocess t ransformation

He was a part of the 10 member Process and Systems Reengineering group. The group performed

analysis of Centralized V/S Decentralized Purchasing and Automation of accounting function and

p resented their recommendations to the Director of Finance and In ternal Audit.

Worked as a Management consultant for analyzing and suggesting transformative measures for

existing functions like Post-facto issue of work orders; centralized vs. decentralized purchases and

automation of accounting function.

ED UCAT ION

Master’s in Business Administration – Finance

Associate Chartered Accountant- Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

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Certified Green Belt Six Sigma & Lean Sigma Professional

Trained as a Certified Information Systems Auditor

PeopleSoft 8 Financials Management Implementation Champion

O racle Financials 10.7GUI Implementation Champion

Diploma in Project Management

T EC H N ICAL SK I L LS

PeopleSoft Financials, Oracle Financials, Cognos, Web Focus, Essbase, Hyperion, TOAD, MS

P rojects, MS Visio, Visual Safe Source, SharePoint, Calligo, Subversion, Excel, Word

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