Profile

SAP professional with proven track record of success as SAP Finance Module business consultant with 12 years of business and Project Management experience and 8 years of SAP Implementation using ASAP methodology. I have several years of Quality Assurance experience. I am excellent in design, development and support of SAP processes with demonstrated capabilities in managing clients and directing cross functional teams of technical and business experts to implement business transformation systems. I have Experience in various facets of FI/CO module hands on experience on team management using the on shore and offshore model, change management, client’s needs assessment, business consulting, strategic planning and budgeting. Excellent communication, organizational and people leadership skills. Understand and utilize the system Lifecycle methodology (SDLC).

Professional Experience

IT Finance Business Solution /Project Manager - Jun 2011-Mar 2012
Confidential

Key Responsibilities & Achievements
FI Solution Manager

• Managed and fully developed the IT Finance roadmap ensuring that there is a proper business case with clear and attractive ROI.
• Trained Grace IT PM’s including the IBM project team on specific SAP business processes and the Grace Software Development Life Cycle.
• SAP technical expertise and project delivery experience, able to get a project back on track and deliver to expectations.
• Team player collaborated well with team members and consultants. Stayed engaged with my team by having weekly meetings with the US/EMEA/ASIA PAC and LA team members.

Project Manager

• Performed cost management by estimating costs, determining budgets and controlling costs.
• Working knowledge of cost control tools such as Earned Value Management (EVM), Forecasting, To-complete Performance Index (TCPI) and variance analysis.
• Based on 2011 IT management guidelines and S&OP process, determined the IT demand and supply for 2012 IT Finance projects.
• Established some guidelines on how IT Finance projects should be ran including, Refining the project scope management tasks such as performing business analysis upfront to get a better business requirements and defining a good scope documents and creating work breakdown structures (WBS) This then enabled establishment of better project planning of project time an costs and consequently better project delivery.
• Defined quality plans, performed quality assurance and performed quality control.
• Enhanced project communication by identifying stakeholders, planned communication methods, distributed information as necessary, managed stakeholder’s expectations and reported performance.
• Analyzed variances and initiating corrective actions.
• Prepared Risk management plans, identified risks, performed qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, prepared risk responses and monitored and controlled risks. Familiar with risk tools such as the Ishikawa diagram, SWOT analysis, probability and impact matrix, risk modeling and analysis methods such as Monte Carlo Analysis and Expected Monetary Value (EMV) analysis.
• Budget for completed Finance IT projects that I managed in 2011 was approximately 1.2 M.

SAP Managing Consultant – Finance Distribution- Oct 2008 – May 2011
Confidential- FI Lead

IBM Project - Nov 2010 – Apr 2011
FI/CO US Rollout Lead, (Germanischer Lloyd, Houston TX)
Industry – Oil and Renewables, Maritime services and Inspections
Project Description: 
The Germanischer Lloyd group consists of three major business segments: Maritime Services, Ship Classification and Consulting, Oil & Gas and Renewables. With its head office located in Hamburg, the global GL network currently consists of 208 locations in 80 countries. The key enablers for the GESS program were legal consolidation, organization consolidation, harmonized business processes including the implementation of SAP and IT
infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Responsible for leading the FI/CO process area for the US and Canada rollout, including consulting advice on consolidation strategy and business process definition using Standard SAP Best practices.
• Analyzed and understood the US and Canadian specific process issues and then provided the CFO with SAP FICO and project Management consulting services and assisted in developing strategy for system redesign thereby maintaining strong Executive relationship.
• Guided the P&L Finance leadership which consisted of 7 Finance controllers through consolidation activities, process redesign, change Management and automation that were part of the global template.
• Held weekly status meeting to ensure that the project plan and progress and deadlines were clearly communicated and understood by all the business stakeholders , team and peers.
• Maintained an issues log managing all critical activities.
• Managed the Master data and Data Migration process.
• Designed and delivered an ECC 6.0 global template to support global business needs aligned to overall IT strategy based on work streams such Business process alignment work stream and IT infrastructure work stream.
• Completed Fit Gap Workshops, Identified the gaps between the local process and the global template.
• Managed the scope to project Agreement of the global rollout.
• Coordinated all projects globally. This included for example Chart of Accounts (COA) mapping
• Managed resources to create project deliverables such as Creation of several Functional specifications for example Dunning Process, Automatic Payment program, Check forms that were Gap processes from the global template.
• Worked with the central team to design, develop, and test the local gaps.
• Trained client on master data maintenance processes, data migration, Finance and Master data reconciliation.
• Responsible for creating the US Tax Solution strategy.
• Helped establish the data migration strategy. Educated the local GL resources on data conversion.
• Completed Dress Rehearsal 1 activities including loading the Trial balance, AR, AP, Asset files into SAP. Performing reconciliation training of these uploads.
• Responsible for providing training to the designated trainers from the client.
• Managed US/CA support resources that included an onshore and offshore team of 8 people by distributing workloads, setting project expectations, performance development, coaching and mentoring.

IBM Project Oct 2009 – Oct 2010
IBM Blueprint-Financial Team Lead, (Confidential, Chicago IL)

Industry – Chemical/Healthcare
Project Description: 
Abbott Framework Program, a pre-Blueprint program designed to establish a solid foundation from which to launch a multi-year SAP Implementation project, scheduled to start in 2010. The Framework Program was comprised of four sub-teams – Harmonization, Requirements & Legacy System Analysis and Design, Validation and Testing, Security Strategy and Design, and Technical Design and Build teams.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:
Client contact for deliverables on business process requirements and deliverables. Worked on three different work streams that involved the following
Reviewed Legacy Systems and developed requirements including:

• Conducted data gathering sessions for several Finance Legacy systems and captured complete AS-IS scenarios of these legacy systems and all related interfaces.
• Reviewed and updated several Legacy system maps
• Managed a team of 10 on the delivery and Client team.
• Assisted in mentoring, training and delivered career development assessments for some of the delivery team members.
• Reviewed over 1000 legacy application. Developed the legacy retirement strategy after analyzing which ones would be replaced by the SAP system and those that required WRICEFs.
• Sat on several change management meetings to carefully explain the legacy application retirement work stream.

Developed Abbott Vascular (AV) Upgrade Work stream requirements including:

• Presented new ECC 6.0 functionality focusing on the areas that Finance SME considered as value adding such as New GL and Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM).
• Worked with Business process in Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payables SME\'s on current pain points in the current 4.6C SAP solution and formulated the overall ECC 6.0 upgrade strategy.

Managed the design of the Framework Business process requirements and achievements in the Record to Report (RTR) area included;

• Made sure that the delivery of the blueprint documents was on time.

Confidential Sept 2009 – Oct 2009
FI/CO Configuration Support Consultant, (Confidential, Chicago IL)

Industry – Retail
Project Description: 
ACE Hardware\'s strategy is to drive value through a stronger integration of processes and a focus on the end customer product sales instead of the pure wholesale business. The “Business Transformation program” was to operationalize this strategy. IBM was selected to develop a program roadmap and implementing SAP. After a successful implementation, IBM is now currently engaged in the Business Transformation Realization phase for SAP.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Led and directed blueprint activities for a global program.
• Supported the RTR team in the timely preparation of deliverables in the realization phase.
• Completed several RTR Configuration documents and prepared presentations to educate the client on these configuration tasks.

IBM Project - Jan 2009 – Jul 2009 
Confidential FI/CO, (Confidential, Princeton NJ)

Industry – Pharmaceutical
Project Description: 
ConvaTec is a $1.2B medical products company that operates in 43 countries with four manufacturing facilities - 2 in UK, 1 in Dominican Republic, 1 in Greensboro, NC. Previously a division of Bristol-Myers Squibb, ConvaTec was spun off on August 1, 2008 and is now owned by a private equity firm. The underlying purpose of Project Foundation is to enable ConvaTec to independently operate and close down its Technical Services Agreement with BMS - an agreement that allows ConvaTec to continue using BMS systems and Finance Shared Services Center until January 31, 2010. 

Project Foundation included four components: (1) an SAP/EDI implementation encompassing Supply Chain, Finance, and Order-to-Cash processes; (2) Finance and Accounting outsourcing; (3) Application Development and Maintenance; and (4) System hosting for both the retained and outsourced processes. The roll-out schedule consists of two waves. The first wave was scheduled to go live on October 1, 2009, encompassed the full SAP functionality across a limited number of locations. The second wave was planned for January 1, 2010, included the same SAP functionality for the remaining ConvaTec global locations. This project was complex in terms of process and geographic scope and difficult because of its highly compressed timeline.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Managed the business analysis process with client discussing and clarifying business requirements.
• Made presentation to Senior Process SME’s in AR and AP and company CFO on recommendations of business process simplification using SAP best practices business processes. Examples of these include presentations on Chart of Accounts consolidation, General Ledger Journal Entries, Financial Reconciliation, Treasury and GL/Month and Year end business processes.
• Wrote Gap Documents and Functional Specifications for Interfaces and enhancement in the Blueprinting Phase.
• Managed and Mentored Junior Consultants. Distributed work loads among them strategically to ensure on time delivery of work products.
• Managed the FICO project Plan deliverables master list monitoring, planned dates and resources assigned. Further, maintained an issues log. Resolved project related issues within internal project team and with the client business users.
• Led Milestone invoicing process based on achieved milestones
• Owned the development of IBM F&A tools such JET (Journal Entry Upload tool), QuickR (Document repository tool), NXG (Financial Reconciliation tool) and JIRA (Closing Schedule tool).
• Owned and created all FI WRICEF objects (such as Sales, AR, Cost of Goods Sold, Inventory, Journal Entries, AP Workflow, NXG Reconciliation and Activ Payroll) Successfully completed these WRICEFs by determining and documenting the business process, created mapping documents, guided the development process and testing of these objects.

AP Workflows included;

• Blocked Invoice Workflow
• Blocked Invoice WF- price differences
• Blocked Invoice WF- quantity differences
• Blocked Invoice WF- service PO over 2k
• Blocked Invoice WF- additional items

Invoice Approval Worklow for Non PO Invoices

• Invoice Approval WF – non PO
• Created AP process documents, Process flows and Deskstop Procedures (DTP’s), WRICEF functional specifications explaining each of the above scenarios.
• Helped with workflow configuration
• Worked with ABAP resources to explain requirements
• Performed UAT and end user training of the workflows.
• Leveraging over 7 years of Quality Assurance experience, led testing for Unit and System testing.
• In the Unit testing phase, used uPerform tool to write several Unit test scripts that would be used for training purposes for GL processes.
• Ran Unit test defect reports; participated in defect review/status meetings.
• Using HP Quality Center tool, created System scripts for standard and custom SAP transactions that captured business requirements in the PDD’s and business critical functionality. Peer reviewed system test scripts to ensure they passed validation.
• Updated Test plan with these scripts, developed Test sets and attached data sheets; managed execution of these sets, logging of defects and resolution of the same.
• Created Change Requests as necessary and processed them to approval status.
• Increased proficiency in Solution Manager, maintained documents and document status including running Unit Testing reports using this tool.
• Set up testing data in development, and Quality SAP environments such materials, customers and accounts.

As ConvaTec is a Pharmaceutical company processed all the above in a validated environment.

Sr. SAP FI/CO Analyst- Apr 2007 – Oct 2008 
Confidential, Baltimore MD

Industry - Global Manufacturing
Key Responsibilities & Achievements:
Owned the FI/CO modules and perform all production support for these modules.
Led all Fixed Asset/tooling maintenance and Configuration for US, Suzhou (China), GPA and Reynosa, Mexico including, - maintaining fiscal year variant, maintaining relevant master data, depreciation key, copy chart of depreciation, integrate with the GL, test by adding assets and running AFAB.
Performed all FI/CO configuration and maintenance such as,

• Business Area Determination configuration
• Payment terms configuration
• Account determination configuration
• Update Report Painters using sets.
• Cost center maintenance. Includes blocking, adding cost centers
• Control module maintenance including adding cost elements
• Maintaining the chart of accounts for US, Europe, Asia and Canada. Sole contact person for account addition
• Updating organizational structures such as adding business areas, company codes.
• Maintaining Enterprise for example by adding currencies
• Responsible for FI period close and processes such as closing and opening periods for all account types for US and Canada company codes.
• Wrote LSMW’s and CATT scripts for Journal entries, loading assets.
• Copying Plan data.
• Maintaining product hierarchies.

In 7 clients performed year end processes such as,

• All asset close processes, balance carry forward for Customers, GL and Vendors, Profit Center Accounting PCA, Special Purpose Ledger, maintained number ranges.
• Help in reconciliation by monitoring VF03 (Accounting docs that have not passed into accounting) and producing reports for regular and intercompany sales, by division and business area.
• Research OSS notes while looking for solutions to productions issues. This included requests for help to SAP.
• Prepare ad hoc reports using quick viewer and Data browser SE16N, such asset lists, customer lists, GL line items, AR line Items from tables such as BSEG, BSID, BKPF
• Perform Hyperion Planning Production Support.

Worked on the Preparation Phase of CO-PA project used to track customer profitability, pricing effectiveness and discretionary spend. Planned and wrote the scope and requirements documents.

SAP FI/CO Functional Analyst- Aug 2003 – Mar 2007 
Confidential, Multiple Engagements

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Hands-on configuration of SAP FI/CO modules including full-life cycle implementation and support.
• Knowledge of finance business processes, with a strong Finance and Accounting background.
• Configuration and support experience with all major areas of FI including General Ledger (GL), Accounts Receivable (A/R), Accounts Payable (A/P), and Fixed Assets (FA).
• Used best practice ERP implementation process with various phases including project preparation, business blueprint, realization, final preparation and go-live and support to ensure successful implementation.
• Project management responsibilities including managing project scope, cost and quality determination.

Project Highlights 2003-2007

• Full life cycle implementation using ASAP Methodology (Blue Print, Realization, Final Preparation and Go-live and Support).
• FI, GL, AR, AP Configuration.
• Understand the integration points between AR and SD, Sales Order creation, PGI, Billing, Process customer incoming payments.
• Maintained the integration points of AP and MM, PO creation, GRIR account, and Invoice Verification.
• Worked on various testing efforts such as unit testing, created test plans and scenarios, performed system testing and user acceptance testing.
• Coordinated with other team members to resolve issues, process change requests, and implemented enhancements.

Quality Assurance Consultant - Jun 2002-Mar 2003
Confidential, Atlanta GA

Industry – Oil
Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Fuel Cards Transaction Processing (Billing, Pricing, AR, AP)
• Created test plans, test cases for several modules of the application such as billing, collections, accounts receivables and fulfillment among others.
• Automated scripts using Quick Test Pro (QTP) and ran test cases using Test Director.
• Involved in the interview and selection process of QA Consultants and Junior QA Analysts.
• Performed heavy backend testing of enterprise wide level Java and .Net applications on Oracle 10g database using SQL Plus and SQL Navigator to ensure data integrity.
• Performed performance testing that enabled tuning through code changes.
• Built value based relationships with Analysts, Developers, Peers and Management.
• Executed stored procedures to test various application processes such as moving of loads from one application to another, production of reports and generation of emails.
• Unit test stored procedures to ensure that individual entities of the database function as designed.
• Used the configuration management process to update files in WinCvs, and ensured that the correct versions of scripts, triggers, constraints and packages were maintained in the database.

Quality Assurance Tester/Consultant -Jun 2001-Mar 2002 
Confidential, Atlanta GA

Industry - Healthcare
Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

Automated several scripts to enable creation of testing scenarios faster for smoke, functional and regression testing of .NET web applications.
Conducted extensive back-end testing on SQL Server 2000 Enterprise edition to ensure that important elements on the database were accurate.
After reviewing the requirements documents thoroughly, prepared concise test plans, test cases, resource proposals, status reports, and metrics for the .NET web applications. 
Carried out various types of manual testing including smoke, functional, integration, User Acceptance testing (UAT) and regression testing for .Net web applications that spanned 17 states.
Participated in weekly project status meetings and defect report meetings and provided substantial recommendations on process improvements and web applications enhancements.
Understood the Quality Assurance build release migration process that included moving a build from development, QA, UAT, staging and finally into production.

Web Quality Assurance Tester/Consultant- Aug 2000-Mar 2001 
Confidential, Atlanta GA

Industry - Healthcare
Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Tested a workflow driven .Net web based application that had over 220,000 business rules.
• Participated in verification reviews and/or meetings to evaluate documents, plans, code, requirements and specifications.
• Developed test plans which included writing and executing the plans for manual testing and Conducted manual tests to validate functionality and usability of programs and ensure that they were consistent with Requests for Proposals (RFP) specifications.
• Executed test scripts and validated results, reported discrepancies and determined functionality and usability were consistent with RFP specifications.
• Identified and maintained log of software bugs, anomalies and potential improvements. Followed through to ensure that all discrepancies and issues were resolved and assisted developers in identifying program and /or system errors.
• Performed regression testing on open tickets, closing them if the defects had been fixed.

BAAN ERP Project Lead / Branch Accountant - 1997-2000
Confidential, Nairobi Kenya

Industry – Manufacturing
Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Oversaw parallel conversion from SUN to BAAN Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP).
• Acted as a liaison between functional analysts and system development staff and provided second/third level system support for end users. Effectively built and managed project teams
• Provided analytical support for full project life cycle, including concept design, requirements analysis, system design, testing, documentation, and deployment.
• Assisted in the implementation scoping and planning effort, including development of the overall project plan as well as of individual work plans. Provided project management support.
• Worked with functional analysts in determining strategy for implementing systems.
• Worked with end user teams to mediate, resolve incidents, problems and find solutions so as to help in the day to day smooth transacting of the system.
• Developed test plans and test scenarios, and participated in solution testing, user acceptance testing, change control and training. Helped implement changes as necessary based upon test results.
• Developed and managed project schedules, budgets, forecasts, costs, analyzed business issues, assessed risks and responded appropriately. Maintained complex inventory reconciliation spreadsheets.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements as Branch Accountant included:

• Performed inventory control on a daily basis; recommended alternatives to avoid surplus and cost saving by improving the Purchasing Department strategy.
• Prepared month-end reporting analyzing changes in revenue and expense levels.
• Performed Variance Analysis.
• Assisted in MRP implementation.
• Processed Debit and Credit memos.
• Managed general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, sales, billing, collections, cash management, investment, fixed asset activities.

Professional Courses and Training

SAP FI/CO Certification Exam Pending 
Project Management Professional (PMP)

Education

Master of Science (Computer Information Systems)
MBA
Bsc Agricultural Economics

Memberships
ASUG Maryland Chapter
PMI Baltimore Chapter