Development Sales

JAMES L. LAIRD

*** ******** *****

Sunnyvale, Texas 75182

Mobile: 972-***-****

********@*****.***

EXECUTIVE PROFILE

Senior Executive with extensive accomplishments in Leadership, Product Development, E-commerce, Technology Operations, building high performance global teams to manage the needs of diverse stakeholders and the high expectations of quality focused clients. Proven record of accomplishment to drive project delivery, innovation and operational excellence in a dynamic environment by translating objectives into actionable plans, and providing decisive leadership to multi-functional teams. Team player building successful teams, but also working well across the organization, and embracing partners.

EXPERIENCE

TriZetto Corporation

St Louis, MO

Senior Vice President, TriZetto Provider Solutions Software Development: 2013 – Present

TriZetto Provider Solutions (TPS) is a Cognizant company and business unit within Cognizant’s healthcare that helps physicians, hospitals and health systems simplify business processes and get accurate payments quickly. Responsible for providing strategic leadership in developing and implementing IT initiatives and processes for TriZetto’s provider technology platforms reporting directly to the CTO and managing a budget in excess of $26M

Reduced IT staff while organizing from a matrix organization into product centric teams with focused innovation and management based upon product and service delivery roadmap

Successfully adopted Agile/Scrum practices and drove waterfall changes to increase efficiency and reduce time to market with a 64% velocity increase per FTP. These improvements help to power a 15% top line growth and increase margins to 24%

Creation and execution of 3 year technology roadmap including FOX code removal, SQL Server 2012 upgrade, Window Server 2012 upgrade, implementation of TIBCO products (EMS, Business Works, APIX, Business Events & Spotfire) to replace legacy applications

Reduced IT headcount by 6%, decreasing total development cost by 37%, supporting 19% more revenue with a 59% increase of transaction volume

IT has decreased maintenance support by 89%, committed delivery dates have been on-time 86% with 9% delivered early

Platform availability has improved from 98.05% to 99.96%

Worked in concert with Operations to enhance current products and stabilize platform outcomes yielding an 18 point increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Manage a global staff of approximately 175 resources located in St Louis (MO), Sacramento (CA), Oklahoma City (OK) and Bangalore (IN)

Executive Team Member in recent sale of TriZetto to Cognizant for $2.7B sale price

Travelocity

Southlake, TX

Vice President, Software Development: 2011 – 2013

Travelocity is a subsidiary of Sabre Holdings that is a provider of consumer-direct travel services for the leisure and business traveler. Responsible for all technology development for the Travelocity.com global shopping platform, World Choice Travel (B2B) platform and offline sales & customer support applications reporting directly to the CTO and manage a budget in excess of $20M

Over the past year, successful global team consolidation, implementation of a global shopping application supporting hotel, flight & packages which improved conversion by 75 bps, attained new affiliate partners that contributed an additional $50M in gross sales, drove offline sales and operational effectiveness which increased revenue by 12%

Manage a global staff of approximately 150 resources located in Southlake (TX), Buenos Aries (AR), Bangalore (IN), and London (UK)

Successfully implemented SDLC to improve a 15% bottom line growth and a 10% reduction in overall technology infrastructure required to handle our global customer base

Turned around technology team and transformed the group into one of the highest throughput teams in 2012 with a 150% increase in shipped product

Expedia Affiliate Network, Expedia, Inc

London, UK, Bellevue, WA, Springfield, MO & Dallas, TX

Sr. Director of EAN Technology: 2009 – 2011

Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) is a $1.3 Billion subsidiary of Expedia Inc. that creates, hosts and transacts travel websites for 5,500 travel agents and travel partners around the world. I am a key member of the Senior Management Team responsible for all technology development reporting directly to the President of EAN and manage a budget in excess of $10M

Over the past year, successful technology team consolidation and turnaround supported business top growth by 45% while reducing technology costs by 20%, and improving development productivity by 50%

Manage a global staff of approximately 100 resources located in Springfield (MO), Bellevue (WA), Dallas (TX), London (UK), and Minsk (Belarus)

My team develops, maintains and administers all phases of the global Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) development, including systems design, application engineering, installation, and operation of our 7X24 e-commerce platform handling over 28M shopping requests per day

Set short- and long-term strategic and operational objectives while providing the management necessary to achieve profits, growth, capacity and costs

Built cross-departmental relationships to manage project/support objectives, design application solutions, prioritize deliverables, determine implementation strategy and coordinate assignment of resources in developing software for EAN while utilizing Expedia’s Electronic services framework

Improved EAN e-commerce platform availability from 99.33% uptime to 99.97% by driving changes in Application Architecture and improving performance, scalability, and manageability

Member of the Expedia Affiliate Network Leadership Team that guides all strategy and execution for this major travel subsidiary – single point of contact for the EAN Business on all matters Technology related

Develop technology roadmap for IT projects to support EAN Business initiatives

Responsible for compliance and security, setting policies, managing audits and leading the certification processes for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and PCI

Member of the Expedia Technology Leadership Counsel (Senior Technology Management across all Expedia, Inc.)

Hotels.com (Hotel Reservation Network)

Dallas, TX

Director of Core Systems Development: 2003 – 2009

This $2.0 Billion travel subsidiary of Expedia Inc. is the leading online hotel booking site in North America. Managed 75 development resources with a budget in excess of $9M

Assumed leadership of the Systems Engineering team. Managed all aspects of e-commerce web site development for Hotels.com (domestic)

I was part of the Hotels.com team since inception. In 2008, Expedia Inc. had two platforms serving Hotels.com one domestic, and one global. Following Expedia Inc. reorganization around global brands, I lead the integration of the Hotels.com domestic platform, into the global platform leading to a complete transition of development out of Dallas into the European team. This $25M project was very successful as it is saving the company over $15M a year, and allowing it to compete effectively using one platform instead of two. On a personal basis, transitioning the team I had lead since startup, and ultimately closing the office was a deep learning experience where my success ultimately resulted in my promotion at the head of EAN technology

Directed, drove and lead project managers, business analysts and other functional subject matter experts to insure that their capacity was aligned with the business and being deployed appropriately

Resource administrations (recruiting, general admin, reviews and disciplinary actions)

Senior Manager, Applications Engineering: 1999 – 2002

Member of Senior Technology Team responsible for the Hotel Reservation Network initial public offering (IPO)

Responsible for creating and managing a development staff

New system development, maintenance and enhancements. Duties included requirements gathering, technical designs, development estimates, development, QA testing and implementation

Responsible for managing the consistency of development across all projects

Review all technical designs

Ensure reliable software release/build process

Mentor to the developers

Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist Convention

Dallas, TX

Team Leader, Applications Development: 1993 – 1999

Responsible for the implementation of the general ledger system, accounts payable system, fixed asset system and human resource system. Duties included supervision of programmers, gathered requirements, creation of request for proposals, vendor selection, installed software, data conversions, design and developed interfaces, coordinated testing and production implementation

Programmer/Analyst, Applications Development: 1988 – 1993

Responsible for creating program specifications, coding complex applications and becoming the system expert of many applications

Dallas County Data Services

Dallas, TX

Programmer, Applications Development: 1987 – 1988

Responsible for coding programs, creating reports, modification of existing applications and nightly support

EDUCATION

Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

August 1987 - B.B.A. in Management Information Systems

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