SUMMARY

• 9 years of work experience with 6+ years of experience as Business Analyst in pricing analytics, pricing optimization & pricing visibility.
• Main work area includes Retail IT process enhancements, Price Management & Revenue Optimization, Promotion Planning Optimization.
• Forecast analytics & trend analysis.
• Build strategic plans for promotions & avoid price leakage.
• Use of multi - regression model for trend analysis, kNN models for predictive analysis.
• Provide such analyses to key stakeholders such as Pricing Managers, Marketing Managers & Merchants.
• Extensive use of excel, pivots, SQL, tools such as Oracle Promotion Planning Optimization, Oracle Sales Forecaster, Oracle Retail Merchandise Suite(RMS) 6 / 12, MicroStrategy, Vistaar Analytics, Vendavo Price Optimization tool & Metreo for sales analyses, decision making & build decision support systems using mentioned tools..
• Requirement gathering, interviews & negotiation with business users.
• Work as liaison between Business users & IT teams. Work in a diverse environment with multiple teams including onsite-offshore teams.
• Interviewing business users, identifying gaps, understanding requirement scope, documenting requirements.
• Work as techno-functional lead to assist in creating functional specs, design specs and test plans.
• Used RAD methodology
• Develop training material, address tickets on priority basis& support post implementation projects.
• I am highly motivated, detail-oriented person with good communication skills.
• Core member of Price Management & Analytics (PMA) Domain Competency Group for Hi-Tech & Retail Industry Verticals at Tata Consultancy Services ( Confidential ).
• Spearheaded price management initiatives for various sub-verticals (Semiconductor, Consumer Electronics, Spare Parts and Software Services).
• Also worked in retail pricing and merchandise promotions & planning.
• Work included understanding the business issues and data challenges and suggests area of improvement.
• Worked with stakeholders on various front including benefits assessments, process change & improvements, training, process change execution planning (operations & IT), risk assessment, cultural issues & offshoring,and communication.
• Core competencies include market analysis, presales support & domain consulting; providing domain support to various assignments on PMA covering different business models, lean & Six Sigma methodology.
• Active member of Professional Pricing Society.
• Technologies I have worked on include Oracle db 11i, 10g, Oracle Retail Suite (PPO module), Retek 6 as retail suite, MS Business Intelligence Productivity Suite, Vistaar, Metreo & SAP Vendavo as analytics tool.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Business Analyst Tools: Oracle Promotions Planning & Optimization, Retek 6, MicroStrategy 8 Reporting, MS BI, Vistaar Pricing & Analytics product v 3.37, 3.45, 3.65Oracle 9i / 10g/ 11i, Netezza, MS Excel, MS Visio, Palisade @Risk

OS: MS Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, RHEL AS4 / ES5, Solaris 10, AIX

Business Processes Standard: CMMi, UML, DPMM & Lean Six Sigma Process, DMAIC, DFSS.

Other: SQL, VB, C#, Java, Perl, JavaScript, XML, Shell Scripts.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Confidential, Irving, TX

Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Working as Business Analyst with promotion planning & optimization team and BPI team.
• Working as liaison between business user group, IT delivery /support team & product consulting teams.
• Work includes:
• Business requirement gathering
• Creating functional & design specs
• Creating & documenting report layout & mock up screens for analytics metrics, navigation, promo vehicle designs, page layout for print media (8-page, 4-page, 2-page standard promotion leaflets), workflow approval UI, etc.
• Test cases, test plans & UAT.
• Analytics reports showing varying degree of metrics to assess promotion forecasting process & improvements.
• Use of kNN model, causal regression models for forecasting.
• Use Excel / MicroStategy / Retek reporting to gather forecast vs actual comparison reports, trend analysis to identify focus departments.
• Scope analysis of various proposed enhancements
• Responsible for UML modeling, system design, and functional process enhancements.
• Identifying gaps & converting gaps into possible IT projects.
• Building analytics cases & metrics to show / narrow down various merchandising categories & focus area of improvements in promotions & forecasting.
• Analyzing offer forecasts, offer demand (using JDA Demand Planner Forecasts) with actual sales data, thereby assisting in scope of improvements in forecasting process.
• Identifying key categories, seasonal departments & offers for seasonal merchandize & clearance for stores across US & Canada.
• Forecast & historical trend analyses to come up with key focus area including process & merchandize reclassification.
• Suggested forecasting trend process to see a possible improvement in forecast visibility upto the lock down period of promotions. Building metrics & usage criteria for end-user training.
• Use data to assist stakeholders with decision support. Understand user problems with operational changes, assisting pricing managers in propagating benefits of new IT system & thereby helping in user acceptance of solution.
• Ad Price Grid process gap analysis & educating stakeholders on the benefits of SKU Exception, switch outs & price grid reporting.
• Designed SKU exception & Price Grid report layout, UI navigation plan in Retek application using wireframe approach.
• Working as Business Analyst. Training users at various levels on solution.
• Analytics testing & quality assurance activities in promotions planning system.

Confidential, New Jersey

Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Worked as Business Analyst & process improvement analyst for MHC Dodge team.
• Interacted with Confidential reporters in understanding & documenting existing business process and got training in the proprietary tool for Dodge Reports.
• Interacted with Confidential quality assurance in identifying quality metrics.
• Worked with Director-System Process Integration (A Six Sigma Black Belt Trainee).
• Assisted team in creating construction business lifecycle (pre-bidding).
• Assisted team in creating detailed As-Is & To-Be process maps, Six Sigma deliverables including high level transition plan, SIPOC, Process FMEA.
• Helped define & design the process of construction information collection based on UML & CMM framework.
• Interacted with zone managers for brain-storming sessions, organized six thinking hats, identifying loopholes in existing processes to make them aware of possible benefits with new methodologies.
• Devised a better & controlled way of collecting construction bidding information, citing benefits on time, efforts & improved resource utilization.
• Organized shadow sessions to understand the process & its complexities.
• Prepared training deck for managers to help them propagate benefits message to their team members & reporters and get them adapted & trained to new process execution & realigning their roles with benefits.
• Developed training manual for off-shoring.
• Planned interactive sessions to bridge cultural gap between managers & reporters in USA and the offshore team.

Confidential, San Jose

Analyst / Domain Consultant

Responsibilities:

• Designed dashboards, business rules & implemented using Vistaar Analytics tool.
• Designed & created mock-up screens & UI to showcase to the end users, get feedbacks to modify screens. Parallel development of the UI.
• Adopted RAD development methodology for quick delivery. This approach helped in adapting to the changing needs of users.
• Analyzed the pricing process and implemented improvements in exiting solution.
• Educated & explained stakeholders of various benefits & great flexibility in application usage.
• Developed daily customer & vendor deals / vendor bookings data load process, security & permissions, deals & customers comparison dashboards, price setting & forecasting dashboards in Vistaar 3.6.5 OLAP platform.
• Use of DAG (Deal Ad Guidance) to create predictive model for understanding future deal performance.
• Implemented OLAP database in Oracle 10g.
• Customized & integrated Vistaar for LDAP authentication & role-based security settings.
• Part of QA team to analyze system / process quality, streamline business requirements with solution, check performance metrics, address end-users issues and tracking of issues using HP Quality Centre software.
• Provided training to end users, supported solution testing and administration.

Confidential, Cincinnati

Analyst / Domain Consultant

Responsibilities:

• Requirement gathering, pricing process analysis & business process mapping
• Did risk assessments of new process.
• Lead the development team, onsite-offshore coordination, & training.
• Designing pricing model & various dashboards, UI screens and reports in Vistaar using DPMM & Six Sigma methodology. (Pricing For Spares project)
• Used Vistaar Analytics for price setting & performance reporting. Use Metreo for trend analysis.
• Designed the solution using CMMi & UML framework & implemented core design using VB6 & Vistaar JavaScript.
• Designing reports & dashboards using MS Business Intelligence reports & excel macros for (Mx Opportunity project).
• Developed approval work flow in MS BI.
• Used Vistaar as front end & OLAP engine. Oracle 10g as the backend database.
• Customized Vistaar to work on the Confidential ’s SSO (Single Sign -On).
• Assessed process of revenue sharing with partners for improvements & increased visibility.

Confidential

Product Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Involved into pricing model design, workbooks development & implementation.
• Lead the development team for Confidential -Vistaar alliances.
• Environment setup and product customization. Setup of OLAP schema in Oracle 9i database.
• Customization & integration of Vistaar web service to expose analytics data in Vistaar 3.45.0.1 OLAP tool to external systems (SAP SD module & Microsoft Dynamics).

Confidential

Research Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Participated in client meetings, presentations and offering preparations.
• Used MS Business Intelligence tool for generating client score card & use as dashboard for client tracking.
• Instrumental in in corporation of niche domain of Price Management in Confidential in the year 2007 and successfully made it as one of the top offerings from Confidential for various Hi-Tech clients.
• Key member for the assessment of alliances with Price Management software vendors.
• Aggressively tracked the opportunities with Confidential accounts / prospects.
• Involved in preparing a Go-To-Market strategy on price management solution with various accounts.
• Spread awareness across accounts about this immerging area, educating & empowering account heads on how to discuss this with clients, how to educate clients & drive pricing process using best practices in their organizations.
• Involved into various events & conferences in the area of price optimization & revenue management.
• Created a dedicated community which leverages pricing knowledge & builds competency.
• Created domain training kit for imparting training to interested candidates.
• Did pilot project for Japanese client on solutioning & integration of Vendavo pricing application with SAP SD.
• Did pilot project for US client on solutioning & integrating Vistaar pricing application with Microsoft Dynamics.
• Provided support in price management offering creation & identifying opportunities for Confidential ; which included client analysis, competitive analysis, SWOT analysis using market intelligence.

Confidential

Developer

Responsibilities:

• Did feasibility analysis and assessment on the technology, time & cost impacts.
• Conceptualized the architecture for building such conversion tool and showcased it by developing PoC.
• Built graphical user interface UI for this conversion tool.
• Nominated in Confidential Gems Awards under “Innovation” category.
• Technologies used were MS Visual Studio 9 Orcas, MS Silverlight, MS Expression Blend 2, MS Expression Design, Adobe Flash CS3 Pro, C#, Flash Dump

Confidential

Developer

Responsibilities:

• Designed & developed front-end UI in JSP, created database schemas for storing & retrieving BLOB objects.
• Technologies used were JBoss, Eclipse 3.0, Java, JSP, Servlets, and Oracle 9i Database.