RICARDO GARCIA

BSC IE, MBA, PMP, ITIL V*

SCRUM MASTER, AGILE MASTER

Secret (Level II) Security Clearance

Phone: 905-***-**** / e-mail: ad3swp@r.postjobfree.com

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Program and Project management

Management of transition and transformation projects

Business & systems analysis

Six Sigma, continuous improvement

Finance, activity-based costing

Change Management.

Requirements gathering and validation

Productivity improvement & cost reduction

Vendor management

WMS

Develop high performing teams

Performance management and improvement

Managing/guiding teams through difficult and complex situations

Business Process Management & Business Analysis

Software development, Testing, release, and deployment.

SQL Server, MS Access

Visio, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, MS Project, BPMN

.Net, ASP, MVC, Javascript, JQuery.

ITIL v3, ITSM, best IT practices, SIAM

Jira, confluence

PCI compliance

ServiceNow, Remedy, Service Center, OpenView

Governance

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

IT Program Manager (contractor), Product Operations Technology, Bank of the West Merger with BMO Harris USA

Bank Of Montreal, USA Jul 2022-Oct 31, 2023

Responsible for managing a portfolio of projects to integrate Bank of The West Fraud Detection System, Primary Payments System, Online Adjustment Transaction System, Check Archival Solution, Branch Settlement, Collections Dialer, call recording migration, Item Processing (Day 1 and Day 2), infrastructure capacity Increase and upgrade, 10 Business Managed Applications.

Migrated Bank of the West legal order systems LevyLog (Levies), Appian (subpoenas), and FileNet to Sales Force using agile methodology to speed up delivery since project was behind schedule.

Worked with Playbook leads to create the minute-by-minute playbook, command center incident management and escalation processes, command center roles and responsibilities, and command center schedule.

Worked at the integration command center as escalation manager during project mock 1, mock 2, mock 3, and go-live to solve major incidents related to the migration of collections systems, infrastructure, data warehouse, and MIS.

Structured and helped reach peak performance of a team of Project Managers, QA leads, and Release & Deployment team (playbook leads).

Technical Project Manager

Manulife Mar 2021-Jul 2022

Managed contract with IBM to remediate cybersecurity for Unix/Linux and Windows servers hosted by IBM.

Managing remediation of privileged access for database servers.

Managed work of Global Access Management resources to onboard unmanaged access into CyberArk.

Improved cyber security remediation process to make it proactive instead of reactive.

New Venture Project (self-employment)

Multi-Income Solar Panel Jun 2019-Mar 2020

Completed patent application process for a new type of solar panel that increases the economic productivity of solar farms. Patent granted in December 2021.

Completed project financials to assess the economic feasibility of the project to present to potential investors.

The project has been put indefinitely on hold due to COVID-19.

Scotiabank, Toronto

Sr. Manager, AML Remediation Project, International Wealth Management (Contractor) April 2019-Jun 2019

Responsible for Project Management, analyzing business needs, gather requirements, and design processes, and establish production lines for Anti Money Laundering (AML) remediation in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.

Upon completion of project initiation, it was discovered that the bank already had a production line doing this type of work in Mexico and was ready to intake more work as it was finishing the current assignment.

Sr. Manager, Project Management, Integration Change Office (ICO) (Contractor) Jan 2016-Aug 2018

Managed a full cycle portfolio of projects across different domains to integrate Citibank’s collections operations from Costa Rica and Panama into Scotiabank: Key responsibilities included but were not limited to, project governance, due diligence, initiation, financial management, business case, gathering of functional and non-functional requirements, design, project planning, resource optimization, project execution, project control, and project closing.

Project areas: Business Transition/Transformation/readiness, Legal, Compliance, Learning and Development, Training Delivery, Change Management, Governance. HR, IT, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Citibank’s Collections Data and DWH Migration to Scotiabank, and Reporting (MIS).

Applied Change Management methodology to roll out new technology and introduce processes changes into the integrated collections operations. Organized and facilitated two one-week Change Management workshops with main stakeholders to create a shared need, shape vision, mobilize commitment, agree on the change management plan, and agree on change monitoring activities.

Ensured that the merged collections operation incorporated all requirements and touchpoints as specified in Scotiabank’s ERM policies and procedures for risk monitoring and management according to the bank’s risk appetite.

Products: Credit cards, mortgages, personal loans, Small Business.

Highlights: USD$14M budget, applications upgrades, implementation of TSYS (new credit card processing system) and migration of credit card portfolio from Citibank and Scotiabank, implementation of TRIAD (collections & risk engine), migration of Citibank’s A/R portfolio, opening a call center in Colombia, real estate construction of facilities (USD$5M) for 480 seats, Infrastructure readiness, hiring 334 new positions in Colombia, learning and development project to design and create all training material for the integrated collections operations, and training delivery through in-person sessions and SAP Workday.

Created of all project management artifacts for all project phases and project streams: Due Diligence, Requirements Document, design document, Change Management Plan, requirements traceability matrix, Stakeholder matrix, project plan, project controls, budget, deliverables matrix, Command Center Playbook (minute-by-minute), etc.

Established the implementation command center to manage the on-time execution of all migration activities. Managed the identification, escalation, and resolution of all major incidents during the implementation of integrated systems.

Ensured adherence to program and project management methodologies, identified, mitigated, or eliminated potential risks. Made sure that delivery of project milestones on time and budget.

Responsible for initiating and overseeing IT change requests and to approve release and deployment of application upgrades. Participated in CAB meetings to assess change risk and approve the change and release plans.

Used process re-engineering expertise, and advanced Robotics Process Automation (RPA) skills to eliminate project risks:

oEvaluated RPA tools to select the most cost-effective choice for the project (Microsoft Power automate, UiPath. Selenium, and Prism).

oDue to the bottleneck in HR Operations, the turnaround time (TAT) for a project to create new employees in the HR system was 3 weeks (An HR Ops analyst took an average of 10 min to create a new employee in the HR system). The new automated process reduced input time to 70 seconds, eliminated typing errors, and reduced the TAT from 3 weeks down to 24 hours per project (about 800% productivity improvement).

oUsed RPA to reduce TAT for the creation of user accounts in Windows, email, Debt Manager, TSYS, and Global Dialer.

Helped BBVA Chile transition to automating the process to create 3000+ Position Codes and 2100 new employees in HR System.

Initiated and structured project Columbus (SABE) to move Dominican Republic Collections Call Center to Bogota, Colombia.

Managed project to migrate Collections Data Mart into the Enterprise Data Lake (EDL).

Project Manager/Entrepreneur (self-employment) Jun 2014 – Dec 2015

Worked on two separate startup projects:

oAccepted into the startup incubation program at the Halton Innovation Centre (http://haltech.ca/) to market a framework and related technology that I designed to predict incidents and significantly reduce the number of IT service disruptions in any company. The product used enhanced configuration management to support predictive analytics and has been successfully tested in two companies using ITSM tools such as HP Openview, HP Service Center, and BMC Remedy.

oProject to design a mobile application that allows Professional Services companies in Latin America to track time and cost for each engagement. Responsible for designing the initial prototype and for providing Program/Project management expertise to develop the methodology for project initiation, resourcing, execution, control, and reporting.

World Networking Services Oct 2013 – Jun 2014

Program Manager and Interim Problem Manager (Contractor)

Contracted by Capgemini as Service Integration and Management (SIAM) Program/Project manager for a transition and transformation project with Loblaw Companies Ltd. Used standard ITIL Processes to establish a governance framework for vendor integration and management.

Worked on the Remedy upgrade project from version 7.0 to 8.1.

Helped the customer with a temporary role as Problem Manager from Oct 2013 to April 2014. During this time:

oPerformed root cause analysis on major incidents. Identified and implemented improvements for Incident and problem management processes.

oWorked with Loblaw’s command center during the resolution of major incidents and post mortem reviews to initiate root cause analysis during the migration to Remedy 8.1.

oManaged major incidents and root cause analysis to resolve recurrent issues in the loyalty program.

oUsed predictive analytics to identify the top 20% of all the severity 1 incident types.

oIdentified the store locations and the infrastructure with the highest probability of being affected by the top 20% of incident types. Performed root cause analysis in the top 20% of incident types to eliminate them.

GE CAPITAL Working Capital Solutions – EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) Nov 2011 - Jun 2013

IT Project Lead Continuous Improvement

Program Manager assigned to recover a troubled multi-million-dollar program to re-engineer GE core account receivables system (following credit card collections model) and to implement CIM dialer (contact center solution). Worked with the business to analyze the troubled program, prepare, present, and get approval for the proposed recovery plan.

Established functional and non-functional requirements review sessions to align work of the different IT with the business objectives in order to eliminate project scope creep.

Led three project managers, one telecom expert, two technical architects, two vendor development teams (14 people), QA vendor team (7 people), and release team (2 people) to complete this program on time, on budget, with the lowest number of defects, no post-implementation issues, and record business satisfaction.

Helped the business transformation team to structure Project Governance, Change Management, and business project plans to roll out new processes and related technology that would affect the work of 680 people across different regions.

Guided the business on how to apply the Change Acceleration Process (CAP) framework to effectively make business and organizational changes.

Developed all program/project management artifacts (plans, schedules, milestones, metrics, controls, risk registry, change management plan, issues log, track budget, etc.).

Negotiated contracts with vendors and managed performance according to contract/plan and established SLAs.

Made weekly presentations to executives and all other stakeholders. Made monthly and gate closing presentations to the Project Management Office (PMO). Provided project management expertise to help structure the related business project stream.

Introduced agile methodologies for software development in our division. All best business practices, project management tools, and agile techniques used in this program became the standard for future programs/projects.

Improved business and systems analysis which resulted in improved requirements management and prevented risk of project falling into scope creep.

Successfully set up and led testing center of excellence (CoE): Negotiated contract with QA services vendor, worked with the vendor to hire QA team (a QA lead and five QA analysts in India and a QA lead in Canada).

Managed project to implement credit card payment processing. Prepared project proposal, obtained approval from Governance Committee, and executed phase 1 of a project to achieve compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards.

Re-engineered the release and deployment processes, and introduced the creation of the minute-by minute deployment playbook. This resulted in faster cleaner deployments with significantly reduced post-implementation issues.

Established the release and deployment command center to manage all playbook activities and any incidents during the project go live.

Led implementation of ServiceNow for service delivery in the division to set up incident management, problem management, change management, configuration management, and CMDB.

INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR (self-employment) Jul 2009 - Nov 2011

Worked as an independent contractor due to the lack of opportunities during the great recession

Provided consulting services on program and project management, ITIL & ITSM, business analysis, process improvement, process re-engineering, and process automation. Clients: Home Depot Canada, Kayak Global (United States), and MetroIngenieria (Colombia).

Kayak Global: As Program Manager, helped one of Kayak Global’s customer (Northern Tier Energy) to reorganize a program to implement Oracle Financials and all other systems required to run a new company resulting from spinning off from Marathon Oil (USA) a refinery, 160 gas stations, 160 convenience stores, and a bakery. Worked with the customer to establish the governance framework, program management methodology, change management plan, program governance framework, and communication standards.

HEWLETT-PACKARD CANADA – Toronto Jun 2006 – Jun 2009

Global Problem Manager (2007-2009), Service Segment Manager/ITO Consultant

Client: Weyerhaeuser – HP`s largest global outsourced customer at that time

Promoted to a newly created customer-facing role as the single point of contact for Problem Management between the client and HP service towers (infrastructure and application management).

Represented the global problem management function in the weekly meeting with client executives and consistently delivered above service level agreement (SLA) targets.

Worked with client command center during major incident investigation and resolution. Initiated and performed end to end root cause analysis on major incidents to eliminate the underline cause behind those incidents.

Implemented Problem management, root cause analysis, and proactive problem management for infrastructure and application management.

Created incident trend analysis methodology and application to identify infrastructure incident patterns. This process resulted in a 54% reduction in critical service failures in five months.

Trained global resources on Problem Management, Root Cause Analysis, and trend analysis.

ITIL/ITSM Process Consultant (2006-2007)

Process Engineering, Knowledge Management, and Operational Excellence teams

Clients: General Motors, Celestica, Delphi, DirecTV, Hexion, CIBC, ING, KPMG, PepsiCo, Rockwell, Weyerhaeuser

Responsible for leading a team of Process Consultants, tools specialists, and technical writers to implement HP Infrastructure Management and Governance framework, ITIL processes (Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, Service Catalog, and CMDB set up) as part of transition and transformation projects for customers that outsourced IT services (infrastructure & application management) from HP.

Established the project war room (command center) processes and scripts to manage all activities and incidents during the project implementation and post implementation phases.

Movement of infrastructure from customer data centers to HP DCs (i.e. windows servers, Unix servers, Mainframes)

Worked with tools specialists and developers to modify tools as per customer requirements to implement ITIL processes in ITSM systems such as Openview, Service Center, and interface with Remedy (case exchange) as part of process implementation in transition projects.

Facilitated working sessions with clients and internal resources to document “As is” processes, gather functional and non-functional requirements, present findings and recommendations, and agree on the “To be” process with all stakeholders.

Developed new standards for problem management process, root cause analysis framework, and training materials that improved the efficiency and effectiveness of problem management in all new accounts.

Worked on client escalations to help existing accounts to improve underperforming processes.

Worked on the design and implementation of ITIL/ITSM process and SLAs for General Motors account in the context of a multi-vendor environment using SIAM principles.

As one of the regional ITIL/ITSM subject matter experts provided support to sales teams during sales pursuit projects and presented HP’s processes to potential customers.

APOTEX INC., THE APOTEX GROUP – Toronto Jul 2003 – Sep 2004

Project Manager & Senior Consultant, Consulting Services

Managed the complete lifecycle of a multi-year internal program to re-engineer all applications that had to comply with FDA 21CFR part 11.

Completed phase 1 of the project:

oPerformed inventory of applications and built project portfolio based on high, medium, and low non-compliance risk.

oLed application owners through the process of preparing, submitting, and getting approval from the governance committee for projects in the portfolio pipeline.

oSet up standards for project communication, change management framework, and project control.

oCreated application agile application framework based on test driven development and agile best practices, developed standards for business and systems analysis, process mapping, gathering of functional and non-functional requirements, documentation, and testing within an agile environment.

oLed team of business owners, business analysts, validation specialists, and developers to develop, test, and release the first batch of applications that did not comply with FDA 21CFR part 11.

oImplemented application support processes based on the ITIL framework.

HEWLETT-PACKARD FINANCIAL SERVICES (contractor) – Mississauga, Canada Jun 2001 –Jul 2003

Business Process Analyst & Project Consultant, LAR Collections (2001 – 2003)

Promoted to a regional role responsible for managing a project to re-engineer the collections, credit, and cash application processes in a region comprised of eight countries. The team included all collections managers and collections analysts in the region as well as a regional business analyst and a regional systems analyst.

Designed, executed, and monitored the strategy to enhance value creation in a $1 billion portfolio. This resulted in a 50% reduction in the combined collections’ exposure of eight countries, and improved credit approval process for the region.

Created a model to calculate and monitor total risk exposure. Incorporated HP’s enterprise risk management within the re-engineered collections processes to proactively identify and act on HPFS portfolio risk deviations from HPFS risk appetite.

Designed and implemented a governance model for collections in the entire region that defined clear roles and responsibilities for all processes, service level agreements, KPIs, and relationship management with third-party collections service providers.

Successfully applied change management framework to manage change within the scope of the project.

Identified opportunities for improvement and presented project proposals to regional management to obtain approval.

Worked with regional systems analysts and developers to create an application to manage workflow and enforce process governance for leasing contracts, an application to calculate total risk for leasing portfolio, and an application to set collection priorities and manage workflow for delinquent accounts.

Used robotics process automation (RPA) to improve the leasing accounting month-end adjustments process. As a result, the time required to complete the accounting closing was reduced by 97%.

Subject matter expert in the transition from legacy systems to SAP FICO. Responsible for working with SAP functional consultants to gather and document requirements for leasing operations, account receivables, and reporting. Additional responsibilities included the development of test cases and user acceptance testing.

Business project leader responsible for liaising with the IT team for the development and implementation of the new leasing, finance, and accounting systems after merging with Compaq. Responsible for leading UAT and worked with business and systems analysts in the development and execution of test cases.

Project Lead, Re-engineering (6-month assignment) - Mexico City (2001) Mar 2001 – Jun 2001

Accountable for leading a team responsible for reducing collections total exposure in Mexico

Managed project in Mexico to re-engineer collections process, improve reporting, and recover USD$47.5 million dollars in uncollected invoices that were over 90 days old. Led a team composed of one collections manager, one accounting manager, 10 collections analysts, and two business analysts.

Successfully applied CAP (change accelerated process) to manage change to implement new processes.

The streamlined process reduced the work done by ten collections analysts in 10 days to one person working one day.

Ten collections analysts freed from non-value-added activities focused on collecting money. As a result, the collections team recovered USD 45 million in the first three months.

Reviewed and proposed changes to a $1 million/year contract between HP financial services and a third party collections agency. Changes included adherence to the new process, key performance indicators, and penalties.

HANES CANADA, SARA LEE CORPORATION – Mississauga May 2000 – Mar 2001

Logistics Technologist

(Worked full time between May 2000 and March 2001)

A Key member of Operations Cross-Functional Management Team responsible for project governance, business process and logistics planning, identification of continuous improvement and cost reduction opportunities.

Managed the initiation phase of a project to select and implement new ERP systems. Performed business and systems analysis, gathered requirements, and mapped processes and documented all logistics processes to select the ERP system that best fit the company needs.

Managed project to fix the WMS implementation in JBA System 21 which solved all logistics and inventory management problems that caused overstocking, missed SLAs, higher costs, low productivity, and poor use of warehouse space.

Managed project to increase productivity, eliminate waste and reduce production costs using lean six sigma principles, and Activity Based Costing. This resulted in balanced work cells, optimized production floor usage, reduced work in process, and 58% savings in production costs over the first eight months.

Managed a project to identify, select, and implement the best alternative to reduce the cost of waste disposal. As a result, the project achieved 59% savings in the first after completion.

Conducted a feasibility study on buying or leasing a garbage compactor to reduce garbage disposal costs. As a result garbage disposal cost was reduced by 59% through new contract negotiation instead of buying a garbage compactor.

HEWLETT-PACKARD FINANCIAL SERVICES (HPFS) – Mississauga Feb 2000 – May 2000

Contract Administrator

A member of a high-profile project team responsible for setting up the back office to manage operations in eight countries and fourteen leasing entities.

Provided consultative expertise in project management, change management, process re-engineering, and development of governance framework for leasing operations.

Led project to digitalize in FileNet all leasing paper contracts in the region.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS EXPERIENCE

CONSULTANT, AISEC International Professional Exchange Program - Mexico Jan 97 - Oct 97

Worked in the following industries and management consulting projects:

Worked on several management consulting projects to reorganize client companies, reduce cost, and improve productivity.

Management Consultant Oct 92 - Jul 96

Most relevant project:

Empresas Publicas de Pereira (1995 – 1996)

Only provider of electricity, telecommunications, water supply, public works, and waste disposal services in a city with 500,000 inhabitants.

Member of General Manager’s consulting team to restructure the entire company and spin it off into five different companies.

The project portfolio included:

-Creation of a new shared services company that would provide Finance, accounting, Human resources, payroll, invoicing, and other services to the other four companies resulting from the spinoff project.

-A new customer service department, reorganization of purchasing department, construction of three new warehouses, and implementation of Warehouse Management System (WMS).

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Propal SA, International Paper – Colombia Feb 92 - Oct 92

Industrial Engineering intern in the largest paper manufacturing company in Latin America (1500 employees)

Worked for the vice-president of Human resources in a project to restructure the company (6 months). The project resulted in company-wide organizational changes, reduced cost, increased profits.

Upon completion of the restructuring project, the company transferred me to the industrial engineering department where I worked in the following projects:

• Project to determine and eliminate causes of failure in the paper coating process: Used root cause analysis and continuous improvement techniques to identify and eliminate the causes of operations downtime.

• Project to determine feasibility for the company to build a new paper coating plant.

• Project to implement a new Warehouse Management System (WMS)

EDUCATION

Project Management Institute, Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification (#1869642) 2012

Master of Business Administration (Finance, Control & Accounting concentration) 2005

Solvay Business School, Université Libre de Bruxelles – Brussels, Belgium

International Marketing, Honors Post Graduate Certificate 2000

Humber College School of Business – Toronto, Canada

Bachelor of Industrial Engineering 1992

Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira – Pereira, Colombia (evaluated by University of Toronto)

Bilingual: English & Spanish

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