Project Manager Business Intelligence

Nag Akula

Ph: 925-***-****

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

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BACKGROUND

Nag is a Sr. Project Manager on BI Projects. He has extensive experience on IT service delivery in various leadership roles. Mr. Akula has proven leadership skills in results-driven IT delivery management, advisory, people management, and all other aspects of project management. He has adept communications skills, business alignment and metrics-driven leadership, enabling effective interaction with C-level executives. Mr. Akula has extensive experience in business analysis, requirements definition and transforming requirements into IT solutions. He has evolved into leadership roles from various hands on roles in BI/Analytical tools like SAP BW/BEX, SAC, Tableau, Business Objects, HANA, ORACLE, PostgreSQL and with very good background in various business processes.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Key Strengths and Accomplishments:

MBA in Project Management as specialization.

Strong experience in managing and leading multiple BI and data projects involving data scientists, data stewards, functional leads from onsite and offsite locations.

Experience in providing roadmaps based on business needs, company acquisitions and industry best practices in Reporting and Data Visualization space.

15+ years of experience in working on multiple BI & Database technologies like SAP BW, HANA, Business Objects, Tableau, SQL Server, PostgreSQL and ORACLE.

Extensive experience in requirements gathering, designing, testing and building solutions for business using advanced BI technologies/tools.

Act as liaison between Business, Project team(s) and all other supporting teams.

Understand and constantly improve company’s data analysis, data visualization frameworks and data governance processes inline with industry best practices and latest technological directions.

Proficiency in Project Management, Delivery Management, and People Management with special focus on customer needs.

Good understanding in building reporting from various functional areas like OTC, RTR, SCM, TPM etc. EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS:

Master of Business Administration in “Project Management”

Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering

PMP, Agile / SCRUM and Six Sigma Trained

SAP BW and SAP HANA Certified.

Nag Akula

Ph: 925-***-****

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

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Professional and Industry Experience

Bayer Corp.:

BI HANA Integration Manager April - 2018 - till today

• Lead integration of analytics and data pipelines of US/CA for Monsanto and Bayer integration into HANA.

• Completely own the end-to-end implementation of legacy Monsanto Data Assets with Bayer BI Platform.

• Initiate, Plan, Budget and oversee the complete project for successful go live of new analytical reports.

• Coordinate working sessions with multiple stakeholders to understand legacy data assets and architecture for Event360, Customer360, Company360, Product360 programs.

• Develop capability to stream data changes from multiple ERP landscapes into new digital platforms, data science models and information assets.

• Work closely with business leads to ensure business will continue to benefit from data supports field optimization, pricing optimization, marketing customer segmentation, digital crop protection sales pipelines and real-time dealer and farmer portal updates like they do today in legacy Monsanto.

• Oversee development of POCs and use cases to explore new reporting options on current BI/HANA landscape.

• Create user stories on various business requirements, detailing the requirements, transforming the same into Functional and Technical design documents.

• Facilitate daily standups to ensure project deliverables are on track and escalate, help resolve on any roadblocks.

• Plan and manage all production migrations and post production validations to ensure user acceptance.

• Work with other source systems, to understand changes, production go live activities with source systems that could impact downstream reporting systems and take necessary mitigation steps.

• Work with off site and distributed teams to ensure all production issues in the current landscape are fixed and system health checks are maintained on day to day basis.

• Provide regular status reports to leadership team.

• Work closely with team members in hand holding on technical, functional and other aspects of project to bring them onboard with project goals.

McKesson Corporation:

SAP Analytics Manager August - 2016 – March – 2018

• Managed multiple BW/HANA projects from inception till post go live and ELS phases.

• Led requirements gathering, daily standups, project timelines, issue analysis, issue resolution and all critical phases of BW projects.

• Managed data quality, data integrity requirements for BW projects.

• Led all design review and test strategy sessions.

• Ensured best practices and development standards are adhered in all phases and all projects.

• Conducted daily standups, resolved impediments and provided possible solutions and executed project in SAFE Agile methodology.

• Managed multiple BW Projects and high priority production issues.

• Collaborated and coordinated needs of multiple teams to align project requirements and schedules are successfully met.

• Created detailed communication channel with leadership, internal teams and all stakeholders.

• Provided timely status updates on project progress to McKesson Leadership.

• Was liaison between business and IT teams (Scrum team, SV&T, Basis, Admin and other teams).

• Ensured seamless support activities from distributed systems, with successful SLAs for business. Nag Akula

Ph: 925-***-****

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

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Rush Enterprises Inc.:

SAP BW Project Manager December - 2015 – July-2016

• Managed and coordinated a large Dashboard Redesign project with Rush.

• Managed the project using Agile Methodology tailored for client’s processes.

• Prepared detailed test plans in all systems to ensure all the components are working as desired.

• Closely tracked deliverables, as per the plan and proactively coordinated any issues to resolution.

• Collaborated between multiple teams (BI/BW/HANA team, reporting team and the functional team) to ensure the sprints are planned and delivered successfully to business.

• Created detailed communication channel with leadership, internal teams and all stakeholders.

• Led and driven an elaborate testing in all boxes of BW and ensured all errors are fixed by working closely with multiple stake holders.

• Prepared a detailed upgrade/migration plan in all systems.

• Provided timely status updates on project progress to CIO and directors.

• Planed, forecast and manage resources at various phases of the project.

• Motivated project team and acted as a liaison between it and business.

• Created and constantly reviewed the risk register. Mylan Inc. Canonsburg PA

BI Program Manager August - 2014 - December – 2015

• Established Business Intelligence Practice. Provided road-map and strategy in-line with current/future business needs and business intelligence trends. Trained & mentored team members to provide value added business solutions in the area of business intelligence.

• Owned and delivered a large multi-national self-service reporting program with multiple projects running in parallel.

• Planed and delivered large multi-region BW HANA migration and Data Foundation project.

• Lead the progress of all projects with in commercial analytics global portfolio

• Reviewed status reports and analyzed results to effectively troubleshoot problem areas and mitigate risks.

• Worked with other IT & Business Managers across infrastructure, security, integration and other teams to communicate expectations and align resourcing.

• Communicated and enforced project management and change management standards across the teams.

• Prepared detailed Project Plan collaborating with multiple teams and groups.

• Managed project plan, budget, daily activities, issue resolution and communication across project execution teams in order to deliver projects on-time, on-budget, as per program timelines

• Identified stakeholders and communicated a clear communication plan including training and post go-live support activities.

• Worked directly with partners to determine project scope, goals and deliverables.

• Reviewed progress, managed resources, and ensured overall quality of completed deliverables

• Ensured successful transition to support and maintenance teams

• Prepared Risk Register and constantly update the same.

• Planed and delivered multiple data visualization tool demos and training sessions with power users across users.

• Presented weekly status and risks to leadership team and other stake holders. NISSAN America - Franklin TN

SAP BI Technical Manager Feb-2014 to August – 2014

• Helped identify key pain areas for Integration and Business Intelligence users in Purchasing and Finance teams.

• Built a rapid turnaround strategy to bring performance levels of the integration and business intelligence applications to above optimum levels.

• Brought back the confidence of business teams in using enriched data by collaborating elaborate sessions with business, IT and Support teams and strategizing the complete application development and support process according to business needs.

• Completely owned the delivery of projects, right from inception till successful go live and post go live. Nag Akula

Ph: 925-***-****

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

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• Led the requirement gathering sessions and acted as liaison between business and development team.

• Managed multiple business planning and consolidation initiatives.

• Meticulously tracked the deliverables and financials at each phase of the project.

• Managed multiple vendors in the project.

• Assessed risks and prepared a detailed risk register.

• Helped client in the hardware procurement process.

• Prepared and tracked a very detailed project plan for upgrade project.

• Worked with SAP, BASIS and other infrastructure teams in all phases of the project to successfully resolve issues and complete the deliverables planned.

• Coordinated with multiple stakeholders on an exhaustive testing plan for the upgrade project and successfully got a sign off from business on the same.

ULTA Beauty – Bolingbrook, IL

Reporting Manager July 2013 to Feb 2014

• Lead High Analytical Reporting project, for this cosmetic retailer.

• Managed multiple initiatives from inception to realization.

• Helped client with strategic planning, vendor evaluation and project kick-start.

• Led strategy meetings with client managers and assist them in finalizing appropriate migration strategy.

• Identified areas of improvements, risks, process management, change management and prepared a comprehensive report of the same.

• Prepared Risk Register and constantly updated the same.

• Prepared a detailed hardware estimate document for current and future requirements (using different SAP sizing tools and programs).

• Assisted clients with procuring hardware for HANA box (reviewed and provided recommendations on specifications and warranty/risk aspects of the complete procurement process)

• Updated high level project plan to most granular level possible to meticulously track each deliverable at all the phases of upgrade/migrate projects.

• Prepared a list of all dependencies and risks (with risk mitigation plans) at each stage of the project.

• Clearly communicated and coordinated with different stakeholders on a continual basis for smooth execution of project.

• Followed agile methodology to successfully complete the implementation. Clorox: Pleasanton, CA

SAP BI Project Manager July-2012 to June-2013

• Lead implementation of Business Intelligence solution, for this ‘6 billion-dollar retail client’, who is pioneer in household cleaning appliances.

• Completely owned the implementation of the project, right from inception to, implementation, hyper care and knowledge transfer to client.

• Independently coordinated all needed project tasks working closely with IT and Business.

• Worked with key stakeholders to prepare a Project Management Plan that describes the overall scope, deliverables, organization, high-level schedule, and associated project management documents (charter, blueprint, and procurements) for the project.

• Facilitated daily status meetings with IT, involving different stakeholders like key business personal, and other project players for successful completion of deliverables on time.

• Worked closely with client’s PMO team to create comprehensive change control methodology and ensured the same is followed in all the projects under BI portfolio.

• Created a detailed communication guideline for the distributed systems to work seamlessly on multiple initiatives.

• Ensured appropriate documents and artifacts are prepared, reviewed, approved and uploaded in SharePoint by responsible teams.

Nag Akula

Ph: 925-***-****

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

RESTRICTED

Cibavison a Novartis Company, Zurich Switzerland.

BI Project Manager Oct 2010 to April 2012

• Planned and helped lead the complete delivery of International SAP rollout for major Pharma client.

• Lead a large BI project for Cibavision.

• Identified nearly 40% in operational and implementation cost savings by implementing an outsourcing approach to roll out the SAP Projects with Onshore and Offshore methodology.

• Led Delivery of high analytical reporting model in SAP BI with highly aggregated and analytical data from Finance, Sales and Manufacturing functional areas.

• Meticulously tracked and oversaw the successful completion of deliverables through all phases of the project. Was a single point of contact for project delivery.

• Managed Project Scope and Change Management.

• Managed Project Time and Cost to ensure timely completion of projects within acceptable budget tolerances. Phillips, Health Care division - Eindhoven Netherlands SAP BW Delivery and Support Manager May 2009 to Oct 2010

• Actively contributed to the setting up of large SAP BI/BPC managed services for this client, who is world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting.

• Involved in complete planning and execution of the program.

• Helped, setting up SALs, support and execution methodologies, risk mitigation plans, disaster recovery plans and seamless support of multiple IT applications.

• Led setting up Center Of Excellence wing for both technology and process areas of the SAP applications.

• Worked closely with business process owners to establish a comprehensive support process to address issues of various complexity and urgency.

• Established a clear communication and escalation mechanism and helped client adopt the same seamlessly with new teams.

TAMKO – Joplin, MO

BW Manager Mar 2008 to Feb 2009

• Managed multiple SAP enhancements at this manufacturing client in FI, Sales, Procurement, HR and BW Modules.

• Involved in project planning, execution and delivery of all the phases of the implementation. Closely tracked the deliverables and worked on timely resolution of pain areas.

• Worked closely with business and user community to plan ahead for timely availability of all stakeholders for testing.

• Helped lead the change control process in fine-tuning the change control methodologies and adopting best practices in industry for efficient results.

• Worked closely with basis and other infrastructure teams to provide the required and timely support for successful execution of the project.

• Managed Project Scope and Change Management.

• Managed Project Time and Cost to ensure timely completion of projects within acceptable budget tolerances.

• Identified risks, and defined risk mitigation strategy and manage risks. Honeywell Aerospace – Phoenix AZ

BI Implementation Lead July 2007 to Mar 2008

• Led this large implementation of SAP BW in Finance and Procurement areas For Honeywell.

• Worked on requirements gathering, Functional and Technical design document preparations.

• Worked on preparation of test scenarios and test data in collaboration with functional teams and business teams.

• Worked on project planning, execution, resource ramp up, resource allocation and daily tracking of deliverables throughout the project.

Nag Akula

Ph: 925-***-****

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

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• Worked on user acceptance testing and hyper care phases of the project for a smoother adoption of the solutions provided.

• Participated in solution architecture and design phases of the project to guide the teams to come up with best possible solutions and overcome bottlenecks.

Other Projects:

Various Roles October 1997 to July 2007

• Worked on requirements gathering, development, and testing of multiple BI projects in various roles

(developer, tester, lead, onsite coordinator e.t.c). Evolved into Management and Lead roles from development roles with actual hands on experience in various implementations of IT projects. Has extensive technical background in technologies like IBM Mainframe, ORACLE, Visual Basic, Informatica, SAP BI.

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