|
Randall L.
Hitchens |
41-B Secor
Road |
|
203 313-2812
(C) |
Brookfield, CT
06804 |
|
203 775-1955
(H) |
Mr. Hitchens, a proven “Big 5” leader, is highly skilled in all
areas of Software Development Life Cycle and has over 20 years of combined
experience in Business Intelligence
systems development, Project
Management and Data Quality
Management. He has an impeccable
track record of assessing, promoting, managing, planning, designing and
delivering high quality BI solutions, on-time and within budget, in large
complex projects as well as small focused teams.
Mr. Hitchens communicates
effectively and credibly at all corporate levels. As a motivating leader, Mr.
Hitchens assembles committed teams and builds consensus. As a strong promoter of the Business
Cases for the employment of technology, Mr. Hitchens understands the Strategic,
Business Process, and Organizational Changes that drive business performance
improvement and are affected by the application of BI technologies.
He has hands-on experience in
almost every conceivable role, ranging from programmer/analyst to Director
Level. Solutions range from
stand-alone reporting systems using 4GL technologies to the integration of ERP
systems like SAP through leading ETL
tools such as Informatica or DataStage with powerful Data Warehouses
residing in Oracle or Teradata using Business Intelligence
front-ends like Microstrategy, Cognos, Business Objects or Brio.
Selected
Client Companies | ||
|
Microsoft Corporation |
Gartner, Inc. |
United States Tennis
Association |
|
FM Global |
Lucent Technologies |
Freightliner
(Daimler-Chrysler) |
|
Target |
3M |
Arrow Electronics |
|
Doubleday (Bertelsmann) |
United Rentals |
Intracorp (Cigna) |
|
GE Capital |
Purdue Frederick |
A.C. Nielsen Media
Research |
|
PepsiCo |
Pepsi-Cola |
Mobil |
|
Ciba-Geigy |
Schering-Plough |
Nestle |
|
General Foods |
Chesebrough-Ponds |
Learning International |
|
The Cambridge Group |
BearingPoint |
J.P.
Morgan |
·
Mr.
Hitchens founded Action Centric
LLC, a professional services firm specializing Business Intelligence Systems and
Data Warehouses in 1994 and has run it continuously since
then.
·
In 1997
Mr. Hitchens worked under contract to KPMG LLP, was hired f/t by them as a
Manager from 1998-2001.
·
From
1983-1994 he was Chief Technology officer of Sundance Software, Inc., a
professional services firm specializing in 4GL reporting
applications.
·
Prior to
that, Mr. Hitchens worked f/t for Cheseborough-Ponds, General Foods, and The Nestle Company.
Following are
selected projects and summaries of work over the last 20+
years:
·
As a
Business Analyst on a “100-day” project involving a dozen dedicated planners for
more than 6 months, scoped and planned the implementation of an Enterprise
Customer Master at Microsoft in
Redmond. Analyzed the common
requirements of the systems supporting the various divisions including thousands
of data elements. Three of four architectural elements were
conceived and vetted including business architecture (use cases and
requirements), application architecture (high-level approach and interfaces),
and information architecture (logical data model). Buy/build evaluations comparing several
different build alternatives and several leading vendors in the CDI application
space. A multi-year plan was
drafted and estimated, and funding secured for the initial phases of this
pivotal enterprise data mastering application with an expected investment of
10’s of millions of dollars.
·
Improved
the Data Quality in the Data Warehouse and Operational Systems for Gartner in Stamford while managing
projects to replace legacy data cleansing and matching tools and then to deploy
the new tools. Savings on
direct mail alone was conservatively estimated at more then $80,000 per year
going forward. The implemented
systems assessed the quality of data in various systems, cleansed and
standardized contact information, de-duplicated and consolidated organizational
and individual records in support of marketing and operational systems. The technical environment included Sun
Solaris, Oracle 8i and 9i, DataStage, Firstlogic, Brio, Crystal reports and
other tools and facilities.
·
Working
in the PMO of the United States Tennis
Association, implemented new Credentialling, Access Control, Meal
Allowances, and Gift Card systems for 2003 US Open Tennis Tournament, the
world’s largest annual sporting event, at the National Tennis Center. These mission-critical systems shared
core data and all had multiple-backup of hardware and software, all tested to ensure full operability by the time
the tournament started and throughout the event. Provided support leading up to the 2004
US Open.
·
Engaged
by Outsourcing Partners International, a financial systems outsourcer, to design
the infrastructure enabling broad international access to applications and
servers. Assembled the team, helped
develop the vision and create the roadmap underpinning their most effective
investment.
·
Hired by
FM Global to manage a team to create
their Corporate QA Strategy and to test it by managing the QA team on a state of
the art customer facing extranet portal implemented with .NET technology.
Organized the team, developed test scripts and managed all QA activities that
ensured a very successful implementation.
·
Managed
a team of 6 people on a data warehouse project for Lucent Technologies, responsible for
assembling and training the team made up of Lucent employees, specifying
enhancements to data mappings, creating an intial portfolio of reports, and
driving the architecture of the OLAP facilities. The team successfully employed a mix of
new and more proven technologies (Datasweep, Oracle, Business Objects) to meet
some very aggressive schedules set by the client.
·
Brought
in to manage a special consolidation and profitability reporting sub-project for
Daimler-Chrysler’s Freightliner
Division Financial Data Warehouse.
Responsible for complete project from establishing requirements, through
designing special cost accounting interfaces and making custom modifications to
Informatica’s Data Warehouse, to writing complex consolidation reporting
specifications for the Business Objects programmers. The sources of data for the Data
Warehouse included SAP interfaces as well as external files imported from
foreign affiliates. Complexities
addressed included consolidations, inter-affiliate transfers, and profitability
analysis.
·
Evaluated and recommended Digital Asset
Management vendors for Target to
select the tools used to move them to eCommerce using commercially available
packages to replace a home-grown, under-powered system. The dynamic, seasonal nature of the
business, and tracking more than a quarter million SKUs meant having to manage
as much as 1 million images and other media.
·
Planned,
for 3M, a web-enabled extranet
interface to legacy international order entry systems with particular emphasis
on handling the tricky documentation and regulatory requirements of the
systems.
·
Managed
a team developing the highly customized ETL and web-based back-end support
systems of an international supply-chain data-warehouse for Arrow Electronics. The support systems included both data
management through the client’s Intranet and complex rule-driven data cleansing
written in Java.
·
Managed
the data extraction team on a Customer Relation Management data warehouse for Doubleday, a division of
Bertelsmann. Working at Doubleday’s
headquarters, the team developed the data mappings, transformation rules, data
dictionary, source code, job streams, documentation, and project plans,
developed all program specifications, test plans, and supervised the team during
programming the extracts, unit, integration, and volume testing, and the startup
of production.
·
Enabled
United Rentals, an initial start up
firm growing rapidly through acquisitions, to go into business in time for
wall-street announcements. Lead the
team to assimilate up to 7 new companies' per week. Working at both the firm's headquarters
and at each acquired company’s retail locations, the team converted each
acquisition’s financial systems and retail systems between the time it closed
for business on Friday (or Saturday) and the time they reopened for business on
Monday morning. This
extraordinarily successful project resulted in the conversion of 25 companies
with nearly 100 locations nationwide in just over one month and put the firm
nearly a year ahead of their schedule for growth. It also provided the roadmap for URI to
grow an internal team to continue the acquisitions and assimilate companies at
their own pace in an ongoing way.
·
Managed
the technical conversion of claims tracking data from the legacy system (RMS) to
a new client/server system (Rdb) for Intracorp, a subsidiary of Cigna. This included producing all the project
plans, documents, schedules, staffing requirements, building the conversion
matrix and supervising the programmers during implementation. The programmers used Prism and COBOL for
the conversion.
·
Reviewed
for GE Capital’s Real Estate
management group, the design of an existing system and proposed a number of
enhancements and changes to simplify and streamline the systems while optimizing
the investment in programming and maintenance efforts. The proposals were accepted and
implemented after being expanded to include other divisions of the parent
corporation.
·
Managed
for a Purdue Frederick, a tightly
regulated pharmaceutical firm, a team that developed a digital asset management
system for the firm’s packaging artwork and text, and for the package
inserts. The LAN-based system used
Documentum, Oracle, Powerbuilder, C++, and some FOCUS to build a custom document
workflow system. In addition to
supporting complex routing, the system had to secure each approval and
positively identify each signature digitally using Smart Cards, pins, user Ids
and passwords.
·
Managed
for A. C. Nielsen Media Research, a
team of as many as 8 programmers to implement an extremely complex reporting
system for ratings. The system
downloads ratings information daily and produces a wide range of reports. Users of the system are able to define
their own reports, store them, and run them as needed.
·
Numerous
projects, across Marketing, Financial, HR and other business areas, in the
Consumer Goods, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, and other industries.
·
9 years
industry experience working for Nestle, General Foods, and Chesebrough-Ponds
implementing systems for: Cash
Accounting, Finished Goods and Work-In-Progress Costing, Risk Management,
Capital Projects Tracking, Factory Shipments and Forecasting, and an Interactive
Coffee Blending process control application. The last several years were spent
supporting users using interactive data management systems such as FOCUS and
EXPRESS.
Selected
Technologies Managed or Employed | ||
|
Oracle |
MS SQL Server |
Business Objects |
|
Brio |
Crystal Reports |
MS Access |
|
Cognos |
MicroStrategy |
Powerbuilder |
|
Actuate |
Informatica |
DataStage |
|
Firstlogic |
Group 1 |
Trillium |
|
Appertus |
Prism |
FOCUS |
|
MS Project |
Visio |
ErWin |
|
Sun Solaris |
HP/UX |
MVS/TSO/ISPF |
|
VB |
C++ |
|
Frequent speaker at trade meetings
and educational symposia. Author of
several trade journal and newspaper articles. Chaired the Y2K committee for the
National Focus Users Group and chaired a roundtable on the Y2K challenge
published in Information Week.