Richard Shanks

Richard Shanks

$95/hr
Senior Solutions Consultant
Reply rate:
-
Availability:
Full-time (40 hrs/wk)
Age:
41 years old
Location:
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Experience:
13 years
RICHARD SHANKS CURRICULUM VITAE Personal Details E-mail:-Mobile:- Notice Period: 3 months ID Number:- Marital Status: Single Education & Qualifications Diploma Comprehensive Programming - Computer Training Institute (CTI) Advanced Linux Certificate - Computer Training Institute (CTI) Admin Linux Certificate - Computer Training Institute (CTI) Project Management Fundamentals (PM Ideas) Planning, Organizing, and Leading (Workwise) Project Management Intermediate (PM Ideas) B.com Degree - Currently Studying Informatics (UNISA) Certified NLP Practitioner (Mental Combat) Certified Life Coach (Mental Combat) Profile Senior Solution Consultant for the Africa region at Business Logic Systems, with over 12 years experience in the IT field. For the last year I have been working in the ‘Go to Market’ team, which helps relay all new product information to the various regions. This includes assisting with on-site demos, sales presentations, as well as account management for some of our African sites. Prior to BLS I was with Emagine International for 6 years, performing various roles within the company. I started as a Technical Marketing Operation Specialist, and within the first two years moved into the role of Customer Value Delivery Manager. This role required a combination of skills for our biggest client, Vodacom SA. This was primarily a client focused role in Service Delivery and client satisfaction, and entailed providing guidance and advice on campaign configuration, up-selling of additional product development, and managing the onsite team. I then moved into the role of Capability Delivery Manager. This role required me to be the product expert, to provide best practice campaign configuration and execution, training of new product functionality, both on-site and at other client sites like Etisilat Nigeria, as well as up-selling of additional development days and Marketing Support. This role also required me to assist in a Pre-Sales role, assisting with presentations to Vodacom Tanzania, Vodacom Mozambique, and Brutel - a fixed line operator in Brunei. In this role I have also had some exposure to various campaign management systems such as Chordiant, Flytext and Pontis. Using my combined skill set of my technical background and customer facing skills I have been able to perform in this ever-changing and demanding industry. Prior to my current employment I worked as a Database manager using SQL Server 2005. I used SQL Server primarily to compile ad hoc reports for the researches based at the UKZN – Med School, as well as liaising with Harvard University in Boston and Cambridge University in England. These reports were used in AIDS research papers which were then published in medical articles, journals, and other academic papers. Maintaining the database here included making sure that data integrity was maintained at all times and rectified if incorrect. My prior two years were worked primarily in Oracle Applications 10g, Oracle Webforms, Oracle DBMS SQL and PL/SQL 10g - 9i, Crystal Reports and Unix Scripting, Oracle Stored Procedures and Program Units specialising in Forms, Reports and Applications development within the Medical Aid/Insurance and Financial market sectors. Working within these areas has given me a good working knowledge of the complete Oracle environment. Strong client facing skills, which have been used to quickly and efficiently solve clients required needs and provide solutions, means that I work well in a team. I am also highly motivated individual able to adapt to any working environment. Page 1 of 6 RICHARD SHANKS Technical Skill Summary: Operating systems: Languages/Tools: Databases: Internet: Database objects: Network Connectivity: Office: Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/2007, Mac OS X, Unix, Novell Netware and Linux Oracle Forms 10g – 4.5i, Oracle Webforms, Oracle Reports 10g – 6i, SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle RDBMS dev/admin, Visual Basic 6, VBA, Unix Scripting, Oracle Stored Procedures and Program Units, T-SQL, SQL Loader, Crystal Reports, TOAD, SQL Developer, JDeveloper 10g, MS Visual Studio, Perl Teradata, Oracle 11g – 6i, SQL Server 2005, MS Access Dbase VB6, XML, VBscript, DHTML, HTML, ASP, ActiveX ADO, DAO, RDO, DOA ODBC, TCP/IP MS Word, MS Excel, MS Outlook, MS Access, MS Powerpoint Page 2 of 6 RICHARD SHANKS Employment History Company Business Logic Systems Employment Date July 2015 – Present Position Senior Solution Consultant - Africa Involvement in ‘Existing Customer Up-sell / Cross-sell’ (Farming) sales processes  Provide pre-sales support to the CSO, Sales and CPM teams in the BLS customer base in the Africa region, by assisting, where required, with solution presentations, demonstrations, solution workshops (design, preparation and delivery) as well as assisting with general solution and business case Q&A throughout the customer lifecycle.  Assist with the strategy, documentation of and submission of upsell business proposals and supporting sales collateral in the Africa region led by the Sales Directors.  Manage, where possible, the production of customer endorsed use cases to add to the GTM-produced sales collateral.  During the post-commitment sales stage of any project or change request, assist the CPM and Solution Specialist in the process of eliciting the Statement of Works (SoW) for the projects ensuring the scope covers the commercial requirement of the customer.  During the lifecycle of the customer, help capture any potential new business requirement input to the overall solution roadmap to be fed into the Product Steering Committee. Duties Involvement in ‘New Customer’ (Hunting) sales processes  Provide pre-sales support to the CSO, Sales and CPM teams in the Africa region, in the process to acquire new customers by assisting, where required, with solution presentations, demonstrations, workshops (design, preparation and delivery) as well as assisting with general pre-sales Q&A.  Assist with the completion, though the proper BLS processes, to provide detailed answers to RFx compliance statements as part of a bid.  Documentation of collateral to support the sales process to new customers such as business proposals, case studies, use cases for the software and custom solution descriptions.  During the post-commitment sales stage of any new customer, assist the assigned CPM and Solution Specialist in the process of eliciting the SoWs for the projects. Working with the BLS Marketing Excellence Centre  Assist the BLS Marketing Excellence centre as a ‘champion’ of Data Driven Marketing principles into the BLS Africa Business Unit.  Provide input to the design of, and distribution to Africa CPMs and Sales Directors, new and updated standard BLS MEC services propositions (service briefs, standard sales presentations, bespoke service packages ...etc).  Be involved in the production of all bids and SoWs in the Africa region that combine both software installation and MEC services in the project, to ensure the alignment of the 2 business units working together to meet the customer’s project objectives. Page 3 of 6 RICHARD SHANKS Company Emagine International Employment Date Sep 2012 – July 2015 Position Capability Delivery Manager Campaign Design  Be the on-site guru for campaign design and the use of Emagine functionality  Design, document and co-ordinate client sign-off of campaigns and reports  Complete QA on campaigns and reports to ensure delivery to a high standard Business Analysis and Project Management     Duties Elicit and document Change Request requirements to a high standard Achieve on-time and on-budget delivery of assigned CR and SOW projects Ensure that end-to-end UAT testing is achieved and that developed functionality matches original design and scope Ensure that the handover of items from development to support is done New Capability Roll-out   Manage the rollout and training of new functions on site and ensure client adoption Ensure that TMOPS are fully trained and can support new functionality TMOP (Technical Marketing Operations) Support  Provide advice and support to TMOPs to solve escalated issues Pre-Sales  Conduct off site presentations on the Emagine application to prospective clients Continuous improvement   Reason for Leaving Identify opportunities for the client to get more out of Emagine. Identify opportunities to improve Emagine’s products and business practices Better job opportunity and growth. Page 4 of 6 RICHARD SHANKS Company Emagine International Employment Date Oct 2010 – Aug 2012 Position Customer Value Delivery Manager Project Management and Staff Management • Managing cross-functional internal and client resources • Execute and facilitate effective meetings and workshops • Generate outcomes by communicating with a range of key stakeholders on project progress, gaps, successes, challenges and mitigations Duties Account Management • Overall client relationship accountability • Actively seek out sales opportunities within existing clients • Gain a solid understanding of the customers' infrastructure, business objectives and processes to become a trusted advisor for all issues related to strategy, operations, performance and revenue generation • Manage client relationships at best business practice, marketing (business user) and senior stakeholder level • Contribute to policy making at the highest level with respect to CRM best practice Service Delivery Management • On-the-ground assistance and understanding of support, testing and marketing operations • Measuring, monitoring and reporting on all Service Level Agreements (support and operational) • Negotiating, agreeing and maintaining Service Level Agreements with new clients • Building customer satisfaction through excellence in delivery and support • Liaising with Emagine CTO, COO, and CEO to ensure all operational and development responsibilities were being managed effectively Company Emagine International Employment Date Nov 2008 – Oct 2010 Position Technical Marketing Operations Specialist (TMOPS) Duties         Performing operations and maintenance of production systems Incident and problem tracking, management, and reporting SQL scripting PL\SQL coding Identifying enhancements to improve supportability, operability or performance of the application Ensuring SLAs are met Maintaining the internal servers and performing day to day IT admin tasks Campaign Configuration and troubleshooting Page 5 of 6 RICHARD SHANKS Company UKZN – Med School (Nelson R Mandela School Of Medicine) Employment Date Oct 2006 – Oct 2008 Position Database Manager Duties        Migration of Access database to SQL Server 2005 Creating reports for Lab researchers on confidential patient information Linking several clinic sites directly to Database to view results Liaising with clinics / university staff Working with Harvard and Cambridge Universities in assistance with reports, which are used in Aids research as well as publications Ordering Relevant Equipment and Computer Components Database and Computer troubleshooting Reason for Leaving Better job opportunity and growth Company 2CANA Solutions Employment Date Jan 2005 – Sep 2006 Position Oracle Developer   Duties Reason for leaving     Creating New programs to be used within the System Maintaining existing programs as a part of the CSS Team (Critical Systems Support). This included going on Call to ensure the system was maintained 24hours a day Enhancing existing programs to perform better and ease load on the system Upgrading Oracle Forms to 10g Meeting with Clients to discuss changes to the system Training and assistance with the workings of the new forms Better job opportunity and growth Interests Gym, Mixed Martial Arts, Music, Gaming, Body Boarding and Movies References Name Lana Janicijevic Company Emagine International Position General Manager Contact number Cell:- Name Kavish Maharaj Company MTN Position Senior Manager - CVM Contact numbers Cell:- Page 6 of 6
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