Stewart C. Weaver
MBA, PMP, CSM

Needed to simplify systems to reduce system and labor costs for the Sales & Marketing organization. Simplification meant expending capital for system upgrades. Budgets were set at the beginning of the year, limiting the amount of capital to be issued for project.

Uncovered opportunities to reduce expenses through power and server consolidations. Led contract negotiation with key suppliers. Implemented data center migration and move strategy for consolidations of systems through business impact analysis and application mapping exercises.

23% reduction in Data Center Operations’ costs by strategically leveraging onshore and offshore sourcing and succession planning of Help-desk and Call Center functions.

Company had outgrown its existing data center capabilities and needed to relocate its Revenue Generation system “Holidex” to a higher-tier data center to eliminate concerns over hardening and data availability. There was a limited number of unique skills and staff retention to run legacy systems. No documentation existed on how to support systems. Penalties for not meeting milestones were costly to the company.

Gained stakeholder approval to front-load project with additional contract resources to assist with knowledge gathering and documentation. Built project team and created a governance model to capture Add/Moves/Changes. Developed detail schedule through dry-run scenarios. Communicated often via email and town hall meetings on the importance of the project to ensure ongoing commitment to outcomes. Migrated reservation systems to two new colocation facilities to address Primary and Disaster Recovery needs.

Ensured secure, continuous operation of $6 billion business by leading project from selection to implementation.

Company sought to lower cost of call center operations through greater efficiency of new colocation in Guangzhou China. No work streams were funded. Contractual services agreements were difficult to maintain due to several third-party partners.

Restructured the overall program to execute the plan developed around decision of call and data center location. Established a steering committee to provide oversight of finances, benefits and progress of the effort. Worked with team members in China to establish a procurement process for new technology devices, which minimized or eliminated customs’ delays. Built a schedule around critical path items.

Improved service delivery 25% while achieving 33% cost reduction by leading project from selection to implementation of a new colocation facility.

Company sought to transform existing delivery model to improve on brand awareness and increase customer satisfaction. No common project management framework or processes was in use. Weak stakeholder management obfuscated progress.

Led a focus group to document the current delivery model. Defined dependencies around other functional areas including finance, HR and sales. Adopted and created best practices for new delivery model. Gained buy-in to proposed approach and funding needs. Built transformation journey to include key future state milestones. Communicated and trained business owners in on the new delivery model.

Over 47% reduction in cycle time from solutions design to build gained by identifying and rectifying inefficiencies across people, processes and technology through global rollout of SDLC.

Tasked with improving service levels of current network environments. There was a lack of prioritization and limited resources to complete analysis of networks.

Retained as SME to identify opportunities and prioritize against competing initiatives. Created investment documents for capital and presented to senior leadership to obtain funding approvals on all project work. Worked with management team to build a matrix team, which completed project work on time and within budget.

Achieved scalability objectives and exceeded service levels through design and implementation of network architectures.

Needed to improve availability of HIRO (High-Revenue Optimization) system applications, as antiquated hardware would fail creating a poor experience for owners and franchises impacting revenues in selected key consumer markets.

Established core team to include external partners to capture requirements for new systems. Worked with developers and engineering teams to obtain key business processes needs. Developed contingency plans with key vendors for systems cutover in the event existing storage systems were not available. Gained approval via sign-off on retirement of legacy storage devices. Communicated roadmap with key milestones to all stakeholders in preparation for outages. Led the implementation of the new storage systems.

The implementation of virtual tier storage decreased the cost of physical disks by 33% and significantly improving performance.

Company sought to reduce spend and number of suppliers needed for staff augmentation. Global Spend was $50 million with approximately 159 suppliers used, both preferred and non-preferred.

Overall spend was slightly increasing year-over-year. The entire process was highly manual, not scalable, and lacks infrastructure. No effective governance model in place.

Acted as Global Operations liaison to the business and established cross-functional team representing key stakeholders. Collected and analyze total GT Contractor/Consulting spend to ascertain additional opportunities to leverage where appropriate. Worked with procurement team to reviewed current practices to apply “best-in-class” and a common, automated process across the organization. Engaged business stakeholders to gather and analyze their business requirements. Evaluated and select operating model that should be employed to manage the ‘Contractor/ Consulting’ as defined above.

Reduced supplier relationships 87% (159 to 20) while introducing new technology to automate process.