Applications Analyst/Developer - VBA/MS Access

SUMMARY

Business Systems Analyst adept at workflow evaluation and data delivery methods. Flexible, detail oriented and highly focused self-starter, with a proven history of project skills and delivering results in process improvements. Comfortable working independently and with teams. Expert in process engineering and re-engineering. Adept at engineering, maintaining and prototyping new business processes to achieve desired goals using a variety of frameworks such as VBA and SQL. Such rapid application development (RAD) methodology allows for the design and delivery of new processes to the business in a significantly shorter time frame than building directly to a mainframe application. After the business has resolved processing issues in the production setting, can manage resources to deliver best practices, documentation, workflow, and domain specific knowledge to engineering for replatforming. Expert at full life-cycle development, from requirements through design, development, user testing, training and support.

EXPERIENCE

THE SYSTEMS GROUP 3/06-6/09

CONSULTANT - Business Systems Analyst

On assignment to State Street Securities Finance: A SDLC VB development team focusing on new projects, enhancements, upgrades and regular maintenance to Access and Excel based macros. Each member was responsible for every aspect of their projects including Business Analysis from inception through design & technical specifications; Development including architecting and coding; Project Management through full lifecycle of project; Unit testing and UAT management; Documentation and End User Training; Deployment and on-going Production support.

• Initial design inception and development of custom CRM application for 120 global users for Securities Finance client and broker start-ups; systems data used to populate over 15 applications necessary to daily loan processing and reporting; provided on-going maintenance resulting in 6 enhancement releases; final Business Analysis to Java replatforming team.

• Developed and deployed loan failure penalty calculations application in response to new Federal Regulations in only 8 weeks after the new regulation was announced by the Fed, including analysis, documentation and application design, all while these regulations were undergoing continual revisions.

• Acted as Lead Developer on new application initiatives, delivering finished applications in time periods of less than 3 to 6 months.

• Run discovery sessions with users of all levels as needed to define functionality of new applications; plan project scope and timeline to delivery.

• Provided ongoing support and training to multiple Securities Finance desks including Trading, Fixed Income, International Equities, 3rd Party, International 3rd Party, Account Management, Financial Accounting, Risk, Compliance and Reporting.

• Determined optimal method to achieve business goals, including the use of links and references to external systems via ODBC and SharePoint connections, or by application manipulation such as screen-scraping, HTML fetch, or passing values to screen coordinates for batch transaction processing.

• Maintenance and enhancements to a catalog of over 300 Access and Excel based macros.

• Mentored teammates on business, development process and standards, applications development and issues resolution.

THOMSON FINANCIAL 6/04-3/06

BUSINESS ANALYST - Business Systems Group

Gather and document user requirements for projects, enhancements and upgrades. Write Business Requirements documents, Use Cases and Functional Test Specs following SDLC guidelines. Moderate/negotiate design changes between business and technology groups. Train super users, help desk and training staff on functional changes to system. Work with other BSG BAs, PMs and development staff for cross-system dependencies and integration. Triage CRM issues and resolve directly, or work with developer for resolution. Patch and project testing, manage UAT.

• Cross-trained other project teams on applications and functional vertical (CRM) for understanding system dependencies.

• Wrote BRD, UCs and FTSs for successful release of new Customer Master application through Phases I and II, and Sales Performance enhancements to PeopleSoft CRM 8.9.

• Diagramed logical flow for conversion of 58,000 Customer records from 2-tier to 3-tier parentage, including use of pseudo-code.

• Wrote CRM user training guides and FAQs for publication to corporate Intranet.

PRIVATE CONSULTING PRACTICE 1/03 - 6/04

BUSINESS ANALYST/MS ACCESS DEVELOPER - Various Clients

Evaluate client's database needs. Requirements gathering through user interviews. Document workflow and procedures, analyze issues, and recommend system architecture. Design UI, tables, reports. Program code to deliver functionality. Repair existing systems. Document design, online help and user guides. Train clients to use and maintain systems.

• An Access-based tool providing customized reports on data in the client's Oracle databases. (Client: Thomson Financial.)

• A referring physician’s contact database, populated by data from the client’s Meditech, IDX and other proprietary Oracle databases. This was deployed across the client’s intranet for use by all departments and affiliate practice offices. Even with a major change in project focus, it was delivered on time, and exceeded the client’s expectations. (Client: Lahey Clinic.)

• Extensive redesign of the client’s subscriptions and donations database, including a more CRM-like workflow, basic roll-level security, massive data clean up, all new menus and interface, and system automation. Similar changes were made to the client’s library database. (Client name on request only.)

• Ground-up redesign of client’s warehouse workflow, including cataloging all materials, providing recommendations on floor layout, new customer order forms, a database for tracking customer orders, and a roadmap of next steps to deploy an on-line order system. (Client name on request only.)

PEGASYSTEMS, INC. 9/98 - 10/02

BUSINESS ANALYST - Product Operations Group

Analyzed engineering workflow, and defined user requirements for internal applications. Defined division metrics reporting for all levels, including Executive Committee and Customers. Delivered incident trend and aging reports, and tracked key corporate performance goals. Analyzed and recommended appropriate actions as required.

• Saved 80% of weekly executive report processing time by programming Access and Excel to automate report generation. Later expanded on these reports, without increasing processing time.

• Automated the daily reports, saving management up to 3 hour per day, per report.

• Spearheaded effort to redesign "Action", Pegasystems' proprietary CRM solution. Wrote the functional specification that codified the best practices in use by Service, Development, Quality and Operations. The document later became the basis for Pegasystems' "Enterprise" project.

• As Business Process Expert, delivered "Enterprise", Pegasystems' next generation comprehensive CRM system, on time. In this role, was instrumental in affecting the design of the workflow process.

• Trained division staff in use of the "Enterprise" system (approximately 60 users).

• Mentored Development’s and Quality’s Analysts on report design methodology.

• Provided data that aided Pegasystems in successfully defending against a multi-million dollar client lawsuit.

• Helped target development efforts based on actual revenue (for the first time) by developing a report of clients with revenues generated by product, platform and database.

• Developed database of customer platform, product and database configurations, which later resulted in the development of Pegasystems' "Action" system.

POLAROID CORPORATION 10/87 - 8/98

ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT - Digital Input Devices Development

JR. ADMIN ASSISTANT - Consumer/Industrial Hardware Development

In addition to administrative duties, developed and managed program budgets for the department. Primary vendor contact, purchasing and expense controller. Managed space and moves; project and technical files. Provided technical support for lab and desktop Macs.

• Managed development budget of $12 million dollars, reconciled monthly with financial department.

• Developed FileMakerPro database to track purchasing and reconcile vendor invoicing.

• Designed and maintained automated Excel spreadsheets (including use of pivot tables and charts) to manage data collection and correlation of the R&D division budget (over $30 million dollars,) in support of the VP of Development.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Systems:

Windows 2000/XP/NT/98/95, Macintosh OS.

Applications:

MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, Power Point), Access, Visio, Project, SharePoint, Dreamweaver, Claris Draw, Adobe PhotoShop.

Specialized Applications:

Remedy, CMOD, IIS Web Server, PVCS Tracker, PVCS Version Manager, Visual Source Safe, Silk Radar, PegaSYSTEM 7, PegaREACH Report Writer, PeopleSoft Sales Support CRM versions 8.8 and 8.9.

Databases:

MS Access, FileMaker Pro, SQL Server.

Programming languages:

VBA (macros) in Access, Excel and Word including application integration and API calls; VB, .NET, SQL, JavaScript, and ASP.

Other skills:

Use Case and BRD development in support of SDLC, Functional and Technical specification writing, Work process and Workflow improvement, Project management, Process planning and implementation, Metrics analysis, Database modeling, UML, HTML, Quality testing, System/User documentation, User training (including remote user training methods), Budget planning, Knowledge expert, Team leadership and mentoring.

EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

BU Corporate Education Center, Boston, MA 2/05

"Business Analysis Crash Course"

Clark University Computer Career Institute, Cambridge, MA 12/02 - 10/03

"Enterprise Web Developer Master Certificate Program"

New Horizons Computer Training Center, Burlington, MA 4/02

"Mastering Microsoft Access Programming" (a MS Certified course)

Pegasystems Training Center, Cambridge, MA 5/00

"Accelerated Learning Program: Designing Queries in a Pegasystem"

Harvard University Extension School, Cambridge MA 9/94 - 6/99

General studies in mathematics, science, and writing.

PERSONAL INTERESTS AND HOBBIES

Reading (both professional and for pleasure), continuous skills improvement, technology, sustainable living, landscape photography, travel, camping, gardening, and belly dancing.

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