March 2004 Jan 2010 For SFR (N9UF Cegetel France)
SFR/N9UF Cegetel is the second Data and Voice Global operator of France providing Data, Mobile and Voice services to Residential, Small to Large Business and Telco Operators.
For Post-Paid Fix division (residential fix/adsl and soho): (2Years) – (Senior Business Solution Architect)
Starting in January 2008 responsible of the Architect team, redesign the CRM and Billing system (Syebel/WebMethode/Kenan FX started in 2007) in order to be able to acquire 5 times more customers without neither business impacts nor major hardware changes: there are currently around 8M customers. Customers came via various migrations projects provided by Cap Gemini, and I took care of integrating Neuf ADSL, Cegetel - Fix, AOL, Club Internet and TELE2 customers. We are now waiting for last 2 migration projects from SRR (Reunion) and Neuf Optical Fiber THD.
In 2007 the existing system was too instable to handle that huge amount of data and to ensure normal production cycle. I remodeled the existing team for separating Business Analysis from System Support. I improved and customized existing processes between internals and external teams. I enforced and shared with teams the notion of common target, providing for each part a clear and achievable planning, showing deadlines and clearly identifying all deliveries.
According with Sopra Group, I re-designed the delivery process, in order to reduce the packaging effort and in order to minimize the production system downtime. I modified development standards to increase system maintainability. I have negotiated and provided support to Sopra Group in order to introduce a source control program (Subversion), a mandatory step for negotiating the maintenance contract between Sopra Group and SFR. I put in place and managed for SFR a RAPID development team for marketing prototypes and for specific or/and complex development.
For the migration projects of SRR and Tele2 France to the SFR IT system: I participated to the design of the migration solution for the CRM and Billing system. I worked on the implementation of the juridical customer data isolation constraint, which imposes logical separation between customer invoice sequences and customer’s data accessibility.
Gap analysis for MVNO fix and mobile numbers portability: SFR network did not provide MVNO information to the mediation, the billing system could not detect and apply specific rate for calls terminated to ported and original owner network.
Update the unit credit solution to include bundle options betweens product.
Work closely with marketing to design new product and be sure that they fit business requirements, and they can be supported by current architecture.
Redesign and implement the Invoice proforma application system that correspond of business requirements, ad an automatic panel definition system based on business needs (panel of new customer never billed, panel of customer with new products or new rates, panel of customer that change pay method, that change business segment etc)
Study the Kenan mobile inventory system on version FX 12 to understand if it possible to use it on the current version 11.7 FX. (this for future use in case of migration of mobile in the fix line billing system)
Support SFR operational management to negotiate Sopra group outsourcing contract.
Support SFR operational management to re-negotiate Kenan Support contract.
As Kenan expert: the main goal of 2008 was to increase the performance of production processes to run the entire cycle faster enough to process 4 times more customers coming from migrations. We achieved 20 times more for IGEN (Invoice Generator), 2 times for LTP (CDR Loading Ticket Process), 50% more for CAP (CDR Rating) and 4 times more for JNL (Journaling). DATABLITZ, BIP are currently under analysis, we achieved 6 times more with replication process during installation (Currently we have 6 customer databases running and 3 under constructions).
Put in place the archive and the purge architecture with related batches for Ordering, Products Views, JNL*, BIL* and CDR* tables. Negotiating with Marketing/Client Service / Financial and Legal department the retention and purge delay. Business impact analysis, solution design and coding, tests and go live. Put in place a compressed Oracle 11g database and develop all scripts for extract data from source database and inject on target database.
CAP : Introduced CDRs input sort system for increase rating process performance
IGEN: Worked closed with Comverse in order to define, test and release the new Multi Server scalable model using HP X86’s low cost hardware architecture on Solaris 10 (Never used before on production). This hardware is 10 time less expensive than a SUN Sparc architecture for same CPU workload capacity
Replication: Redesigned with Comverse the Replicate process for implementing the parallel mode and for making optional the object recompilation function. Introduced a automatic replicate tables behavior in order to decide between delta and full mode during production installation process.
Added 2 additional customer databases on existing billing production system Kenan FX 11.7. In collaboration with Sopra Group as outsourcer I did gap analysis, solution design, and acceptance test and at the end go live.
The main goal of 2008 was stabilizing the billing cycle.
Implemented WebMethod, Tuxedo and ETUC alarms for monitor processes alive and measure instant functional io error during the provisioning and rating processes and providing aged error and workload measures. Designed and implemented the NetCool interface.
Designed and coded the Payments Alarm architecture for monitoring and reacting in order to receive the expected but un-received files. Tracked and monitored payments from Banks Institute and Payment Agencies from when they should arrive to when they were computed.
Payment consolidation between the new Arbor Kenan FX v11.7 for Neuf-Cegetel and the one closed down by the migration project (Arbor BP 10)
Putting in place a splitting system (ksh+awk+sybase+oracle) for redirect payments, payment refund, payment by CreditCard from the clearing houses to the 2 billing systems in place at the same time (during the migration period of 1 year).
Defined the space policy, analyzed the security model to put in place Unix/Oracle/Tuxedo/Java dedicated users for each batch.
Short task: Gap analysis, process re-modeling to stabilize and optimize the payment process to reduce manual work and to increase customer satisfaction. Credit Cards and EFT payments errors are now minimized and can be reworked by the classic support helpdesk.
Added 3 additional customer databases on existing billing production system, reusing the 2008’s procedure. We are running 9 customers databases.
That part relate of the period before the fusion between SFR and NeufCegetel
For Enterprise division: (3 years) starting in 2005 as Project leader
MERCURE Project: Product and Customer Migration from Neuf (Siebel /Web-Method/Arbor 9) to Neuf/Cegetel (Clarify CRM/InHouse Connector/Billing Arbor 10 /Mediation XACCT).
- Design of the data migration strategy for Data and Voice products from NEUF CRM and billing to New NEUF/CEGETEL platform.
- Responsible of the Functional DATA Product Migration team (3 people), responsible of the Migration Development team (4 people) and the Business Acceptance Test team (5 people).
- In charge of the DATA Product Migration team (the project where splitted in 2 main segments DATA and VOICE products), closely with marketing and sale department I did migration mapping between source and target products. I reduced the number of migrated products from 50 to 16, I performed the global gap analysis between source and target DATA functionalities, provisioning, activation, deployment, logistic, billing, reporting, financial and network monitoring. Main target products were 9Office, 9IpNet, 9Connect, FramRelay, Black Optical Fiber. Analysis of historical Client organization to fit target constraints and to map target data model expecially for multinational and huge companies like La Poste, EDF, Société Generale, Thales, Banques Populaires, Marchés Publiques like Mairie de Paris, APHP and UGAP. Design of target data services based on existing CRM/WorkFlow/Network provisioning process
- Design and implementing of the architecture (based on Oracle, C , Shell) used to support data transformation business rules
- Design and implementing of business transformation rules for data and voice
- Design of the Test Analysis tools to reduce the human intervention and increase quality
- Implement audit system to trace each single transformation step (scheduled processes, customer data and customer charges. The system is used to check and validate customer output data and invoices
- In charge of the Business Acceptance Test team for Data and Voice products and for technical architecture. We tested all big customers one by one and others customers using a random statistical representative cases model using SFR internal HelpDesk resources
Neuf acquired Cegetel from SFR, Neuf had to move all applications hosted on SFR datacenter to NeufCegetel datacenter. PUMA Project was the Billing moving process. The two operators had different IT that implemented heterogeneous and sometime incompatibles functionalities and all had to coexist for few months during the set up of the new core architecture (Arbor BP 10 with 30 specific developments) that would have received all customers. The target system had to support existing complex business and new marketing offers with at least 2 times more customer data and same production constraints in terms of people, hardware and software (of course we add disk space and RAM on the Unix server).
• Managing and working as resource in the technical architecture team
Main areas: definition of the migration strategy and validation of the Blue print, fulfill the project risk. Key’s points were: integration of existing CRMs and EAI modules, full integration of Arbor MSA architecture, redesigning all interfaces and connectors. For the project I did: gap analysis between the source and target CRM and Billibg system with definition of the business and technical implementation plan. In detail :project plan, billing product and function gap matrix for provisioning, rating, billing and reporting, skills and resources definition, hardware and software chose, tools development. Major functional complexity comes from new requirements provided by marketing, legal, accountancy and client management services. Technical complexity was the move of the production plan from the Autosys to Vtom product and the implementation of Neuf standards for Unix environment system (ksh in front of csh, new Unix user organization, new FileSystem organization and new naming convention that have to apply on target system. I implemented few controlling reports for all type of customer charges RC/NRC but usage.
I detail here some points, for the CRM: solve performance issues on the CRM to Billing connector. For the Billing system: introducing multi frequency for products, multi-bank payment, customer business unit for controlling and accountancy, fusion of rate periods between source and target, jurisdiction reorganization, introducing of 5’s digits usage round method to stop existing home made system developed by Accenture (Cuoct), migration of rating keys (from rate class to product element driven), redesign of the invoice cover page, implementing on target architecture for heavy usage reports for historical source customers. Continuing supporting source systems and supporting migration team in charge of the fusion of existing Neuf Telecom systems (BSCS / NODHOS) to Arbor/BP source system. (project start 2 years early)
• Leading the Technical Migration team during phase 1 (6 months), installing and preparing Arbor /BP environments, end to end test from CRM to invoicing, including all existing interfaces (financial, DWH, reports, data quality, Extranet).
Hardware and system migration from SFR to CEGETEL architecture, (we provided back current hardware to re-install everything on a new SUN 25K system on NeufCegetel datacenter), impacts on DNS, Firewall and CFT (secure file transfer monitor system), we changed the supervision platform and the performance monitor system.
• Senior Consultant driving the Billing Business architecture choice between the NEUF and CEGETEL existing IT system.
For NEUF in the OPERATORS division: (6 months) in 2004 as Business Analyst
• Responsible for the CRM, Middleware/Billing end to end implementation, in charge of the set up of the Arbor/BP billing platform. Project plan, technical architecture definition, team set up, and operational Migration of the 5 existing systems to the target Architecture (the existing interconnect system was kept). This was a strategic and complex project for NEUF TELECOM because of the operator customer’s income, the short deadline and the customer diversity. Our Operators Billing platform is chosen for the NEUF-CEGETEL OPERATORS division. A migration project is running for moving Cegetel customers on the Neuf system.
Migration between Sybase 11.9.2 to Sybase 12 (in 4 weeks time). Performance improvement on MPS and BILLING modules, move from 6MCDR to 30MCDR per day.
• Move the production architecture in 2 tiers for the billing system in Sybase with 2 HP hosts, 1 for the DBMS and the second for applications (COM/MCAP/CAP/BIP/MIU….). We multiplied performance by 4.
For all divisions: (3 month)
• Arbor/BP migration from v9.1 to 11.5 project study (planning, impact analysis, budget, risk plan, team definition). In charge of the Sybase 11.9.2 to Sybase 12 and from Sybase 11.9.2 to Oracle 9i feasibility and risk study (technical check, planning, impact analysis, budget, risk plan, team definition).
2003/04, 6 months: Sabbatical semester to the University of Michigan Business School (USA),
MBA: Integrated Operations, IT and Business Collaboration as non registered student.
2003, 9 months: For Noos Cable, Lyonnaise Communications (France)
Noos the first French Cable operator providing TV and Internet services to around 1 million customers.
• Arbor BP Business Analyst in charge of the test of the new patch/upgrade 9.1.11.
• In charge of evaluate a new biller system (Highdeal) for NOOS
• Production support for Billing, Provisioning, Collection, Account Receivable, Payment and Reversal process.
• Working to clean-up customers/contracts and services between Arbor and Vantive.
• Production performance optimization to be able to reduce the time to market of new products and to invoice customers 5 days early. This vas the major impact on human and business process.
• Analysis and design of new collection and payment cycle to reduce the time to collect founds and to clarify and use the effective reasons that push customer into collection, design changes to the invoice to clearly explain why the customer enter the collection and how to escape. Migrate all customers in a death collection path to the new business collection process. (Mainly the idea was to use all information from Arbor and Peoplesoft Vantive systems to make the collection process work properly). The entire process was speed up from 4 days to 1,5 day.
2002, 19 months: For T-Systems-Siris, Deutsche Telekom Group (France)
Siris is part of Deutsche Telekom group, offering business voice and data services local and international Services (T-System). Project bases in France.
• Arbor Upgrade Expert in charge of the migration of Arbor/BP 7.6 to Arbor/BP 9.1.6. Coordinate the client functional and technical teams, installation and testing of Arbor (global and customer specific) patches, validation of the migration plan, execution and support of the migration tasks (hands on, creating, modifying and running scripts, working close with the DBA and Unix administrator, supporting the end users during and after the Upgrade. (20 people)
• Euro migration Expert in charge of the Arbor/BP Euro migration project. Definition and validation of the Euro migration plan. Test of Lucent Euro tool and building of a robust and easy to use migration layer (process, tools and workarounds) to automate the Euro migration process for the production team. Implementing scripts to automate migration to Euro of customers outside the Kenan tool. (7 people)
• Analysis design and development of a rapid provisioning interface (perl, ksh, sql) , from Excel spreadsheet to the Arbor/BP database. (this was necessary to help provisioning team to provision a large amount of internal customers in a short time)
• In charge of the definition of implementation requirements for existing and new Data and Voice products. Main functional interface with the Cap Gemini implementation team. In charge of the functional analysis and evaluation of T_VPN (world wide VPN using Deutsche Telekom (Amdocs) and other T-System's partners mediation, biller, network and existing products) , Intelligent services, Toll free, Toll shared, Add-Values Numbers ).
• Business Analyst for a new Editing and Printing system that include the externalization of the scheduling, controlling printing and dispatching functions.
• Analysis, design and implementation of the Invoice interface to the DWH and SAP. Before the Bill cycle we calculate the amount and volume of the usage to bill, and after the bill cycle we transfer RC/NRC/Discount/Adjustment and Usage and Unit Credit information to SAP and DWH.
• Project Manager for Number portability for enterprise customers. We implement mobile and fix number portability using network and CRM information.
Project Manager for Free Numbers, Cost Shared and Values Shared numbers (Intelligent Switch Platform for 0800 and 0890 numbers).
The complexity resides in the way to reverse the add-values of the call to the service provider. We have used Arbor to produce the Order for Reversal Paper (in French : “Bon à facturer”).
Strong interaction with MEDIATION/Accounting/CMR / DWH/ Statistics/ Invoice Presentation on WEB.
• Implementation of Data Services with usage (Data VPN). Definition of the mediation CDR, rate and discount model, invoice design.
• Processing audit and data cleaning of the CRM referential before the implementation of the Automatic provisioning system (EAI WebMethod)between SAP-SIEBEL-ARBOR-MEDIATION. The idea was to identify the source for each typology of customer and to dispatch customers data from the source to others systems. The complexity was to identify the various different existing rules and actors and to clean up existing databases to have a consistent referential Database.
• Production support for Provisioning, Rating and Billing processing.
2001, 3 months: For BLU Telecom spa (Italy)
BLU is the 4th Italian Mobile operator offering mass market and business pre-paid and post-paid mobile services.
• Project manager in charge of the Arbor/BP and OM software upgrade (8.1 to 9.1) and Euro migration study. Definition of the migration plan, resources plan, risk plan, and functional and technical environment. Definition of the Business rules according with the Italian low and of the business plan taking in account all existing client milestones. Working on the impact analysis for 34 interfaces and for Arbor Rating, Discounting, Financial (Journal, Balance, Payments, Collection). Definition of the new format invoice and of the rounding methods. The project was validated by the client but postponed to September.
• Responsible for studying a new technical architecture that allows the implementation of new product/services in 2/4 months. Working with a team of 14 people of CAP Gemini & Ernst Young Italy and Lucent Technologies. The study involved provisioning (Clarify,N@atel), Billing (Arbor BP/OM), Financial (SAP) and mediation. The major issue was the large number of interfaces and workarounds that increased the complexity and influenced negatively the possibility to evolve to a stable and easy to use billing system. This study was in parallel of the Euro study.
1999-01, 20 months: For UTA Telekom AG (Austria)
UTA Telekom provides fixed telephony services to both business and residential customers throughout Austria, offering Intelligent Services, Leased Line, Frame Relay, Internet, ASDN, VPN and ISDN services.
• BA for UTA analysis and design solution team..
• In charge of the definition of implementation requirements for existing and new Data and Voice products. Main functional interface with the EDS implementation team. Implementation of the new global discount plan across services. Implementation of an in-house credit note module for Intelligent services.
• I In charge of the definition of implementation requirements for VPN, Intelligent services, Toll free, Toll shared, Global International Discount plan across services, Internet and voice Unbundling packages, ADSL, Week-End flat fee, Telenetworking, eShop/ASP/File hosting / Web Hosting/Database Hosting products.
• Responsible for Premium Rate product’s migration from Arbor BP 7.1 and OM 1.3.7b to Arbor/BP 9.1 and OM 1.3.7d.
• Functional support for Euro Migration. UTA was one of the first 3 projects testing and running the Kenan EURO Migration scripts. The project was done in 3 months with a team of 12 experienced people. In charge of the functional validation of the migration design, and interfaces. In charge of some business issues and rounding and precision roles (In the rated CDRs, Balance, Invoice Tables etc). In charge of the Euro conversion of a In-House Credit Notes Interface.
1098-99, 14 months: For Carrefour, a Worldwide retail company (France)
The “Thales” project was a 3-year program to realize the value of a significant business case through the global implementation of PeopleSoft and business process changes. The technical architecture project phase was comprised of the design, development, and the deployment of the components necessary to support the PeopleSoft implementation in 22+ countries, 300+ sites, and 3000+ users. The development environment consisted of PeopleSoft related components, Oracle, HPUX, Tuxedo, ReportMart, Sagent, IIS, PVCS and other satellite products, 90 developers, and 250+ project personnel. (150 M$).
• Planning and estimating the effort of the Technical Architecture project implementation phase (90 people).
• In charge of the definition and validation, on behalf of Carrefour, of the EDS proposal to move the existing development infrastructure and to implement the production infrastructure to the EDS data-center. (Outsourcing Contract)
• Design and implementation of the Help Desk (processes and tool) to solve problems and coordinate teams of various countries.
• In charge of the first negotiation with product vendors and integrators for software and services (Hardware was pre-negotiated).
• In charge of the development infrastructure team (composed of 10 Andersen Consulting, PeopleSoft, HP and Oracle personnel) developing the components and tools supporting the PeopleSoft installation, environment migration and change management system using PeopleTools on the development site and in each deployment site.
1997-98, 18 months: For AT&T-Unisource, a telecommunication company. (Netherlands)
The SBS project was a 2 year program to merge 2 existing Data and Voice billing platforms (TIMS and GBP) to a unique billing platform (Arbor/BP) with in addition to rebuilding the Mediation Layer, the Rating system, the Reporting System and all interfaces from and to the Billing system. The final goal was to adopt and build the technology to extend business functionality for data and voice services and to reduce the implementation life cycle of new products, services, and discounts.
The development environment consists of Arbor/BP and related components, Sybase, HPUX, Dephi, ReportSmith, C, Unix shell and other satellite products; 20 developers and Business Analysts. (6 M$).
• Estimation, analysis and development of corporate discount and new data and voice services, also in charge of the evaluation and implementation of all Change Requests not in the original scope.
• Responsible for the team customer traffic reports and financial internal reports. Traffic reports covered voice VNS, BVS, International Call Center, Teleconference (ACS), Mobile and Transfer Price. We designed and built 2 modules, the Report and Operation Manager that managed all reporting operations and report objects using Arbor provisioning tables and another Report Generator that used configuration and usage tables to retrieve data and to produce reports. In addition to those modules, we implemented an automatic CSR management system that permitted to organize and follow the day-to-day CSR production. Training of the Billing administrators and billing operators on the new reporting and interface system.
• Responsible for the migration team for migrating Accounts, Services, Equipment, Bill formats and Report options from GBP and TIMS to Arbor/BP.
• Responsible for the overall development and operational technical architecture of the billing solution. Reports, Inbound and outbound Interfaces, development environment and tools. An example of interface was the EDI revenue declaration, End Customer-Transfer Price synchronization, Mediation and VNS-WorldSource Module. In charge of the performance of the Billing Platform (Kenan products Mcap, Cap, Bip and BIF and internal developments like Mediation Layer, Transfer Price interface, Reports, Commitment Discount batch, Rate Interface), with direct contact with the client in order to define project scope, software and hardware solution and detailed product specifications.
• In charge of the feasibility study and evaluation of Changes for introducing Kenan Strategist as the report/data managing system. We worked closely with Kenan to build a prototype using AT&T-Unisource data.
1996-97 12 months: For SIRIS, a French telecommunication operator. (France)
Requirement analysis and configuration of the Fixed Assets Management system and Basic Components system (SAP). Design of the Financial (assets management) data model.
Functional analysis and development of interfaces between the billing and the financial system (Arbor BP 6.0 and SAP 3-FI/CO/AM). We disconnect the Arbor Payments and Balance to use the SAP one. The interface consists in taking all information from Arbor Invoice and discounts tables, apply some financial rules and inject results data into SAP. The second interface was to implement Financial Cost Center notions into Arbor.
Functional analysis and development billing multi-currency. (This was not supported by Arbor BP 6.0)
1995-96: For I3F, an important French Social Housing Property Management. (France)
Responsible for the development team (5 people) in charge of the automatic conversion system from IMS and DB2 to Oracle under Unikix (3000 TP programs and 2000 batch programs )
1995: For the trading department of the French financial institution Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations. (France)
Study of an evaluation method for the middleware on which will be founded the “Information Bus”. Perform the evaluation of the middleware using Teknekron TIB and Sybase OpenClient / OpenServer.
1993 - 1995: For EDF GDF the French Power Supply Department. (France)
Customer Care and interface with billing iQE/CLIO system implementation to manage EDF GDF residential and Business customers (Niveau1/Cible). Data Model analysis, design and implementation for the whole Customer Care project. Feasibility study, design and development of the technical architecture to implement business batches and processes to downsizing and upsizing between the Data Center (IBM 3090 system) and Agencies (UNIX AIX and HPUX system). Study and optimization of all batch processes under SYBASE /C /Unix / BO.
1992 - 1993: For the DREE-CFCE , the French Department of Finance and Budget. (France)
Feasibility study and development of the Management and Accounting information system of Foreign Economic Relationships Department.
1992- 1988: Various project for some Italian and French banks, ""Cassa di risparmio di Parma e Piacenza"", BPTB, Crédit Agricole and CCF, CDC. (Italy/France)
Various projects as developer and analyst for Marketing, Accountant and Controlling in Cobol, DB2, VSAM, CICS, IMS.
