Amit
SAP Project Manager
SUMMARY:
Technical Project Manager with over 10 years of experience in IT and Telecommunications industries in customer facing roles with strong background in Enterprise Architecture, Project Planning, Technical Project Delivery, Solution Management, Technical Planning, Design Thinking and demonstrated expertize in:
· Enterprise Solution Strategy· Project Lifecycle Management / · Business Development
· Digital Transformation
· Solution Lifecycle Management / · Cloud transformation
· Solution Delivery
· Technical Team Leadership
· Customer Interactions / · Solution Architecture
· Solutions Go-To Market strategy
· Internet of Things
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
SAP America Inc., Newtown Square, PA 07/2010 – 07/2017
Project Manager
Client: Nissan Motor Company 12/2016 – 08/2017
SAP Landscape Transformation Project involving an upgrading from SAP ECC 6 EHP 6 on Oracle d/b to SAP ECC 6 EHP 7 on SAP HANA d/b with OS migration from Windows to Linux. The objective of the project was to reduce the data foot-print and stabilize system operations. I was brought in as a replacement for the previous Project Manager as customer was dissatisfied with the previous project manager and had requested a change
Accomplishments:
· Interviewed the customer project stake-holder to understand the motive of the project, identify the primary pain-points and desirable outcomes of the project. Also identified the timing and budgetary constraints
· Gained understanding of the as-is system set-up and identified the business processes supported
· Identified other parallel projects at the customer and the existing plan to accommodate them
· Recommended the ChaRM Retrofit functionality to track transports to the live system and replicate and track the same in the Project system
· Arranged reference calls with other customers using the retrofit functionality as requested by customer to familiarize them with the tool available in SAP Solution Manager
· Reviewed the existing project plan and modified it to better align SAP engagements more pro-actively rather than the initial re-active plan
· Mapped out the inbound and outbound interfaces to the SAP system and the overall multi-vendor IT landscape
· Deep-dived into each of the individual functional business processes with customer Subject Matter Experts to identify customer specific modifications and deviations from standard SAP
· The deep-dive sessions also served as an avenue to understand the customers use of interfaces and how data was being moved to SAP from legacy systems
· Reviewed the information collected with the customer to propose SAP technical assessment service to the customer explaining the risks to the project, the methodology and value delivered by the service and the expected outcome to set customer expectations
· Information collected thru’ functional deep-dive sessions was used to scope out the technical deep-dive engagement involving SAP Subject Matter Experts to analyze the technical flow of business processes through the SAP system
· The defined scope was finalized with the customer and sign-off received
· Recruited and staffed additional resources on the project to cover the technical deep-dive
· The service was well received by the customer and they understood the risks involved in the project which they were unaware of. This laid the foundation for enhancements to the SAP engagement going forward and expansion of the SAP contract at the customer
· With the enhanced SAP engagement plan, all risks were mitigated pro-actively leading to a smooth and timely go-live with no show-stopper issues after go-live
Client: American International Group (AIG) 12/2016 – 05/2017
Cloud Transformation Project involving migration of SAP system to Amazon We Services (AWS) cloud in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) mode and re-platforming from IBM DB6 on z-OS to SAP HANA on Linux OS. The objective of the project was to reduce overhead costs of hardware maintenance and FTEs of technical team in addition to improving operational efficiency through the speed of HANA. AN improvement of 36% in processing times was observed
Accomplishments:
· Conducted a technical feasibility analysis taking into consideration the customer’s current system size, SAP license terms regarding the maximum allowed system size on AWS infrastructure and the data compression achieved due to re-platforming to HANA to validate the migration plan from technical stand-point
· Designed a migration strategy in collaboration with the customer to minimize the risk during cut-over while taking into consideration resource availability, budget allocation for the project and time constraints
· Built a detailed end-to-end project plan involving SAP migration experts
· Conducted meetings with customer stake-holder and application teams to adjust the project plan according to their requirements from a timing perspective
· Outlined the person responsible for each step of the project to build accountability
· Documented the detailed project plan with names of responsible resources and stored in in a central shared location where al team members had read access, with edit access available only to customer Project manager, SAP project manager (me) and Project Owner
· Ran daily cadence calls to track the progress of the project, documenting issues encountered and tracking the resolution of the same to keep the project on track
· Defects were maintained in HP-ALM comprehensively and only the critical ones were highlighted in the cadence calls
· The minutes of meetings of the cadence calls were shared with all team members, which outlined their tasks to be completed before the next day’s cadence call
· Chalked out the detailed technical cut-over plan through collaboration between customer and SAP technical teams. The plan included each implementable step along with the persons responsible. In addition, SAP support resources were staffed in 3 shifts from different geographies to provide 24X7 support during cut-over
· In addition, SAP Going-Live support service was delivered for the first week after go-live to ensure show-stopper issues, if any, got resolved in a timely manner to minimize business disruption.
· Daily cadence meeting s were conducted with the customer’s application development team to document the issues encountered and the recommended solutions
· No show-stopper issues were encountered during the cut-over or during the first week of live business on the new system and the first ever re-platforming of SAP system in AWS was successfully completed
Client: Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) 01/2016 – 12/2016
SAP Consolidation and business Transformation project where customer wanted to merge disparate SAP systems into one central system located in their global head-quarters in Saudi Arabia. This project also involved moving certain business processes from legacy systems to SAP. The motive of the project was to provide a seamless unified user experience to employees, vendors and customer alike, reduce cost of maintaining various systems and also reduce incremental cost of $100 Million and 2000 FTEs.
Accomplishments:
· Conducted discovery workshop with the customer to understand their as-as and to-be IT landscape
· Created a business blue print of business processes that were on legacy systems and mapped the business processes to SAP solutions
· Conducted knowledge sharing sessions with individual business process owners to understand their requirement
· Conducted fit-gap analysis based on the information collected and identified the gaps in SAP solution that needed to be plugged
· Defined the strategy to plug gaps and got business buy in and approval for the proposed methodology
· Implemented SAP Innovation Control Center methodology to fill the gaps through exits, change notes and custom code where required
· Proposed the customer to go for “n+1” landscape so that the project and operations landscapes would be separate and project developments would not interfere with business as usual
· Implemented ChaRM retrofit functionality to ensure maintenance transports were implemented in Project landscape as well so as to maintain consistency between the two landscapes
· Coordinated partner resources for uPerform, an SAP partner product to help the customer build training and guided procedures for users specific to their location and business Unit
· Conducted a database and table space analysis on customers Target system as it was necessary to ensure it has sufficient space to handle new data being introduced.
· Identified top 10 tables in the database which were occupying over 50% space on the database and provided recommendations to clear those tables. This was a big win for the project as customer was struggling with database space
· Customer also had a limited downtime window and wanted to ensure all data transfer would be achieved within the window. Reviewed the lengthy data load programs and implemented measures to optimize the programs
· This project entailed multiple mini-projects as extensive problem solving was required and customer preferred project mode for problem solving. These mini-projects involved multi-vendor cross-functional teams and were a regular occurrence, around 2-3 per week
· Identified a potential data inconsistency threat for the customer for their APO on HANA system and engaged HANA development resources to help the customer mitigate the risk 1 week prior to go-live
· The cutover and go live were successful with no major show-stopper issues following the go-live
· Led a team of 27 subject matter experts in hyper-care mode for the customer for the first week of live business on the new system
· Led a discovery and custom development workshop for the customer’s Global Trade system which required custom development effort to meet the customer business needs
· The project was a big success which helped SAP seal a deal worth 14.5 Million Euros with SABIC
Client: Cardinal Health 01/2015 – 12/2015
Green field Legacy to SAP transformation project where customer wanted to consolidate their business processes being run on multiple disparate legacy ERP systems into one system. The motive of this project as to modernize IT systems supporting business processes to be able to compete better in the market, as customers competitors had adopted SAP and were reaping benefits
Accomplishments:
· Conducted a discovery and business blue-printing workshop with the customer to map out their business processes and business process requirements
· Conducted a fit-gap analysis workshop to identify gaps in the SAP solution that needed to be plugged
· Recruited six Consultants for each of the business process areas to develop the Functional Specifications for WRICEF objects that would plug the identified gaps
· In addition, recruited two Developers and one Interface expert for building the technical specifications related to the functional specifications
· The technical specifications were handed over to off-shore team for development
· Deployed automated testing through SAP Solution manager to perform targeted testing by selecting only those objects for testing which were not standard SAP to increase the efficiency of testing
· Implemented the SAP Integration Validation methodology along with Integration testing to cover all integration aspects of the solution including Data consistency, Exception Management, System Integration, System performance and Volume Processing
· Conducted daily cadence calls to track the status of implementation of the recommendations to ensure they are implemented in a timely manner
· Provided on-call standby support during the cut-over weekend to have a second line of support for customer in case of issues
· Led a team of Subject matter experts during the first week of live business operations on the SAP system to ensure issues hindering business operations, if any, are resolved in a timely manner
Client: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 01/2014 – 12/2014
SAP Upgrade Transformation project endangered due to over 50 critical functional defects found during testing with which customer could not go live. Delay of the project would have meant losses to the tune of $2 Million for the customer. The motive of this project was to adopt the latest solutions available from SAP in order to increase business process efficiency and in turn optimize spending. I addition, customer also wanted to have a change management solution as they were using spread-sheet models fro change management
Accomplishments:
· Conducted discovery meeting with the customer to understand the planned upgrade schedule and timelines
· Gained understanding of the existing system landscape and the current versions of the systems and the new version planed in the upgrade
· Documented the business processes running on customers IT systems
· Gathered and documented the list of issues from the Business process and technical leads and prioritized the issues based on their criticality and potential impact if they were not resolved before go-live
· Recruited Subject Matter experts from areas of Business Objects Analytics, Human Capital Management, Finance and Supplier Relationship Management to set up a war room to work on resolution of issues
· Led the team and resolved 50 functional issues in a period of 3 weeks and made the customer go-live successfully
· Delivered a Go-Live Support Service at the customer during first week of go-live on the new version of the system to ensure any show-stoppers issues are resolved in a timely manner with minimum business disruption
· Conducted knowledge sharing session on Change Request Management (ChaRM) solution available through SAP solution manager and also gave a demo of the solution to the customer. This was followed by a Q&A session which was used to answer customer’s questions/concerns.
· After receiving approval from the customer, a Solution Manager readiness service was performed, which checks the system setup and configures the system to make ot ready for implementation of ChaRM
· ChaRM implementation engagement was then delivered to connect all customer system s to solution manager and making necessary configuration changes to the connected systems to make the solution technically available
· An enablement session was delivered to ensure the customer’s users are sufficiently equipped to use the solution, and the customer was up and running with a Change Management solution at the customer
Solution Architect – SAP Internet of Things Solution for Telecom 01/2013-12/2013
Led SAP’s Internet of Things (IoT) solution for Telecommunications customers from ideation to launch
Accomplishments:
· Conducted extensive research on the requirements of an IoT solution through available online forums and expert groups and through SAPs Competitive Market Intelligence group
· Conducted interviews with customers to get a real sense of the market and the enthusiasm about IoT