RAYMOND BLAYLARK
Plymouth, MN 763-***-**** ***********@*******.*** linkedin.com/in/rayblaylark
IT Project/Program Management
I am a dynamic and highly skilled Business Leader with a Swiss Army set of skills, I bring multifaceted technical and analytical expertise to source and produce financial data and structures. With over 22 years of hands-on management experience across diverse environments, including treasury, cash management, automation, project management, finance, and auditing. Expert in all phases of project management with exceptional business and financial acumen. As a diverse leader with an ingrained collaborative mindset, I have substantial experience leading cross-functional teams and working with executive leadership as well as internal and external stakeholders.
• Financial and Data Analysis & Reporting • Information Technology • Project Management
• Agile, Scrum Methodologies • Cross-functional Team Leadership • ERP
• Business Process Improvement • Strong Analytical • Cost/Benefit Analysis
• Treasury and Cash Management • System Admin and Configuration • Process Mapping
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
AT&T INC. Minneapolis, MN 03/2001 – 11/2022
Associate Director/Senior Project Program Manager (03/2018 – 11/2022)
Managed team of developers responsible for end-to-end project management of large Automation projects across all AT&T organizations. Identified and gathered data sets to support Machine Learning projects (Supervised, Unsupervised, and Reinforcement) to increasingly automate processes and augment humans.
•Plan and manage multimillion-dollar projects aligning business goals with technology solutions to drive process improvements, competitive advantage, and bottom-line gains.
•Coordinated business analysis, requirements gathering guidance and synergy between different online applications for user authentication functionality.
•Responsible for developing and maintaining project plans, schedules, and budgets.
•Responsible for identifying, designing, and implementing internal and external business and system solution requirements.
•Applied SCRUM, Agile, and Waterfall methodology for coaching and development of PM team members, as well as removing any possible impediments.
•Managed team sprints, planning, and prioritizing user stories.
•Reverse-engineered data / write queries to pull information required to analyze issues.
•Lead cross-functional teams to deliver complex projects on time and within budget, with a focus on quality and stakeholder satisfaction.
•Manage project risks and issues, and develop mitigation plans to ensure successful project outcomes.
•Monitored development, performed user acceptance testing prior to solution implementation, and trained end users on new system functionality.
•Developed programming (SQL & Python) for reporting at various frequencies (i.e., daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly) for various reports, including AR reports, position trends, profitability trends, risk, capital, and financial analyses for Senior Leadership.
•Developed efficient data reporting structures from various internal and external data sources in collaboration with Corp Finance and Treasury.
•Developed data quality and reconciliation steps to ensure complete and accurate data is used in subsequent reporting results.
•Technology: Commanding knowledge of Office 365, QuickBase, MySQL, Snowflake, Visio, Microsoft PowerPoint/Excel (VBA, Macros, and PowerPivot), Word, Publisher, MS Power Apps, Power BI, MS Access, Automation Anywhere, Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft Office 365, Python, SQL, and SAP, Service Now, GitHub, Azure DevOps.
RAYMOND BLAYLARK ***********@*******.*** PAGE TWO
Senior IT Business/Finance Analyst (10/2013 – 03/2018)
Led cross-functional team of 20+ domestic and international employees in managing a $1.2B AR portfolio of AT&T Partnerships and Collaborations.
•Lead teams across broad technical, financial, and business disciplines. Focused teams on business objectives and tracked progress to ensure project milestones were completed on time, on budget, and with desired results.
•Created collection treatment analysis, risk analysis, and credit analysis reports used to support closed account final balance treatment decisions including referrals to outside collection agencies, client settlement negotiation, and bad debt write-off.
•Provided data analysis & data mapping of client extract data feeds into a central data warehouse.
•Lead role in developing Change Management/Transition Process and associated supporting tools.
•Defined processes and tools best suited to each project and created detailed project road maps, plans, schedules, and work breakdown structures.
•Developed account receivable and billing dispute reporting standards for all locations and departments within the assigned scope of responsibility.
•Monitored and ensured the accuracy of billing and financial reports.
•Developed approaches and methodologies for resolving financial discrepancies and disputes.
•Analyzed key metrics impacting customer behaviors and created/administered strategic action plans to deliver a premier customer experience.
•Led in managing high-volume, confidential financial records across multiple organizations.
•Directed all payment and treasury reconciliations within the assigned scope of responsibility.
•Technology: Office 365, MySQL, SAP Products, Visio, MS Teams, Microsoft Access/PowerPoint/Excel.
Business/Finance Analyst Refund Manager (03/2009 – 10/2013)
Led team of 12-15 international employees responsible for end-to-end processing of international refunds and administration.
•Created tracking mechanisms that facilitated accurate metric reporting encompassing incoming, processed, and resolved refunds and cycle time.
•Partnered with IT to create a database repository for refund tracking and process conformance monitoring related to the Proactive Refund process.
•Reduced refund cycle time from 33 days to 24.1 days resulting in a net percentage improvement of 27%.
•Technology: SAP Products, Microsoft Access/PowerPoint/Excel.
ADDITIONAL ROLE AT AT&T INC.
Credit Analyst Corporate Bankruptcy (03/2005 – 03/2009)
Responsible for analysis, evaluation, development, and resolution of final account and bad debt including oversight of Bankruptcy and Write-Off.
EDUCATION
Associate of Arts (AA) Normandale Community College
CERTIFICATIONS
•Microsoft Power Automate
•Microsoft Excel
•Automation Anywhere
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
Diversity & Inclusion Committee Lead (AT&T MN), 2016-2022
Sickle Cell Foundation of Minnesota - Executive Board Member, 2015 – Present
Mentor – AT&T Leader Program, 2014-2022