Anand_Application_Project_Manager

Project Manager 1

K. Anand Kumar
Bachelor of Science, Post-Graduate in Business Management (XLRI, Jamshedpur)
“Kumar House”, Plot no-6, Door no 1/803, Deivanai Nagar 2nd Street, Madipakkam, Chennai-
600091
Cell: 91-9940492689 | E-mail: [email protected] | ORCID: 0000-0002-6687-3459

My Objective

To be a part of a reputed company where I can employ the skills learnt (and learning) and
contribute to the growth of the organisation while maintaining a perfect balance between work and
family.

Professional Summary

In a nutshell, my experience can be summarised as follows:
 Around 10 Years’ E-2-E project & people management in epublishing industries, with
project/application management and business analysis experience.
 Experience in partnering with clients in analysing business trends and managing user
expectations with special focus on trend and SWOT analyses, and market scenarios.
 Multicultural experience in managing and forecasting risks, scheduling (CPM),
budgeting & cost controlling and procurement (Supply Chain Management).
 Basic knowledge on the use and functionality of electronic warehouses.
 Strategically managed vendor relationships to ensure that the agreed service levels for
the day-to-day activities are met in Project and Transactions.
 Experience in Agile/Scrum & Waterfall methods.
 Ensured deliverables are within the formulated SLAs and costs are within contractual
commitments.
 Experience in managing projects from Analysis to Implementation\Warranty.
 Testing: Experience in defining acceptance criteria and acceptance testing.
 Understanding stakeholder\customer needs and deliver the products requested.
 Business Analysis: Experience in preparation of case studies, documentation, analysis
and product implementation (including understanding user expectation, testing, approval,
trend analysis and sign-off).
 Working experience in SQL, HTML, XML, MS Visio & MS Project.
 PG Diploma in E-publishing (2007)

Other Management-related Experience

 Report presentation to C-level executives.

Project Manager 2

 Cross-boundary collaboration (and, therefore, good knowledge of the cultures and
etiquettes of the West).

 Exposure to lean methodologies. Implemented kaizens in the workplace at the time of
writing this résumé.

 Recipient of Customer Focus and Innovation awards in Reed for the year 2010.
 Owing to my geeky interests, I also regularly review Microsoft Beta versions, test new

products in Google or Microsoft labs. This helps to me to stay up-to-date with the leading

market trends and implement some of this in my own organisation (kaizens, 改善).

Professional Experience

8+ years (6+ years Project & Application Management) in a multicultural environment

• Bookkeeping• Project Management • Customer Facing

• Co-ordination • Statistical Analysis • Training

• Testing • Report/Dashboard Preparation •

Documentation/copy editing

Hands-on experience in the following methodologies

• SDLC\Waterfall • E-publishing methods • SWOT • Risk management

• Fishbone • Lean (5S) • e-Workflow/e-Commerce • Delphi Techniques

Project Management Experience

Role: Project Manager/Application Manager
Industry: e-Publishing (Health Sciences/Medical division)
Companies served: Newgen (2006–2008), Laserwords (2008) & Reed Elsevier (2009–2011),
Amex (for Syntel), Bank of America (for Helios and Matheson)
Adept in: Communication, Project Management, Customer Facing, Presentation, Statistical
Analysis, Team Management
Technologies Used: SQL, MS SharePoint, XML\HTML
Application: Project Planning and Management (PPM), developed by Klopotek, Germany

 Developing and managing annual budget of projects.
 Reconciling monthly activity, generating year-end reports.
 Supervising and coaching team members on a weekly basis.
 Being a part/conducting monthly review meetings with clients\stakeholders to continually

review and improve functions and quality measures.

Project Manager 3

 Liaising with various departments, vendors, customers to successfully roll out products and
statistically analyse the trends post-release.

 Adhering to schedule and reduce costs by negotiating with vendors/freelancers/editorial
teams.

 Maintaining accurate data on all internal systems and complete product and project status
information.

 Liaising with various departments, vendors, customers to successfully roll out products and
statistically analyse the trends post-release.

 Handling client and vendor escalations and be proactive from next time onwards.
 Establishing usage goals per customer (in conjunction with account team).
 Systematically monitoring usage at customer and regional levels against targets, and

develop mitigating action plan where usage is not meeting objectives.
 Acquiring resources and co-ordinate with third party vendors to ensure the project is

delivered on time.
 Forecasting risk and reducing its impact on the project.
 Developing communication & project plans.
 Identifying and resolving issues and conflicts within the project team.
 Track milestones and identify critical paths and any bottle necks.

Project/People/Vendor Management
 Accurate and reliable management of vendors/clients.
 Prepare project status reports using MS Project.
 Preparing monthly dashboards.
 Work with our strategies team to improve workflow.
 Be a part/conduct monthly operation review meetings to continually review and improve

functions and quality measures.
 Communicate with clients, vendors and freelancers.
 Adherence to schedule and reduce costs by negotiating with vendors/freelancers/editorial

teams.
 Maintain accurate data on all internal systems and complete product and project status

information.

Cost and Budgeting
 Discuss costs involved/allocated for a project with business heads.
 Forecasting profitability margins and discussing costs.
 Ensuring timely and accurate invoicing.
 Negotiate with vendors to reduce costs as and when needed.
 Follow up with accounts team, when necessary, regarding unpaid invoices (for

vendors/freelancers).

Project Manager 4

Copy Editing Experience
 Copyediting books and journals for grammatical errors
 Handle author and publisher changes on multiple articles simultaneously from initial proofs

to publication.
 Create and update internal training materials and documentation.
 Edit multiple media for content accuracy and consistency, grammar, punctuation, spelling,

and suggested layout changes.
 Utilize interactive feedback to assess copy editing quality.

On-site Experience

 Have been to Amsterdam, Germany as part of company’s business meet.

Business Analysis

Employer: Syntel
Client: American Express
Designation: Business Systems Analyst\Technical Lead
Adept in: Communication, Project Management, Customer Facing, Presentation, Statistical
Analysis
Technologies Used: SQL, Visio, Excel, Access, InfoPath, MS SharePoint, Adobe Captivate
Application: CA Clarity (for Amex) & PeopleSoft (for Syntel)
Skill Sets Applied: Root cause analysis, Presentation, Metrics and Analysis
Responsibilities:

 Defining project scope.
 Collecting and understanding project/business needs and translated them into application

requirements.
 Liaison between the business units, technology teams and support teams.
 Documenting user (stakeholder) requirements.
 Database management; resolving queries raised by the offshore production team.
 Active participation in RFPs.
 Reporting and analysis of its data for suggesting improvements.
 Identify problems and provide solutions.
 Prepare project plans and charters.
 Root cause analysis and statistical analysis of projects to ensure they are within AMEX

SOPs.
Accomplishment: Successfully engaged in multiple initiatives simultaneously.

Project Information

Project Manager 5

Clarity Portfolio Management

Client: American Express (Cards & Payments and Travels division), Business Management
Team
Role: Tech Lead
Clarity is the portfolio management tool used by American Express (AMEX).

 Setting up and closing projects on Clarity.
 Submitting GL adjustments.
 Funding – Cost and budget plan approval.
 Master Project linking and child linking.
 Resourcing – Allocating tasks to resources and input their info on the system.
 Developing troubleshooting guide and “How-To” tutorials for SDLC 2.0.

Accomplishment: Prepared test cases with respect to post-SDLC 2.0 release. This identified new
methodologies and other areas that a PM\Tech lead should focus on.

SOP for Application Infrastructure Uplift Program

Client: American Express, Business Intelligence Team
What is AIU?
AIU is a company-wide program to optimise the technology operating environment to support the
delivery of optimal business solutions.

My Role and Accomplishments in the project...
 Prepared process flow documentation for Application Infrastructure Uplift (AIU) which
provides a process (not people)–dependent approach for the AIU program.
 The process flow was prepared based on inputs (re: their roles and responsibilities) from
various teams (Database Management Team, Program Managers, Server Management
Team to name a few) that are involved in the program.
 The documentation included a responsibility matrix, SIPOC, flow charts of the workflow, a
glossary and a who’s who section. The Program Manager approved the documentation and
the effort was much appreciated.

White Glove: DC 2015 Migration

What is DC 2015 Migration?
In short, Data Centre 2015 (DC 2015) is the migration of server and its corresponding databases to
the new data centre. In order to migrate the components successfully, various projects have been
put forth and I’m lucky enough to work with one amongst them (White Glove).

Project Manager 6

My Role and Accomplishments in the project...
 Created T100 for White Glove Application.
 Gathered inputs on the databases in DTU and their server mapping.
 Prepare architecture diagrams (physical and logical) based on the gathered inputs (IP
address, node information etc.).
 Participated in calls to discuss project status/updates.
 Gather inputs from Tech Lead/onsite folks and pass them onto offshore members.
 Generate customised reports.

Accomplishment: Successfully prepared architecture diagrams of the databases that exist on a
given server (in this case, DTU). The diagrams will be used as template for successful migration of

the databases.

Business Analysis (Risk and Compliance) Experience
Client: Bank of America, Operations Control Monitoring and Readiness

My Role and Accomplishments in the project...
 Create and maintain scripts to be used to monitor applications.
 Work with business tech partners to coordinate documents needed for on-boarding and
calibrating ongoing monitoring.
 Collect and evaluate data from key systems of record and assess for violations of
established standards.
 Report recommendations for non-compliant findings adhering to defined SLAs.
 Insure all documentation, including reports of findings and artifacts are saved on the MSSP
site.
 Expanding the horizon of the team by working with various teams and facilitating meetings
 Participated in year-end process review and suggested improvements and changes to both
process and procedures.
 Co-ordinated automation of low-level and high-level repetitive tasks.

Voice of My Customers

“The new HS BLAM is a real superstar with keeping the channels open, so hopefully we in SQS
can live up to his good standards.”- Kerri Dwars, Head SQS, St Louis
“Excellent feedback from the client Anand – well done, you did an excellent job, thank you!” -
Cheryl Brant, Head, Edinburgh
“Your tool is really excellent, and it will definitely make our day to day tasks much simpler.” -
Gokul, BD-Ops Executive

Project Manager 7

“Thank you Anand! You’re a star! I’ll tell Karen Morley that you deserve a raise....” - Velia
(Germany, Client)

Lean Initiative Kaizens (改善)

Following are some of the tools created (or ‘coded’) by myself to save time in our day-to-day
routines:

Tool Platform Purpose How Useful?
ExOut Visual Basic for
Send out auto emails from Reduced time taken to
WinWord Applications
Macros excel send multiple emails from
Visual Basic for
Dasearcher Applications 10 min to 1 min (~100

VB 6.0 emails)

Multiple snippets that Reduced time consumed to

include doc clean up, treat the manuscript

formatting, styling manually (from 4 hours to

15 min)

Search for information on Search made easier rather

a database stored on a than to navigate the
user’s PC based on database manually

keywords

Academics

Graduation\Schooling Institution Percentage Obtained
Grade B
PGCBM XLRI, Jamshedpur 85% (University 5th Rank
holder)
BSc University of Madras 91%
85%
HSc Sai Matriculation Hr. Sec. School
SSLC Kings Matriculation Hr. Sec. School

Certifications & Merits:
1. PG Diploma in E-publishing (2007)
2. CSC-certified WordStar programmer (1996)
3. NIIT Integrated Development Program (2000)
4. Awarded the grade “Outstanding” in Intelligence Quotient by NIIT (1999) & earned a scholarship.
5. Winner of several inter-/intra-school and inter-/intra-college competitions.

Project Manager 8

XLRI Projects/Case Studies:

1. TATA’s Marketing Strategy for Automobiles (group project)
2. India’s Balance Sheet on International Trade Account and Foreign Reserves: Is it sustainable?

(individual project)
3. An analysis of Pershing Inc, an affiliate of BNY Mellon’s Strategies (group project)
4. Economy in India: Are We Heading in the Right Direction? (individual project)
5. Operations Research: Market Research in Farming (individual project)
6. Marketing: Counter Value Player Competition in Food Markets (group project)