Alka Mann

Sr. Business System Analyst

Professional Summary:

Business Systems Analyst/ Scrum Master with experience of about 10 years functioning predominantly in Banking, Finance and Insurance, domains using several Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodologies ranging from traditional Waterfall, Agile to modern Agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban and Scaled Agile framework (SAFe).

Experienced in evaluating projects for Credit Risk, Operational Risk and Regulations of banking industry and compliances Experience with compliances such as Anti Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), Customer Due Diligence (CDD), Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), OFAC and regulatory acts such as Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), USA Patriot Act, Dodd Frank Act, Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, Basel II, Basel III.

Well-versed with the Mortgage Loan Origination Systems (LOS), Loan Servicing, Loan Default Servicing and Delinquencies, Capital markets, (Primary and Secondary), Collateralized Mortgage Obligation (CMO), Equity, Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS).

Well versed in Data Migration and Warehousing, Regulatory Reporting, Web and Mobile application development projects.

Knowledge and experience in Business Intelligence Projects encompassing tasks such as reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics.

Extensive practical experience with Project Management deliverables like Project Plan, Project Scope Statement (PSS), Project Charter, SWOT Analysis, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Critical Path Analysis and the Earned Value Management (EVM).

Expertise in requirement gathering techniques such as Interviews, Brainstorming Sessions, Document Analysis, Joint Application Development (JAD), Focus Groups, Prototyping, Observations and Requirements Workshops along with the surveys and Interface Analysis with project stakeholders and categorizing the requirements into Functional, Non-functional, GUI and Data specifications.

Aided in AS-IS and TO-BE modeling of systems, conducting Gap Analysis such as SWOT Analysis, gaining proficiency in performing Risk, Cost-Benefit and Feasibility Studies, change management process, handling change requests and conducting impact analysis. Developed systems as per Business Continuity Plan. Assisted project managers in producing Project Charter, Project Plan, RACI Chart, Work Breakdown Structure.

Well familiarized with Use Case design, analysis and scenarios, Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN), Workflow diagrams, business and functional technical documentation along with Behavioral Unified Modeling Language diagrams (UML) such as Activity and Use Case diagrams, and Interaction UML diagrams such as the Sequence and the Timing diagrams.

Assessed risks and impediments efficiently and determined effective courses of action, resulting in successful implementation and continuous development of Agile practices relating to the accomplishment of the planned tasks per the sprints as well as with the team.

Well-versed with the SQL queries of different types like Data Manipulation Language (DML), and Data Definition Language (DDL) to perform data analysis, and verification

Experienced in assisting the quality assurance team with test strategies by creating Test plans, Test cases, Test Scenarios, and Test analysis reports.

Technical Skills:

Business Modeling Tools MS Visio, Balsamiq Mockups, Lucid Chart, Adobe XD

BI/Reporting/ Visualization Tools: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, SSRS, Bloomberg

API Testing/Documentation Tools: Postman, SoapUI, Swagger, REST API

Version/Revision Management Tools: CVS, GIT, SVN

Statistical Tools: SAS, Minitab, Excel

ETL Tools: Informatica PowerCenter, IBM Infosphere DataStage, SSIS

Database Management Tools: MySQL, MS SQL Server, AWS S3, Oracle DB

Project Management Tools: JIRA, HP QC/ALM, Confluence, MS Project, office 365, SharePoint, Confluence

Others: Salesforce, MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access), XML, SQL,Calypso

Professional Experience:

Cisco, Cary, North Carolina, June 2020- Present

Program Manager

Project:

The project was to create a centralize Saleforce among 2 transaction and sales projects regionally across different states. The purpose is to integrate the UI and backened functionality of old website for one project termed as Support Services and rehaul the other project 360 degree by converting it to SalesForce Modules thereby training, educating, and seamlessly communicating the new program across different sales group and IT development teams.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Lead Manager for 2 cross functional projects with Key focus on developing adoption strategies and communication plans, Stakeholder engagement, and collaborating with the central Change Management team

Owned, designed and Managed 2 SharePoint sites during pre and post IT release cycles, and ensured multi-tier coordination with Project, IT and Business teams.

Successfully on-boarded 300 pilot projects and 10k pilot users and achieved key target metrics of adoption, productivity and usability in the first 3 weeks post go-live.Integrated Walk-Me, an automated in-tool guidance and support walkthrough software for pilot users on the specific user console, this increasing efficiency by 101%.

Partnered with other technology partners, enterprise architecture groups, process and change coordinators and business leaders to support overall transaction and platforms data processing with an understanding of different technical platforms for file and data transfer protocols (SFTP, NDM, MQ, Oracle, SQL, etc.)

Led extensive communication project by conveying the program and project level messaging through Sales Force Marketing Cloud(SFMC) by designing, emailing, and tracking the content and audience behaviour, thus increasing the reachability to 50k users, up by 76% from the previous quarter.

Responsible for integrating user stories to agency management system, crisis reporting and risk mitigating for an automatic system to overcome it quickly. Done elicitation of requirements by conducting JAD sessions, Semi-structured & Structured Interviews, Brainstorming, Observations and collaborated in creating wireframes and mockups using the modeling software like Balsamiq.

Created UML diagrams Use Case, Sequence and Activity along with Business Flows, Business Process Modeling & Notation (BPMN) using MS Visio.

Walked stakeholders through requirements with Development and QA Teams to develop the test plans, strategies, scenarios. Created Functional Test Plan, and Test scenarios.

Formulated various charts, reports, dashboards for BA using Tableau BI. Facilitated Sprint Ceremonies & Retrospectives while acting as the Proxy Scrum Master.

Assisted in setting up Databases, Table Structures, Schemas, Marts & executed OLAP operations. Collaborated with Architects & Engineers in ETL processes, Source to Target Mapping, Data Governance Processes while documenting the technical metadata.

Assisted in removal of impediments and monitoring defect logs, that helped in calculating the Team’s Velocity for easy, accurate and efficient planning upcoming sprints without missing the deadline thus delivering the PSPI on scheduled time to the end-users.

Part of UAT and Test Scenario Drafting Team prior go-live weekend for the defect releases and IT releases.

Transamerica, Harrison, NY Dec. 2019 – May 2020

Sr. Business Systems Analyst

Project:

The project was to create a centralized Data warehouse and source systems by integrating data from 10 different legacy systems. To do this, Company installed an accounting analysis software called Insurance Calculation Engine (ICE) in the Accounting Hub (an Oracle Data Base) for enhancing accuracy, compliance, security and control of Company’s Accounting database.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Wrote user stories, set Acceptance Criteria, checked if they were Done & Ready and passed the criteria set by the INVEST rule.

Responsible for integrating user stories to agency management system, crisis reporting and risk mitigating for an automatic system to overcome it quickly. Done elicitation of requirements by conducting JAD sessions, Semi-structured & Structured Interviews, Brainstorming, Observations and collaborated in creating wireframes and mockups using the modeling software like Balsamiq.

Created UML diagrams Use Case, Sequence and Activity along with Business Flows, Business Process Modeling & Notation (BPMN) using MS Visio.

Created & allotted bulk tasks for the developers to work on task. Conducted Sync up calls with offshore teams through the Skype.

Assisted in setting up Databases, Table Structures, Schemas, Marts & executed OLAP operations. Collaborated with Architects & Engineers in ETL processes, Source to Target Mapping, Data Governance Processes while documenting the technical metadata.

Walked stakeholders through requirements with Development and QA Teams to develop the test plans, strategies, scenarios. Created Functional Test Plan, and Test scenarios.

Formulated various charts, reports, dashboards for BA using Tableau BI. Facilitated Sprint Ceremonies & Retrospectives while acting as the Proxy Scrum Master.

Assisted in removal of impediments and monitoring defect logs, that helped in calculating the Team’s Velocity for easy, accurate and efficient planning upcoming sprints without missing the deadline thus delivering the PSPI on scheduled time to the end-users.

Ability to translate business requirements into Ariba configuration workbooks

Experience in setting up integration with SAP using one or more of Business Suite Add-on or SAP Netweaver Adapter with SAP PI.

Develop, maintain and support an Oracle DB ODS (operational data store) and the ETL processing to produce the Vantage product.

State Street Bank, Boston, MA Jan 2019 – July 2019

Sr. Business Systems Analyst

Project:

The project was to enhance web-based mortgage loan origination system/application (LOS) to be equipped with all the advanced features ranging from enhanced UI/UX and high-performance abilities to the web service accessibility and AWS integration for better cloud capabilities in terms of data storage.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Created uniform loan application forms 1003 and 1008. Trained internal customer service associates and loan agents team on FISERV Business Online Portal.

Used JIRA for the project planning, scheduling & status reporting, while maintaining the Kanban board to visualize the workflow.

Performed GAP analysis reviewing foibles in the existing As-Is legacy application and recommended possible areas of improvements in future To-Be system.

Helped develop MVP with features enough for initial review after product grooming, developing User Stories with the help of Atlassian JIRA, prioritizing using MoSCoW model, proposing Acceptance Criteria and collaborating with the Product Owner.

Verified, validated & prioritized the User Stories before organizing them into Product Backlog based on Done and Ready criteria.

Prepared Wireframes, Mockup Screens and drafted the UML diagrams as Use Case, Activity and Sequence diagrams for proper visualization to design the system requirements.

Accurately funded advance requests utilizing AFS, CLCS, and Loan Administration. Managed Production Pipeline reviewing at 9, 11, 1 and 3pm preventing loans being outside of SLA

Acted as liaison between the Large Middle Market LD&FC and the Line of Business including both relationship manager’s/ client managers and underwriting, the Loan HUB, and other Operational areas within the bank

Extracted customer data into wachmode in db.JSON to enable developers carry out the building of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) & instigate communication using REST and then document API & web service requests and responses using Swagger.

Took part in integrating AWS (Amazon Web Services) with application for scalable cloud computing, storage, web API services.

Identified initial data sources to migrate to AWS Cloud after undergoing Data Mapping and designing target data fields as part of ETL process using Informatica PowerCenter (IPC). Data Transformations namely filter, router, aggregator, joiner, sorter etc. were applied during ETL process before importing data to AWS Cloud for Data Storage, Reporting and Analytical purposes.

Organized meets with AWS integration and bank’s internal teams for several functions such as Account Transaction, Process, Trouble Payments, Payment Requests etc. Collaborated with development team to integrate SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) (Trademarked by SET Inc.) for service message integrity, authentications of all financial data and encryption of the sensitive data.

Created AWS EC2 instances over the cloud and maintained those instances from time to time. Facilitated easy transition of data from AWS S3 buckets to MySQL databases for granularity & easy access of data through different relational databases & platforms.

Assisted AWS Redshift administrator in application and administrative tasks such as creating a profile, object, reports. Created a few new & custom objects & enhanced dashboards. Improved productivity by re-usable transformations & mapplets to save the time.

Created Training & Testing material for clients to proactively execute User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and document.

Supported the messaging environment in the Cloud (Office 365). Queried Exchange environment using the Office 365 Command online tool.

Barclays, Wilmington, DE Jan 2017-Dec 2017

Business Analyst

Project:

The project was to analyze and optimize wholesale lending platform, tools and procedures for enhancing privacy, anonymity, security and control of CBMS applications by integrating Bloomberg terminal.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Acted as a Liaison between stakeholders, subject matter experts (SME), business owner, and development team to identify the business needs, business rules and business process specification.

Assisted the PM in defining the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and performed Scope Analysis, Impact assessment, root cause analysis, Effort estimation, Cost-Benefit analysis, SWOT analysis and Feasibility study.

Worked on a derivative trading team with initial batch trading on WTI Crude Oil on CME to define Cost & Benefit Analysis, Feasibility Analysis and understand the net benefit and the feasibility of Bloomberg.

Used JIRA to capture user stories and Confluence for defects tracking and collaborating teams for meetings and emails.

Monitored loan portfolios of Commercial Bonds and Mortgage Backed securities via Bloomberg and SNL and reported on compliance with Federal Housing Regulations and thereby was able to secure and got approval for $898 million loan profile.

Assisted RTE in facilitating program backlog refinement and PI planning sessions. Ensured Decentralized decision making by balancing the right composition of team members to steer the ART. Synchronized meetings and presentations with the Product Owner to garner solution driven strategies at team level.

Set Acceptance Criteria, checked if they were Done & Ready and passed the criteria set by the INVEST rule.

Maintained, backed different versions of essential documentation with Concurrent Versions System (CVS) for the future uses.

Design, configuration and testing of Treasury systems and modules related to treasury transactions, Cash pools, payments and payment standards, cash management, bank communication, Treasury KPI’s

Worked closely with reporting team to ensure correct data is presented in the generated reports using tableau. Ensured treasury activities are in compliance with treasury policies, accounting guidelines and internal controls. Assisted the Treasurer and Treasury team with the Company’s monthly/annual closing.

Standard Chartered Bank, Mumbai, India Jan 2015 – Jul 2016

Business Systems Analyst

Project:

The project was to develop a COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) software to detect the risk of a mortgage payment default by automatically receiving mortgage data associated with mortgage application of an applicant and generating payment default risk score based on models prepared from data related to historical mortgage transactions, applicant’s credit worthiness thereby performing further fraud evaluation depending on determined risk levels of Early Payment Default (EPD).

Roles and Responsibilities:

Elicited negative growth factors & their possible causes from end-clients through Active Observation technique & helped by reducing Early Payment Defaults (EPD) & Longer-Term Defaults (LTD) through early detection of payment default probabilities thereby lessening inherent risks & increasing overall value of loans thus increasing the Return on Investment (ROI).

Facilitated development team with suitable environment setup to build customizable mortgage fraud detection system that can be configured accordingly to analyze loan application data & identify applications which are obtained using fraud data & delete.

Held interactive workshops with stakeholders & development team to list high-level requirements in automating underlying aspects like application registration, lending & servicing.

Collaborated with Data Engineers to configure storage with a separate data mart to receive all data associated with borrower & co-borrowers from application, previous transactions & credit worthiness. Executed SQL queries to perform Backend testing & Data Validation. Took part in execution of functional & performance tests of APIs. Backed testing team in developing test cases.

Kept track of user stories to test cases throughout their life cycle by RTM. Executed manual testing of application, found critical test scripts to be automated. Conducted various tests like Regression, Performance, Smoke, Sanity, UAT through JIRA-Zephyr.

Maintained & updated Confluence Wiki pages with latest project information like Project Plans, Requirements, Meeting Notes, Presentations & Documentation while linking concerned JIRA issues to these wiki pages.

HDFC Bank, Mumbai, India Aug 2014 – Jan 2015

Business System Analyst

Project:

The project was to test and migrate exhaustive data from existing system to a new, advanced data storage system by performing required data mapping, creating Mapplets in Informatica PowerCenter for future use, ETL operations, developing transformation logics for varied transformations being taken place on data, followed by discarding/disposing old/existing storage systems in a safe & secure way.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Extensively involved in gathering requirements and writing technical designs document and process flows.

Conducted focus group session to discuss communication & interaction between MDM & data warehouse followed up by JAD session involving the end user to record the requirements & expectations.

Tracked and maintained stakeholder requested enhancements and changes using the Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM).

Assisted both functional and technical teams by capturing requirements, creating mockups, wireframes, prototypes using Balsamiq.

Created Data Flow Diagram to identify current source to target flow of the data from source to ODS and to EDW.

Documented Migration plan and Data Profile in the Data Migration Plan including migration risk, milestones and data quality.

Assisted in data mapping and integration by using the different transformations like joiner, filter, expression, sort, aggregator and look up in the Informatica Power Center along with creating Mapplets.

Performed data loading from load files to SRC files in target database. Profiled data and checked for discrepancies in counts. Created, updated and truncated tables with each iteration.

Analyzed and reported data after successful executions through BI, Visualization & Presentation tools like Power BI and Prezi.

Snapdeal, Delhi, India Dec 2012 – July 2014

Business Analyst

Project:

The project was to re-design the existing E-Commerce web portal with advanced features like refurbishment of homepage, dropdown features, cart, product display pages, new payment methods like Paytm etc. The features and functionalities are then to be mirrored onto the mobile application’s counterpart thus providing the end-user with complete and enhanced User Experience.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Designed SRS document from informal business requirements gathered via informal sessions to figure out business and functional requirements.

Kept track of the shared resources such as system architect and created Work Breakdown Structure accordingly.

Documented Migration plan and Data Profile in the Data Migration Plan including migration risk, milestones and data quality.

Generated Conceptual & Logical model document defining entities & attributes with datatypes, cardinalities & relationships.

Performed testing prior to data migration & executed the ETL jobs. Created fact & dimension tables for dimensional modeling.

Normalized the data to fit into multiple fact and dimension tables of Star Schema for by considering granularity of data in sources.

Migrated and reviewed data from heterogeneous sources like various databases, flat files by working with data management team and developed Master File from multiple sources for sound data governance.

Assisted the QA team to develop the test plan and test cases to perform the testing and involved in Automated User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to ensure that the business requirements were being addressed in the test.

Capital IQ, Delhi, India Nov 2010 – Oct 2012

Quality Analyst/Tester

Project:

The project scope was to provide online web portal to its customers.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Reviewed System Requirement Specifications (SRS), Functional Requirement Specification (FRS) & design documents.

Designed & documented Test Plans, Test Scenarios, Test Cases based on business requirements & design documents & logged defects in HP ALM.

Prepared Test Data for positive and negative test scenarios for functional testing using boundary value analysis and exhaustive testing as documented in test plan.

Validated the database using various SQL queries like Joins, group by & SQL Aggregate queries for data profiling.

Maintained and backed up the databases using bulk operations to migrate data across different servers connected to various DBs.

Documented Bug Report and Categorized them based on severity and Priority.

Used Quality Centre to store all test results and for defect tracking and reporting.

Provided weekly management status reports and coordinated meetings between test team and development team to review defects and track them to closure. Created Macros which helped in enhancing the reports.

Took part in all phases of testing; Smoke testing, Graphical User Interface (GUI), Functional testing, System testing and Regression testing and support User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

Education:

Degree: Bachelor’s in Accounting

University: University of Delhi; Start-end date: 2002-2005

University: Master’s in Finance

Degree: Iowa State University; Start-end date: 2016-2018

Contact this candidate