Work Experience

A Journey of Growth and Achievement

Sep 2024 - Present

Head - Delivery & Implementation

ClearDox LLC (Pune & Bangalore)

Heading a cross-functional team for a "Startup" to implement an IDP solution for automated document processing, resulting in reduction in processing time and increase in data accuracy.

Heading the Implementation for APAC and EMEA region

Collaborating with stakeholders to define project scope, utilize advanced OCR and machine learning technologies, and established KPIs for performance tracking

Responsible to successful implementation of the solution across all the big commodities Organization.

Mar 2016 - Sep 2024

Group Manager (Delivery)- Professional Services

NICE Actimize

During my tenure at NICE Actimize, a leading brand in the BFSI compliance and surveillance space, I led large-scale implementation projects that spanned several years. In this role, I successfully managed and executed the following responsibilities:

Timely Deliverables Management:

Ensured Delivery of 15+ Country implementations Go-Live on-time guaranteeing regulatory compliance requirements for the Customer, which resulted in contract extension for Actimize. Ensured all project deliverables were mapped back to business requirements. Coordinated and managed expectations of multiple stakeholders, including various customer teams, PMO, product management, and customer support.

In sourcing and Outsourcing:

Maintained a overall revenue and high margins by outsourcing work as well as recruiting contractors. Successfully managed the insourcing of projects that were previously underperforming under a partner's management, bringing them in-house while adhering to budgetary constraints and maintaining project margins thus increasing Customer satisfaction Index.

Quality Assurance:

Maintained high-quality standards for all deliverables, ensuring thorough testing and securing UAT sign-off from customer teams.

Revenue Realization & Optimization:

Strategically managed the realization and optimization of revenue across various project phases. Monitored and ensured healthy project margins throughout the project lifecycle and was able to improve the margins by 8 basis points for the last 5implementations.

Post-Production Support:

Oversaw post-production support provided by Managed Services and customer support teams to ensure smooth operations post-deployment.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT):

Focused on achieving high customer satisfaction, addressing and resolving issues promptly at key project milestones.

Leadership and Team Management:

Managed a span of control encompassing over 75+ individuals, with direct supervision of 5 managers. Oversaw implementation teams, business analysts, program managers, QA, Managed Services, and the Professional Services Sales team. Liaised with R&D teams, product owners, and customer support teams at the highest levels to ensure customer success

Collaboration with Sales:

Successfully collaborated with Sales and Sales Enablement teams through the Professional Services Sales team. Surpassed revenue targets both personally and for the team, resulting in the prestigious Presidential Club Award for securing a strategic customer deal in the APAC (Australia) market, exceeding $10 million. Mar 2016 - Sep 2024 Additionally, I played a crucial role in ensuring the continued strategic relationship for a project that was in critical condition by implementing the following steps:

Collaboration with Sales:

1. Transition to Agile Methodology:

Moved the implementation from a traditional waterfall methodology to an SAFe (Agile) approach, enhancing flexibility and responsiveness, ensuring First time Right delivery.

2.Industry Best Practices:

Established industry best practices for unit testing & implemented pair programing & strict code review practices. Built a strong partnership with the customer’s user acceptance team to develop a robust common automation framework, ensuring reliability and efficiency.

3. Comprehensive KPI and SLA Suite:

Articulated and negotiated a comprehensive set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that provided transparency to the customer along with maintaining the SLA,s as per the MSA. Implemented measures that significantly improved the quality of service in a measurable and transparent manner

Achievements:

Sales & Sales Enablement: I was awarded the Presidential Club award for meeting and exceeding a sales target of over $10 million for the year. This achievement included the successful sale to a strategic customer, resulting in a multi-year, multi-license deal.

Build & Operated 24x7 Managed Services Offering: Developed the first 24x7 Managed Services offering, enhancing service availability and meeting the needs of global customers.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Was able to move multiple customers from detractor & neutral to Promoter with 1 customer becoming reference customer for Nice & 1 customer who spoke on NICE’s behalf at the annual customer engagement forum. Connect with Client stakeholders to understand their experience and identify themes and pain points and make recommendations for program/process improvement

Process & Quality Improvements: Reduced the field defects by 48% for the final 6 implementations in a 15+ Country Large implementation Program.

Sep 2011 - Mar 2016

Lead SQA Engineer

BMC Software

Senior Leadership Roles in Quality Assurance and process implementation at BMC Software.

1.Issue Resolution:

Led the Quality Assurance team to ensure quick and accurate resolution of issues reported in the field. Conducted orthogonal analysis to identify root causes of defects. Implemented automation processes to streamline defect resolution, resulting in a 30% reduction in turnaround time.

2.Team Expansion and Coverage:

Expanded the team’s coverage to include additional products, optimizing resource allocation and increasing overall team efficiency.

3.Scrum Representation:

Represented the India team in the Scrum of Scrums for Remedy on Salesforce software. Delivered comprehensive status updates on the development progress of the product, ensuring alignment and transparency across global teams.

4. Leadership and Team Management:

Oversaw Lead QAs for two functions, managing a team consisting of 10+ full-time employees and 12 contractors. Ensured effective collaboration and communication within the team and with other departments to achieve project goals. Through these efforts, I significantly improved defect resolution times and broadened the scope of the QA team’s responsibilities, contributing to the overall success and efficiency of the software development lifecycle.

May 2004 - Aug 2011

Senior SQA Engineer

Symantec Corporation

Created and maintained test cases, test plans, test metrics & defect metrics while reviewing test cases on basis of customer environment and issues reported on field during previous releases.

Prepared and reviewed formal review and risk review documents

Conducted a formal review post-mortem analysis to decide on the quality of the current release and prepare actionable items for the same while implementing Quality Control Processes and providing proposals to reduce field issues.

Performed automation using Python for Automating test scripts at the back end.

Scrutinized the customer environment to understand and reproduce defects to enable fixing