PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Challenge-driven professional, leveraging strong business acumen to transform complex problems into focused, organized solutions. Well-established at creating valuable networks and maintaining partnerships across the organization. Analytical, equipped with in-depth working knowledge with the initiative that drives results while demonstrating creativity and the ability to adapt to changing fast paced environments. Excellent communication, negotiation, and interpersonal skills which enable strategic liaisons between SLT, technical leadership teams, and business teams enabling successful execution of business priorities.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Staples Inc. (Oct 2022 – Present)

Director Finance Operations & PMO

Develops and executes on IT product/service strategies and plans.

Directs the operations of the assigned functional area to achieve strategic and operational business goals and targeted financial and content quality results.

Establishes operational objectives for managers and teams of professionals in order to achieve the strategic and operational objectives of the group.

Responsible for executing on functional and business goals for the specified area of expertise and proactively addresses problems across functional areas of the business.

Works with key stakeholders, business, product teams, RTEs and technical teams to formulate a comprehensive technology plan that is consistent with the overall business objectives and budgetary considerations.

Taking lead on POPM efforts to adopt a customer-centric approach to building products, using the Scaled Agile Framework® to deliver more value, faster.

Working towards providing a framework and platform for all stakeholders to work towards a common goal of delivering great products.

Established, created and organized Project Dashboard of high priority finance & business initiatives for all stakeholders to share the weekly/monthly status of projects, risks, challenges aligned with all Agile Release Trains (ART) in the organization.

Staples Inc. (May 2018 – Oct 2022)

Senior Program Manager Tech Ops & Cloud Migration/Strategic Partnership

Managed & led PMO and delivered complex initiative – rightsizing & auto scale functionality within Nephos framework with an emphasis on performance testing across all 70 + services by ensuring consistent response time scale-out and scale-in events which resulted in reduction of cost up to 30% monthly.

Coordinated and managed efforts to complete Venafi migration to cloud to support dotcom disaster recovery in Azure.

Led the team to develop, create and complete 19 test scenarios of “Chaos Monkey Testing” a discipline of experimenting a distributed system in order to build confidence in the system’s capability to withstand turbulent conditions in production.

Driving an effort to complete the migration of Splunk on-prem to Splunk cloud which will help to retire significant number of servers in 2021 with an estimation of 40% of total cost reduction.

Successfully managed and delivered Staples Mobile application and Staples exchange domain to Azure. Currently, leading the Infrastructure Cloud Engineering Scrum team aligned with eCommerce Engineering to migrate Staples dotcom to Azure on an aggressive timeline including DR strategy.

Responsible for initiating project reviews, as well as aggregating and coordinating project reporting information into a program level communication for senior management consumption and for decision-making purposes.

As an RTE, successfully led SAFe methodology, facilitated ART (Agile Release Train) events assist the scrum teams in planning with stakeholders, cross-functional ART teams to escalate impediments and derived relentless improvements through Pre and Post PI planning meetings.

Successfully maintained relationships for governance and performance management across all capabilities, tracked and managed metrics as per contractual obligation with vendor (TCS), leading to resource & gap analysis of current workforce available on-site and offshore vs. Portfolio Project Management for successful delivery of SLAs.

Optanix Inc. (Apr 2017 – May 2018)

Senior Manager – Software Delivery & Program Management

Established Program Management Office which included management of critical initiatives, offshore resource planning, projects deliverables, Risk Register with mitigation plan.

Developed a PMO dashboard for Weekly Executive Review of all active projects with progress.

Responsible for initiating project reviews, as well as aggregating and coordinating project reporting information into a program level communication/report suitable for senior management consumption and decision-making purposes, executive/senior leadership review, led staff meetings to discuss issues, risks developed a mitigation plan for quick and timely resolution of critical tasks.

Intralinks Inc. (Aug 2015 – Jan 2017)

Senior Program Manager

Consolidated 3 different outsourcing vendors and teams to manage and balance the workload for transparency and efficiency which resulted in cost saving and improved governance.

Ownership of all scrum activities including release planning, sprint planning, sprint reviews, scrum ceremonies, retrospective, traceability oversight, promotion into various environments (Dev, QA, Staging, Production), build plans, deployment requests, patch planning, communication cross teams followed by a regular executive leadership and stakeholder alignment.

FedEx-GSP, Southeast Asia Region (Gerry’s International) (Jul 2013 – June 2015)

Head of Finance Operations & Support Services

Led the integration team throughout the M&A process.

Established repeatable processes to streamline the acquisition and integration activities.

Provided oversight and guidance in implementing global visa processing services and executed Service Level Agreements (SLAs) driven process, regional compliance, timely application processing, and financial reconciliations.

Managed administration and coordination of all operational activities including performance management, training, auditing, process management and continuous improvements.

Analyzed budgets, financial reports, and projections for accurate quarterly reporting of financial standing.

Designed and implemented oversight tools that enable departments to reconcile charge processing to schedules and monitor daily productivity.

Assisted a variety of internal and external personnel (e.g., auditors, regulatory agency staff, etc.) for the purpose of providing information and general finance/operations support.

Reviewed existing processes and departmental functions to ensure existing solutions continue to be effective, and the creation of new processes and methodologies to adapt to changes in the business and ever-changing IT climate.

Led the global Visa processing services, application development and operations to build and execute Service Level Agreements (SLAs) driven process, regional compliance, and timely application processing.

Conceptualized, established, and launched new business division Gerry’s Call Center with 20 Call center agents, to offer premium services and beat the revenue projections by 130% in the first year of operations.

Induction & successful roll out of 7 new accounts/regions in Fiscal Year 2013-2014 with Global Partner Visa Facilitation Services to roll out a new software and biometrics solutions.

Hirasoft Inc. (Feb 2010 – Jun 2013)

Senior Director Delivery & Account Management

Developed and implemented business processes to maintain effective efficiency & transparency, derived results for consistent and successful delivery.

Acted escalation point internally and externally for the company maintaining accountability, on delivering key operational metrics.

SPoC for Intralinks to deliver projects with defined scope, budget and timelines, managed a team of 120 plus IT professionals for R&D efforts to develop new application including development in iOS and android platforms.

Collaborated with senior leadership of Intralinks to select strategic waterfall work streams and created agile sprints to initiate organizational technology delivery transformation, delivered projects that resulted in revenue of over $5 million.

Led firm through a significant build in talent while simultaneously introducing numerous improvements to the process of financial management and oversight and followed by assisting in audit reviews and reporting.

Orascom Telecom Company - Southeast Asia Region (Jan 2008 – Jan 2010)

Head of Marketing & Vendor Management

Designed and launched Customer Loyalty Program (1st of its kind in bandwidth domain in Southeast Asia), sales incentive plan, occasional bandwidth, marketing collateral and resource plan to maximize market share and customer retention.

Led a team of professionals to evaluate ERP/CRM for the company, wrote business requirements, evaluated vendors, completed financial analysis, recommended & implemented Microsoft Dynamics as a solution for the company.

FedEx – GSP, Southeast Asia Pacific (Gerry’s International) (Jan 2004 – Dec 2007)

Deputy General Manager – Services & Operations

Led, negotiated, successfully completed and signed UK Visa Project (Global Outsourcing – Southeast Asia)

Managed 18 locations in 11 different cities countrywide with workforce of more than 150 employees to facilitate Visa Applicants, IT enhancement, operational changes, and maintaining (SLAs) Service Level Agreements for diplomatic missions and PSAs (Public Service Agreements) through different local vendor for different services.

IBM Global Services (Jan 2001 – Dec 2003)

Senior Program Manager – Support Services

Managed 60 plus stand-alone apps, delivered 15 new applications and 80 + enhancements on time, within budget & managed Change Control Management process for all the application in production and recovery resulting in 98% customer satisfaction rating.

EES Inc. (Jul 1998 – Dec 2000)

Senior Program Manager – PMO & Vendor Management

MCI Communications (Verizon) (Dec 1994 – Jun 1998)

Manager – Business Processes & Vendor Management

EDUCATION/CERTIFICATIONS

MBA (Management & Marketing), University of Houston, Texas

BS – Engineering Management – UAF

Leadership Development Program – Babson College, Massachusetts

Certified Professional Scrum Master I, Scrum.org

Certification in Digital Marketing Fundamentals

Certification in Leadership in Team Environment, George Washington University

Certification in Fundamentals of Project Management, George Washington University

Believe & Achieve Recognition Award – Staples Inc.

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saleem-raza-2956547/

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