Experience Summary

•Ajay is an experienced ERP Program Manager and Scrum Master with over 18 years of expertise in formulating and executing strategic Planning & Governance roadmap.

•A trusted enabler to establish industry leading Solution Delivery & Operational Excellence practices and guidelines for driving large-scale ERP/ SAP programs, across regions.

•A technical leader with Implementation & Transition expertise in cloud enabled platforms, managing SDLC for Technology, Infrastructure and Applications, delivering resilient and scalable solutions.

•Works in an agile and collaborative manner with key business sponsors, stakeholders, and external vendors to unlock opportunity in business, using technology to power value generation faster and at scale.

Education

July’2002 – July’2005 Bachelor of Technology Major – Mechanical

Employment History

Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Sydney

Feb’15 – Dec’2023

Platform Manager – ERP/ SAP

Led the strategic planning, budget, scope, and resource management for the SAP re-platforming to S/4 HANA.

Led the implementation of 'Program Calendaring', an $8m initiative, to optimize bank-wide appointment booking.

Orchestrated solution design for financial planning business, integrated with CX platform.

Directed the delivery and transition phases of a multi-phased Customer Engagement & Lead Management platform.

HCL Tech, Au

Feb’22 – Mar’2023

Sr. Delivery Lead

Manages comprehensive review of the entire technology stack and implicit requirements analysis to facilitate the implementation of SAP transformation initiative.

Spearheaded MVP delivery with SAP baseline as per the agreed specification for the 1st phase.

Services Australia (Contract)

Jun’22 – Dec’2022

Solution Design Manager

Executed comprehensive monitoring design across nine system layers using service-oriented architecture.

Steer the implementation of a foundational IT Infrastructure & Application monitoring solution and integration into the Enterprise monitoring dashboard.

EOH, MEA

Aug’14 –Mar’2015

BCM Consultant - EPIC Program

Led the architecture and design transformation for City of Capetown multi-channel citizen services center.

HCL Axon, EU/ MEA

Oct’13 – Aug’2014

Sr. Project Manager – ERP/ SAP

Platform governance and Delivery advisor in ERP competency center for IT strategy, landscape, data modeling and archiving.

TSPL, APAC

Jul’13 – Oct’2013

Program Manager – SAP Platform

Head the Solution design strategy and development of a Predictive Service Marketing solution based on data analytics.

IBM, Oceanic/ EU

Jun’11 – Jul’2013

Managing Consultant – ERP

Manages the Digital Transformation of Field Service solution focusing Production Planning & Supply Chain Management.

Led the PMO strategy for the implementing Vehicle Management System (VMS) and Warranty Management solutions for an automotive brand.

Accenture, Americas

Nov’09 – Jun’2011

Delivery Lead – ERP

Architecture and design for brownfield implementation/ phased rollout of integrated Supply chain management and CRM/ CE/ CX solution for beverage giant.

Excel Technology Solutions, APAC/ ME/ EU

Apr’06 – Oct’2009

ERP - SAP Consultant

Architect integrated greenfield SAP ERP Supply Chain and CRM solution for FMCG client.

Lead the Design & delivery of SAP – ERP, CRM, ISU solution for Telco retailer.

Project transition & Operations support SAP Run (BaU) function for electronic giant.

Ajay Sood

ad2q43@r.postjobfree.com

(61-475-***-***

Key Skills

Portfolio/ Project Management

Delivery and Stakeholder Management

Solutions Architecture (TOGAF)

Business Analysis

Operations Management (ITOM)

Service & Integration Management (SIAM)

Technologies/ Platforms

SAP, S/4, C/4, Cloud Suite

Microsoft Azure

AWS

Jira, Confluence, Rally

ServiceNow, MyService

PlanView, WorkDay

Tableau and Power BI

Industry Lines & Markets

Financial Services (APAC, MEA, Americas)

Utilities (APAC, MEA)

FMCG/ Retail (Americas, APAC, EU)

Public Sector

Certifications

Professional Scrum Master

Professional Product Owner

Scaled Professional Scrum

ITIL V4

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals

AWS Cloud Practitioner

AWS Architect - Associate

Membership

Project Management Professional (PMP®) Sydney chapter

International Seminars

Zero downtime SAP Upgrade: Author and Presenter, SAP TechEd 2016, Las Vegas

About the solution: Presented a scalable solution option to Upgrade the SAP System while Running Production Operations in Parallel. The proposed options use the secondary node or shadow instance that would cater the traffic while the primary node has been under upgrade.

Professional Experience & Key Projects

Employer: Commonwealth Bank Australia Feb 2015 – Dec 2023

Client: Global Technology Services Industry: Financial Services

Role: Sr. Operations Specialist (Digital Operations Technology)

Manages the outcomes of E2E Delivery & Operations as a Platform Owner for complete tech stack, involving SAP system suite e.g S4HANA, SAP eCommerce (UX) and Pega, Salesforce, Calendaring enabling Customer Engagement & Experience Management.

IT Portfolio Governance and Compliance management of PaaS systems on multi-cloud (AWS & Azure) Hybrid Architecture in DevSecOps environment adhering to the SDLC principles, optimising Operational Performance, Resilience and Transition management.

Introduced, Assessed, Planned, Build, Launched, Organized, Established and Streamlined, Distributed Agile/ DevSecOps (Break-Fix/ Break- Restore) support model for newly introduced Customer Needs & Conversation platform.

Role: SAP Architecture & Design Governance (Core Product Systems), 24 Months

Responsible for the SAP Applications portfolio (CNC/ CEC/ CX) in terms of Technology Evolution, Business Fit & Agility, Budget, Opportunities to Improve Efficiencies, TCO and ROI including project administration and closure.

Reviewing detailed designs for Customer Engagement and Follow-up to ensure compliance with defined guidelines in concordance with RBS, BB, IB and WM defined architecture principles.

Presenting delivery framework to Stakeholders, Architecture Review Board (ARB), Change Advisor Board (CAB) as needed and incorporating necessary changes as per their recommendations.

Drafted integrated Digital strategy roadmap for platform convergence planning, providing input from architecture maintenance, renewal and operations management perspective for department wide Continuous Improvement initiative.

Tools: Jira, Confluence, Visio, MS Project, Documentum, Workday, Planview, PLM, SAP Activate, Ariba, Fieldglass, Successfactors.

Employer: HCL Australia Feb 22 – Mar 2023

Client: Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC) Industry: Agriculture Technology

Role: Sr. Tech Specialist

Lead workshops with stakeholders to understand and document the Supply Chain & Logistics (SDLE) process flow and its cross-departmental integration with Customer Service, CRM/CX, HR, Finance systems, and current IT Operations in the organization.

Delivered the most suitable system landscape and enterprise architecture after reviewing and analysing various OTS products and applications available in market that is fit for purpose with minimum customisations.

Manages the delivery of the POC and 1st phase baseline solution implementation with a team of 8 analysts, functional and technical consultants and delivered the customer centric customisation to ERP product following SDLC processes in iterative manner.

Tools: RAID Log, MS Project, Visio, Confluence, Trello, SAP SD, LE, CS, MM, Concur, WMS, HCM, PS/ EPPM.

Employer: Services Australia (Contractor) Jun 22 – Dec 2022

Client: Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation (WPIT) Industry: Public Sector

Role: Solution Design Manager

Collaborated across 9 teams, involved in the delivery of WET (Welfare Entitlement Transformation) Program to design overarching monitoring infrastructure for E2E system landscape performance and integrating the operations with existing 24X7 monitoring team.

Manages incremental solution delivery covering Centralised transaction and security logging in Data Lake with archiving policies & conditions, Performance reporting, E2E transaction tracking, Automated incident creation & assignment etc, in DevOps/ Agile model.

Manages cross functional delivery teams to deliver, Monitoring, Alerting, Notifications (SMS/ Email/ Call), Reporting, solution on approved Enterprise architecture tools.

Tools: Jira, Confluence, MS Project, Mainframe, SAP, Pega, API, Microservices, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Dynatrace, SAP Activate.

Employer: EOH, South Africa Aug 14 – Jan 2015

Client: City of Cape Town, South Africa Industry: Public Sector

Role: Manager - EPIC Program, 6 Months

Manages 4 key functions in SAP Delivery, e.g. Portfolio Management, Delivery Catalogue Management, Service Level Management, Identity & Access Management.

Ensures systems are developed according to the agreed methodology, transitioned to high standards within set budgets and timelines, and meet required design and security standards.

Established mandatory minimum standards and controls for project initiatives and delivery governance, encompassing strategic planning, budgeting, quality and risk management, including implementation of distributed agile model in DevOps environment.

Employer: HCL AXON, South Africa Oct 13 – Aug 2014

Client: Standard Bank, South Africa Industry: Financial Services

Role: Portfolio Manager, 11 Months

Lead the team for program evaluation under 3BL (Triple Bottom Line) framework, which involved performance and impact assessment/ estimation of Social, Environmental and Financial aspects of designed solution.

Central point of contact (SPOC) for key stakeholders/vendors, overseeing Project/Product Delivery (SDLC), RFP/ RFQ, Statement of work (SOW), Risk Management, Life-cycle Management and Improvement Ideas, to ensure benefits realization.

Accountable for the negotiations, client support satisfaction and for new, add-on and existing services to ensure commercial viability and realistic expectation setting and ensure delivery is to budget, to specification, on time, and to customer satisfaction.

Employer: TSPL, India Jul 13 – Oct 2013

Client: Ford Motors, China Industry: Automobile

Role: Project Delivery Lead – SAP Platform, 3 Months

Overhauled SAP - Predictive Service Marketing Architecture, Design & Operations based on Simplify, Standardize & Automate concept for supporting the transformation to distributed agile model in DevOps environment.

Established mandatory, minimum standards and controls for the delivery of change initiatives and governance to ensure High velocity, High availability, Lower risk and the Best value from the deployment.

Design and Introduced CARE Model aka Connect, Ask, Resolve, End for enhancing customer experience driving better NPS.

Employer: IBM, Australia Jul 11 – Jun 2013

Client: Nordea, Europe Industry: Financial Services

Role: Delivery Manager – SAP/ OTC, 12 Months

Define System Landscape & Minimum System Requirements to operate the proposed Banking - CRM Enablement Program solution.

Drafted the scope of the workshop to gather business requirements for mobilising the Quote to Cash and Loans Mangement solution and the Application Process, defining the steps involved through Aris process flow modelling.

Ensure that the team meets Contractual commitments (SLA/ TAT), Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Customer Satisfaction Measures (NPS) as defined in the relevant contracts.

Manages ERP system from technical design to implementation for complex, organization-wide SAP systems, including robust change management, availability, security, and resiliency processes, fostering streamlined communication with Stakeholders and Vendors.

Project: SMA (Sales, Marketing and After Sales) Jun 11 – Jun 2012

Client: Mitsubishi Motors, Australia Industry: Manufacturing

Role: SAP/ ERP Delivery Manager, 12 Months

Led the Cross-division Assessment of Brand Management, Sales, Vehicle Management System (VMS), Importer Service Operations, Warranties, Contact Centre Operations for SAW’s three business divisions – Residential, Corporate and Agricultural.

Collaborates with the Organization Change Management team to address assessment findings by creating communication plans, documentation, and training materials, fostering cross-functional process understanding and enhancing system adaptability.

Responsible for managing defect and issues for systems in SAP landscape and acted as 24/7 escalation point for Service Management support to High Priority, High Business Impact and Service interruptions.

Advocated for business interests in Project Management, Governance, Compliance, and Quality assurance practices aligned with PMO standards, while negotiating, influencing, and driving project outcomes.

Employer: Accenture, India Nov 09 – June 2011

Client: ATB Financials, Canada Industry: FMCG

Role: Solution Delivery Lead – ERP

Business Partner focusing on understanding cross department processes & objectives, providing value-added inputs to the client organisation by utilising ERP program management knowledge and skills.

Responsible for managing and reviewing disaster recovery methods, CMS Audit, System Vulnerabilities, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), UAR’s, Certificate renewal, License renewal.

Accountable for defining acceptance criteria for System & Services, Change Specifications, Impact assessment, Regulatory Traceability Matrix, Design Implementation, User Experience, IT Asset Management and Process sign off with relevant business stakeholders.

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