SURESH Venkataraman

Program Management Professional | IT Transformation Leader
Glen Waverley, AU.

About

Highly accomplished Program Management Professional with over 20 years of experience leading complex IT transformation initiatives for Big 4 consulting firms, top banks, and Tier 1 companies. Expert in driving multi-million dollar projects, optimizing business performance through AI, Big Data, and Machine Learning, and delivering high-quality, on-budget, and on-time solutions. Adept at C-level stakeholder management, fostering cultural change, and building high-performing, geographically dispersed teams to create significant customer value and IP.

Work

Aussie Digital Business Systems
|

Principal Consultant - Project Director

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Summary

Led strategic IT Digital transformation and digital presence initiatives for clients, developing ICT strategies and implementing solutions from conception to completion.

Highlights

Consulted on business transformation, developing ICT strategies and implementing solutions for digital presence in Internet and social media.

Migrated traditional systems to Microsoft cloud (MS Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business, Yammer, Teams, Office Productivity tools) for clients.

Consolidated 5 international offices into highly streamlined networked environments using VOIP, videoconferencing, dedicated leased fibre lines, CCTV, and enhanced security.

Rolled out new cloud-based infrastructure and custom open-source applications (ticket management, CRM, ERP) for cost-effective operations.

Delivered projects within stipulated timelines and budgets, ensuring high-quality outcomes.

Charles Sturt University
|

Consultant - IT Transformation

NSW, Australia

Summary

Provided strategic advice on Agile project management frameworks (SAFe) and built technical competence in automation testing for business transformation.

Highlights

Advised on Agile project management (SAFe) to enhance business adaptation, increase productivity, and minimize cost overruns.

Developed technical competence in Agile project management and agile testing frameworks for the client.

Trained in-house staff on Agile Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and customer-engaged practices.

Consulted on business transformation, setting up teams on SAFe methodology, and translating requirements into program objectives.

Nissan Casting
|

Consultant - IT Transformation

VIC, Australia

Summary

Advised on strategic IT transformation, migrating applications and establishing an integrated IT center of excellence, involving major consulting and offshore integrators.

Highlights

Consulted on IT transformation and migration of various applications, including 20-year-old legacy systems, into an enterprise-wide integrated IT center.

Developed ICT strategies and implemented business and project plans, high-level road maps, and solution designs.

Gathered significant data for program readiness and demonstrated Proof of Concept for transforming Lotus 123 into an automated RDBMS system.

Managed end-to-end project integration, coordinating senior decision-makers and C-level stakeholders.

IBM
|

Project Manager

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Summary

Managed the NAB Project 20, focusing on Lotus Notes to Outlook Migration, ensuring timely and budget-compliant delivery.

Highlights

Successfully managed the migration of Lotus Notes to Outlook for NAB Project 20, ensuring seamless transition.

Coordinated project activities to meet timeline and budgetary targets for critical system upgrades.

Collaborated with stakeholders to minimize disruption during large-scale email platform migration.

Ensured data integrity and user adoption through careful planning and execution of the migration process.

Imageshare International
|

Lead Project Manager

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Summary

Spearheaded a strategic cloud-based business transformation initiative, migrating infrastructure and applications to a self-managed AWS cloud.

Highlights

Led a 5-project rollout program to migrate infrastructure and applications to a fully self-managed AWS cloud, implementing 12 product instances.

Managed stakeholder expectations and external vendors, negotiating contractual arrangements and ensuring performance against cost, timeframe, and quality service levels.

Delivered agreed milestones on time (May 2014) within a $3M budget and in compliance with Health regulations, without business disruption.

Received recognition for adopting an innovative hybrid model for managing releases across regions, recommended for patent registration.

IBM
|

Project Manager

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Summary

Managed a $5M budget and a team of 6 direct reportees for NAB's IT Transformation & Transition program, migrating physical to virtual private cloud.

Highlights

Managed a multi-phase transformation program for NAB, overseeing 4 major streams and 20+ projects migrating physical to virtual private cloud.

Directed infrastructure on demand (IOD) migrations (P2V/V2V), OSI installations, database/middleware setup, and data centre relocations.

Managed application migrations for wholesale and wealth banking, including testing and deployment, mainframe virtualization, and OSI migration.

Planned and executed disaster recovery projects with hot/hot, hot/cold, and cold/cold backups, including process creation and trial runs.

Managed the physical lift and shift of data centre migration due to building lease end, ensuring no business-impacting issues.

IBM
|

Project Manager

Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Summary

Managed the Information Centre of Excellence (ICE) project for BHP Billiton with a $3M budget and 4 direct reportees, establishing integrated services capabilities.

Highlights

Established ICC development, test, QA, and production environments for hardware, storage, server setup, configuration, and application installation.

Developed integrated services capability, SOA services for IM Program Delivery, and enterprise-wide reporting using WebSphere and SAP Business Objects.

Managed critical hardware infrastructure components, including Network, Mainframe transformation, Desktop, Data Centre, Service Desk, Hosting, Mail & Collaboration, and SOA integration.

Acted as a single point of contact for all project-related activities, ensuring timely and budget-compliant delivery without business-impacting issues.

Received recognition for project deliverables, with project documents recommended as a reference guide by the steering committee.

AVACORP
|

Project / Release and Test Manager

VIC, Australia

Summary

Managed the COLLAB / SharePoint project with a $500,000 budget and 6 direct reportees, streamlining product customizations and managing releases in an Agile environment.

Highlights

Streamlined, prioritized, built, and tested product customizations for Avacorp's Microsoft-based products (Collab, Collab-Lite, Flitter, CBAM).

Managed all releases in an Agile methodology with a fixed 3-week development cycle, ensuring all requirements were tested before customer delivery.

Reviewed requirements with sales, pre-sales, business analysts, and users to deliver 3 sets of documents per product line within stipulated windows.

Created a new Agile process workflow to ensure timely and efficient delivery across geographically dispersed teams.

Achieved special appreciation from IBM senior managers and customer recognition for best practices adopted in the project.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA)
|

Project / Release and Test Manager

NSW, Australia

Summary

Managed BI Integrated Report Releases for Vodafone Hutchison Australia with a $750,000 budget and 4 direct reportees, consolidating Business Support Systems post-merger.

Highlights

Implemented 7 enhancements in a single release window for 4 projects, successfully executing 1200 test cases within 3 weeks with limited resources.

Consolidated Business Support Systems (BSS) domain to realize synergies post-merger of Vodafone Australia and Hutchison Telecommunications Australia.

Delivered agreed milestones on time and within budget, with no business-impacting issues across various migration projects.

Managed projects related to Butterfly migration, Reverse migrations, Campaigns ASL2, Active pop, Budget and Forecasting reports, PINS and SIMS, CLIR.

Tech Mahindra
|

Project Manager

Chennai, TN, India

Summary

Accomplished two phases of a single integrated customer Franchise datamart for Suncorp, enabling predictive analysis, event-based marketing, and top customer reporting.

Highlights

Developed a single integrated customer Franchise datamart, enabling Predictive Analysis & Modelling, Event Based Marketing (EBM), and Top Customer Reporting.

Managed scope, risks, vendors, executive reporting, and project costs, delivering within a $3M budget without business-impacting issues.

Built strong relationships with 2 C-level executives and various departments (Applications, Networks) to prioritize and achieve project deliverables.

Conceived and implemented an innovative Agile model for BI projects, recognized for successful complex integration and smart handling of 2 scope creeps.

Managed and gained approval for scope, schedule, and budget variations, maintaining up-to-date project documentation.

Tech Mahindra
|

Senior Project Manager

Chennai, TN, India

Summary

Supervised, coached, and mentored a team of Project Managers, managing a $10M portfolio of discretionary and non-discretionary projects for clients like Telstra, QBE, Qantas, Suncorp and DHL.

Highlights

Managed a $10M portfolio of discretionary and non-discretionary projects, overseeing applications development, technology refresh, certification, and security compliance.

Implemented and rolled out several programs/projects using SDLC, Waterfall, and Agile methodologies.

Led initiatives including EDW Transformation (Scope Management), TR1 Remediation (Corporate Data Warehouse), CDW RTCMS (new data warehouse application rollout), and CDW SFTP upgrade.

Delivered agreed milestones on time and within budget for all projects, ensuring no business-impacting issues.

Coached and mentored Project Managers in executing complex projects across various domains.

iGATE Global Solutions
|

Lead Business Analyst / Project Manager

TN, India

Summary

Led multiple projects as a Lead Business Analyst and Project Manager, delivering solutions for GE Businesses and other clients.

Highlights

Implemented several projects (over 70) for GE Businesses, including GE Capital, GE-Aircraft Engines, GE-Plastics, and Global Financial Restructure.

Successfully developed reusable solutions and IP, creating tangible value for customers and enabling value register measurement.

Ensured alignment with strategic plans, enterprise priorities, and effective use of budget dollars by delivering on time with quality.

Increased application availability by reducing Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and achieved significant cost reductions for vendors and customers.

Managed large teams across geographies, optimizing resourcing models, skill management through cross-training, and devising retention programs.

Sikkert Technologies
|

Analyst Programmer / Sr. Systems Analyst

TN, India

Summary

Developed and implemented systems as an Analyst Programmer and Sr. Systems Analyst, contributing to various projects.

Highlights

Contributed to implementing projects for various clients, including University of Madras, Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, and Chennai Telephones.

Applied extensive experience in Oracle, SQL Server, Teradata, JAVA, C, C#, Visual Basic/VB.NET, and other technical tools.

Utilized quality assurance tools like WinRunner, Quick Test Pro, Quality Centre/ALM, and Silk Test for project delivery.

Supported system development and maintenance across various platforms and technologies.

Education

NIIT Chennai
Chennai, TN, India

Post Graduate Diploma

Systems Management

University of Madras
Chennai, TN, India

B.Sc.

Maths, Physics, and Computer Science

Languages

English

Certificates

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Issued By

PMI

Human Centric Design

Issued By

Dr. Meliss (Huddle)

Skills

Program & Project Management

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT, PMP, Agile, Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, SDLC, Waterfall, Project Planning, Risk Management, Budget Management, Stakeholder Management, Change Management, Governance, Project Charters, Schedules, Plans, Cost Sheets, Critical Tasks, Dependencies, Estimation, Metrics, Dashboards, Resource Management, Talent Acquisition, Skill Management, Retention Programs, KPI Tracking.

IT Strategy & Transformation

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION, IT Transformation, IT Strategy, Digital Transformation, Digital Presence, Business Integration, ICT Strategies, Solution Design, Recommendations, Proof of Concept (POC), Enterprise Architecture, Business Change Management, Human Centric Design, Process Optimization, Strategic Planning.

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS, EC2, S3, RDS, Azure, Microsoft Cloud, Infrastructure Virtualization, Data Centre Migration, P2V/V2V Migration, OSI Installation, Cloud-based Infrastructure, Wintel, VMWare, Midrange, IIS, Networks, Mainframe Transformation.

Data & Analytics

Big Data, Machine Learning, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI), BI Integrated Report Releases, Customer Franchise DataMart, Predictive Analysis, Modelling, Event Based Marketing (EBM), Top Customer Reporting, Data Warehousing (CDW), Oracle, SQL Server, Teradata, IBM Informix, Hyperion Essbase, Business Objects, Cognos, Crystal Reports, OBIEE, Data Stage, Info Sphere Data Stage/Quality Stage.

Software Development & QA

JAVA, J2EE, C, C#, .NET, Visual Basic, VB.NET, grails, webmethods, tomcat, SOAP / XML, puppet, SVN, GIT, Cucumber, WinRunner, Quick Test Pro, Quality Centre / ALM, Silk Test, JIRA, subversion, HP-QC, Instalsheild, flexera.

CRM & ERP

sugarcrm, odoo, HESK, SAP, SAP Business Objects Enterprise, SAP MII, Siebel, Kenan, ER-Win.

Operating Systems & Databases

RHEL v5, Oracle 11.2, Lotus 123, Lotus Notes Domino, Windows Server 2008.

Collaboration & Productivity

Microsoft Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business, Yammer, Teams, Office Productivity tools, IBM Web Content Manager, IBM WebSphere Portal Server, TRIM / Document Management systems.

IBM WebSphere Ecosystem

IBM WebSphere Application Server, IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, IBM WebSphere Process Server, IBM Deployment Server, IBM WebSphere Repository and Registry, IBM Rational Tools, IBM Tivoli.

References

References

Available on Request