 I began working professionally in IT in 1991. In San Antonio, I was hired by a startup software company that specialized in providing software-based facilities management solutions. It was here that I gained experience with various technologies. These included Operating Systems such as MS-DOS, Windows and UNIX. It was during this tenure that I was a significant contributor to the design and development of new software on multiple Operating System Platforms and different databases including Informix, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and Sysbase System X/XI, among others.
In 1997, I had the opportunity to move to Dallas with another software company specializing in Warehouse Management Systems for various large clients throughout the United States and Europe. Originally, the software began as a way for big Grocery Store chains such as Albertson’s and CVS to organize and manage the flow of food items from the large warehouses all the way to the shelf within the store. Prior to my arriving at the company, they had begun efforts to branch into other vertical markets. The team that I ended up leading was responsible for customizing the solution for General Motors. It was here that I gained quite a bit of experience in a relatively short period of time learning how to produce solutions for organizations of this size.
I then moved from this company into assisting the Finance department of Sabre (offshoot of American Airlines) with integrating the internal invoicing system with SAP. Also, during the same time period, I developed a process of automating the accruals of Vacation and Sick Time for all employees of Sabre.
Then, in August 2000, I was hired by a company named Essilor. Essilor is the world’s largest manufacturer of prescription lenses in the world today. If you hear of brand names such as Transitions, Crizal and AirWear, these are all Essilor brands. At the time when I was hired the situation presented to the company was a bit tiresome. With multiple A/R systems (result of multiple company purchases) and well over 50 manufacturing facilities, the executives really did not know who their customers were. This also presented issues for creating new accounts or accounts wishing to expand business with Essilor. The business processes set in place took anywhere from 4 – 10 business days to set up a new account because of the varying degrees of technologies.
What I enabled the company to have was their very own Customer Referential. The purpose of this Referential was to provide a single point of entry for all non-transactional customer information for all of Essilor of America. Put simply, the administrative personnel put the information into 1 place and then the information would be distributed only to the manufacturing labs and A/R systems which needed the information. By the time it was fully implemented, the entire process was improved to a 4-hour timeline for a previous worst-case scenario of ten business days. I was the Chief Architect of this solution and led a small team of software developers (anywhere from 1 – 5 at any given time) to lead the solution to full-time implementation. By the time I left Essilor in April 2007, the solution was in use by Essilor in the U.S., Brazil and Canada. This provided a browser-based front end for the end user and the people in the labs never even knew the system existed!
Then, in April 2007, I had the opportunity to expand my knowledge and skills into Data Warehousing with AT&T.  This allowed me the opportunity to see first-hand how data from various systems (Point-of-Sale, A/R, inventory, etc) get merged into one consolidated solution for the purpose of reporting results back to the business units within 24 hours of its being sent to the Data Warehouse. This led me to the logical move of creating my own opportunity and now I can provide advice, consultation and solutions to business of virtually any size. |
