Project Management

In this section, I want to explain to you some of the projects I've led across my professional career, over 15 years in implementation projects of software and hardware in international environments and transformation of the information systems of the companies in which I worked.

Of all the projects undertaken and lessons learned I would highlight the following:

Dedar Milano: As head of the Information Systems & Organization department (CIO) in Group Dedar and Faubourg, my first task was to create the entire Information Systems & Organization Department from scratch. Before my arrival at the company, there were two separate groups, one with the technician in charge of keep running the servers and telecommunications, and the other one with the project managers, that oversees the external consultants that are developing the main software in the company, an old ERP. 

At this point, I have worked on developing these three main points for the department: Organization, Strategy, and Methodology to create the new and innovative Information Systems department, in detail: 

Organization

I have created a structure with two principal areas:

Applications Area: This area has in charge of the role of linking the specific activities of the company, the business processes, and the applications that support and implement them. This role is developed in two sub-areas:

  • Project Management, to manage the improvements of our Processes, Products, and Services, with these steps: 
    • Demand Management, to collect, analyze plan for and manage the company’s demand regarding processes, products, and services.
    • Portfolio Management is the management of the processes, methods, and technologies used to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects. In this step, the objectives are to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and to schedule activities to achieve the organization’s goals.
    • Development, Test, Go Live & Maintenance of our processes, products, services, and improvements. 
  • Processes & Organization, it results crucial to have a very good knowledge and comprehension of the company’s operation logic, together with a vision of how the company has its organizational order, in other words, the relationship between Process and Persons, to obtain this information we work in this way: 
    • Applications Map, which furnishes a panning of the existing general application architecture in the company, as well as, it determines the functionality and services that every application offer.
    • Business Process Modeling & Reengineering, to improve correctly our business processes, I have created structures to manage those processes, working to plan, document, implement and distribute an organization’s business processes with the support of information technology. With the knowledge of our processes, we work also in the re-engineering of them to gain a competitive advantage, because maybe our existing ways of doing things may not be the most effective or efficient. 

Technical Area: This area participates in the growth of the business through the Technological Innovation that brings to the company. Doing this on two levels:

  • Infrastructure &Telecommunications, which defines, implements and manage a unique technology strategy for headquarter, branch offices, and showroom consolidating and defining homogeneous solutions for all the group information systems, ensuring quality and standardized services for all our employees and customers. 
  • Service Desk allows providing centralized global support to all our collaborators in all our locations. To achieve this, we:
    • Select and coordinate the local IT provider and technological partners, defining with them the contracts and the SLA required
    • Monitoring and issues identification in all the company area to proactive communication to the users about the issues and their resolution times 

Strategy

I have defined a Strategy for the department that allows, always, all our colleagues the chance to develop their work with all the information that they need when they need; this Strategy is based on:

  • The Information Systems' Team, with a hierarchy, a clear responsibility definition for everyone, and a methodology to develop their projects. In this way, the staff is able to determine their purpose in the department.
  • Information System Plan, to define our future steps and to share this strategy with the Board Committee.
  • Security Policies, in order to create and extend a Security Culture, into the company, involving the users as the first line in security prevention.
  • Communication Plan, to gain the users' confidence we communicate our goals, developments, and innovations using our Intranet.
  • The IT-Reference figure is a person who receives a specific IT training from us, to provide the first IT contact in his department. It's the way to improve the users' technical knowledge in the company. 

Methodology

I have implemented a working Methodology that allows collecting the requests and provides feedback to our colleagues. In this way, the department becomes reliable for them. We use:

  • ITIL, to manage our services improving the interaction with our users about a request of Demand, Portfolio, Development, Testing, Go-live, and continuous improvement.
  • Agile and PMBOK, in order to manage the projects around three axes Technology, Processes, and People.
  • KPI, to know the real situation of our Information Systems we have been defined some KPIs with the aim of measuring three types of performance:
  • Efficiency and Efficiency, where we measure "productivity" and "cost" to obtaining the output.
  • Quality, where we measure the "conformance" of the output with respect to the requests.
  • Service Level, where we measure parameters (response times and flexibility) over the ways in which output is provided.
  • The survey, where we receive the users’ feedback about the Services offered by the Information Systems Department 

With these main points - Organization, Strategy, and Methodology – implemented in our department, we are able to:

  • To Ensure services of quality and standardized to all our colleagues and customers around the world;
  • To Help our colleagues to follow the paths that lead to solutions suited to their requirements;
  • To Consolidate by creating integrated solutions into the Information Systems;
  • To Participate in business growth through Technological Innovation;
  • To Develop all these projects:
    • Digital Transformation, to share the info from our current ERP with:
      • B2B platform inside our Web Site, where our customers can check their orders & reserves status, see product details and availability or info about invoiced, statistics, etc.…
      • App for our Sales team, where they can manage and follow their own clients like in a CRM
      • E-commerce
    • Business Intelligence tool, for Board Committee reporting
    • Internet Portal to share access to our applications
    • Technical improvements, in our network (LAN & WAN), our servers, and a private telephone switchboard.
    • Document Management system and Intranet to share information among the company's staff.
    • New ERP, as Project Leader I’m accountable to coordinate the task and relationship among the Process owners, users, consultants, project managers, implementers, developer & technician teams. The steps for this project was:
      1. Starting with the Macro-Processes, the classical Michael Porter’s Value Chain, we went down to map all our Processes, in their current state “As-Is”, with SOP (standard operations procedure) methodology defining the Process Owners of everyone.
      2. We have improved some processes, working with the Process Owners, to define the “To-Be” to implement in the new ERP.
      3. We have written the “Business Requirements” where we have defined the more important functionalities for our business in our company, a total of 1247 requirements.
      4. The “Request for Proposal” document to share our company info and vision with 3 ERP implementation partners in order to receive their offers.
      5. We have done our Software & Partner Selection for the new ERP project
      6. We have defined a “Contract Agreement” with the select partner.
      7. We have written the Functional analysis (business blueprints) for every process with the aim to implement them into the new ERP
      8. Software & Infrastructure environments Installation
      9. Supervision of parametrization new ERP software
      10. Supervision of Z-Programs' development and the Objects Data Interfaces migration
      11. Supervision of Key Users Acceptation Test
      12. Organization of Users’ Training
      13. Supervision of loading of last 5 years data in the new ERP
      14. We'll ready to Go live in 2020 

Leroy Merlin Italia: As an overall technical manager in the company in the last years I have been worked in the transformation of the company from a multichannel company to a cross-channel company, in order to guarantee the collaboration between major areas, namely, sales (shops, website, call center), distribution (logistics, transportation, and delivery) and communication (marketing and internet) in the way to offer customers a uniformity and consistency in all stages of their purchase in all possible channels.

Within all this business model transformation and reorganization of the company, I highlight my work in the definition and implementation of all the technical solutions needed to achieve it. In particular in the following areas:

Infrastructure: When I started working in Leroy Merlin there were a lot of problems with the servers, especially with its management, availability, and WAN and LAN networking systems. So one of my first tasks was to conduct the following projects:

  • I wanted to start with some reports BIA (business impact analysis) for all services and enterprise applications, in order to detect the availability needs and possible risks to them.
  • The next step was to virtualize all servers, a total of 456, both at headquarters and in the existing 47 stores in Italy with VMware's solutions.
  • To ensure maximum availability of our systems, we created a Private Cloud for all our applications that are located in three different data centers. The first in each of our 47 stores, with the applications supporting sales and cash, a second data center provider located in Milan for all our core business applications, and the last data center in our headquarters in France for applications shared with other business units. This division of a Private Cloud into 3 parts not only guarantees high availability for all applications but also guarantees a low time-to-market in the implementation of our applications and greater ease in management. The success of this project has been possible thanks to a perfect definition of services, management, tasks, KPI, and SLA that different external suppliers in Italy and in France offer us.
  • I decided to reuse the data center in our headquarters as a Disaster Recovery site, where do daily replicas of all our applications, as defined in our Business Continuity - Disaster Recovery plan. In addition, we use it as a development environment and test for new applications.
  • Within this dynamic of cloud computing, I decided to use some applications like SaaS, such as email and collaboration tools, where I have chosen to use the Microsoft Office 365 solution and our payroll system with ADP and like PaaS for our website Amazon AWS.

Telecommunications: In the field of telecommunications, I have had to ensure the best possible communication with a very low round trip time and redundancy among the three types of data center already mentioned, the 47 stores Leroy Merlin Italy, our Private Cloud outsourced in Milan and the applications at the headquarters in France, which has forced us to create a complicated and secure communication network, with an MPLS among headquarters and stores, Lan-Link among headquarters, data center and the headquarters in France. In addition, to help our customers we have installed systems "Wi-Fi Free" for all of them in our stores, so they can have a satisfying experience in the scenarios of "WEB to STORE" or ROPO (Research Online - Purchase Offline) and M-commerce.

E-Commerce: To launch the website as an e-commerce site in Italy, was migrated from an informative website to an e-commerce site, I have created a Hybrid Cloud, connecting the Amazon site, Public Cloud, with the production servers in the Private Cloud with a double VPN over the Internet using a Cisco ASA 5505. In this way we can ensure the availability of information of product, stock, volume, accepting payments, etc ... in time real.

I would add that Hybrid Cloud implementation project, between Public Cloud services (Amazon) with our website and our Private Cloud divided into 3 different data center, and how the management and tasks of the IT department have adapted to work with him, with a business core system in outsourcing, it has made us win the "Cloud Innovation Award" from the Politecnico of Milano in 2013, more information about this award on my website "Awards".

Processes: One of the most interesting projects done lately has been that I've done with the selection and implementation of a new system of middleware ESB (Software AG) that it has allowed us to implement SOA architecture in all our services, using web service. But the most important and useful is that we have also installed a BPM "Aris" (Software AG) that allows us the mapping, model, applying, execute and monitor all our processes, so we now have the deepest knowledge of our processes.

Supply Chain: In the Supply Chain area we have implemented a new warehouse management system (Manhattan Associates) for the management of the central warehouse that has allowed us to work in cross-docking with all products. My work in this field has developed in two ways, first by participating in the definition of processes to ensure availability of the product in the e-commerce, on how to use the full potential of ESB and BPM and the second as a head technician in the deployment of the new warehouse management system. Now I'm working on the tracking order systems for our customers and of TMS (Transport Management System) for the management and transport optimization.

Customer Service- Call Center: In this area we have implemented a Call Center Service, centralized, for e-commerce customers, using Virtual PBX located in a telecommunications provider, and a delocalized in the 47 stores Leroy Merlin Italy using Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX VoIP, for customers who want to talk to the shops, but always with access to centralized CRM systems. My work has been to select the provider of Virtual PBX, to select the provider of the software of Call Center system with IVR and CTI (Genesys), and to develop the VoIP system that supports the service. Now I'm working on the purchasing system via telephone, with a special emphasis on security in payment.

Business Intelligence: In all that is the reports’ world, we have implemented the QlikView system, and now we are working on a new data warehouse.

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Grupo Interbus and Neo Advertising: As head of the information systems of these two companies I have lived, unfortunately, a period of economic hardship due to the severe economic crisis that existed, and for this reason, my best effort has been directed towards the management of expenditure on IT. I can say that in this period I have learned how important it is to handle properly the budget, expenditure, and all investments of IT in a company. But it was also my first time as IT director and as a member of the Board of Directors, where I took my first steps in defining an enterprise business strategy.

About projects, in Grupo Interbus I want to highlight the implementation of control systems position of the bus fleet in service and systems to collect real-time data of travelers to board the buses, as well as the management of these data with Indra systems. And we launched a new data center where all enterprise's servers were virtualized.

And about projects in Neo Advertising I want to highlight the projects of digital signage and screens installed at various shopping centers and its content management. Together with the creation of a Service Desk, from scratch, to support and fix all incidents of existing broadcast systems in customers' locations.

Europcar Spain: As head of all applications and software in Europcar Spain, the most important thing I learned in this company was the way to work in an international environment, with a new concept of how to do things, because it was necessary to work with a perspective different about the potential impacts on the company's modifications or implementations of new applications, not just a country level but also at international level.

About projects, I highlight the definition and implementation, with my team, of several web services for customers, such as integration with the booking system or invoice Online rental vehicle from the website. Ever we were working in collaboration with other countries. This dynamic of international collaboration also highlights the changes made shared with other countries, such as car rental and fleet management and distribution applications.

In addition, also it highlights the implementation of a new ERP for Human Resources - Meta4, where he also implemented interfaces to load data from a new universe created in the data warehouse, in order to pay for store staff incentives based on the number of rented cars for days, updating category, etc ...

Indra Sistemas: As Project Manager and as a Technology and Finance Consultant in banking and financial companies and in the transport companies I have learned how to lead large teams of development, respecting deadlines, take care of the costs, people management, methodologies ... Or in other words, I acquired the ability to lead a complex development project.

I highlight my work as Project in the "Broker Online for CAM", where for nearly two years I have led a team of 25 people to develop a broker online using Inversis services

El Corte Ingles: As Project Manager, I have developed the connection among web pages of the website for travel booking, developed in Java, and mainframe systems in CICS and IMS environments.

 

Difusio & Telemarketing Group: As Project Manager, I have worked on the integration of internal developments for the collection of data with incoming/outgoing calls from customers using CTI and TSAPI from Lucent PBX technology.