Example of Omar's Work - Complex Customer Solution - VMware, Citrix, Consolidated SAN for Production, UAT and Test env.
- 2. Complex Solution Ben-ABC (Actual Solution )Customer Profile – BEN-ABC Ben-ABC is an offshoot company of a major Canadian mortgage insurance firm. They have been speaking to different industry providers to house about 7 applications in a DC.High level Business drivers Although a long standing profitable business in a booming demand era data flow efficiencies are still bound by use of unreliable fax machines and disparate legacy application. Additionally time to sell is heavily based on internal time consuming business and approval process.Wants to reduce administration overhead, sales cost and time to sell.Be efficient and accurate about risk and finance assessments.Streamline business processes and align control workflow.Wants to Expand business - deal with larger insurance agencies, brokerage firms, mortgage lenders and have compliances challenges. ·
- 3. Legacy Business Process - SummaryNon automated, Large overhead and Manual approval
- 4. Critical Success factorsEasier to use (novice user base).Business process Automation Better ROI and Lower TCO (compared to in-house). Cheaper!
- 5. Proposed Business Process Summary– Automated and Less over headReject Only ProcessApproval processApproved only process
- 6. StrategyFocus on business challenge. Not just infrastructure. End to end approachLack of overall ownership and internal skill set Identified as key deficiency. Momentum move in to take ownership.Close the knowledge gap against our competitions. Meet application vendor, Infiltrate stakeholder domain and propagate value.Maintain apparent cost baseline. Defer sticker shock with Phased approach. Consolidate where possible – Simplify where neededLate to the table! Start drawing differences between Momentum and other service provider. Price to sell.. Build back margin in future phase.
- 7. Hierarchy and Omar’s engagementDiscovery, Negotiations and Communication with Key internal and external stakeholdersBusiness level discussion and negotiationsInternal Selling and Delivery planningTechnical discovery, Sizing and Responsibility Demarcation
- 8. CIO and C-Level Executive Communication, Negotiation and ChallengesCredibility issues. Standardization and Ease of use high on the list. Comfort zone with other vendorsGot face time in a proposal discussion meeting. Elevated the conversation above the isolated managed services component to Business challenge discussion. Impressed with higher understanding and Offered myself as the “operation manager”Lead with 2 page RFP, Engaged as us a last effort to reduce cost. Already set on price due to interactions with commodity space competitors Change the measuring criteria. Help Management understand , We are the only vendor to perform detailed discovery, Cost model and determine Business scope. No comparison applies. No internal budget shared or financial parameters to justify this undertaking. Wants to go live end of October. (less than 5 months). A draft architecture and recommended services portfolio was put in place within 2 weeks. That will allow to set the stage for realistic cost and price negotiation
- 9. Internal Communication, Negotiation and ChallengesComplex solution This required me to overtake tasks i.e. Risk assessment (PM), data flow design (App vendor), DB Design (SQL Expert) draft work/technology recommendation and estimates normally carried out by SME in other business segments. Customer hesitance to discuss budget on a potentially high price project – negatively affected the internal probability estimates. Quickly become high visibility, low probability with smaller deals taking precedence for resource and time allocation.BEN-ABC in shopping mode. Management was not willing to dedicate precious pre-sales cycles based on 2 page RFP. This remains a challenge through out the project. We were working with little to no buy in.This level of hand holding is not a normal practice for Momentum target customer space. After negotiating a strict time to disengage time table. Management approved my T&E and ran the first three month of the discovery as a Pilot program. Quote "...I’d Like to eat my words.. But BEN-ABC will never close”Omar’s Boss around 2 months before SOW signatures/Close
- 11. BEN-ABC will never close?All in good humour!
- 13. Personal Take away’s/Lessons learntOnce again enforced the importance of Engaging early – allows you to be a trusted advisor, shorten sales cycles and guide requirements. All stake holders are potential risk to the project. They should all be brought to the table for discussions. Along with objectives, risks, challenges, opportunity potential – A Win strategy should be laid out and communicated clearly . This helps motivates through turbulent times.Such times truly are a test for relations with Account team. Understand what drives your sales partners, management and your customer and work towards a Win/Win situation. Important to keep your management/stake holders in-tune and updated with the progress of your project.Rise above the product/services portfolio. Focus on business challenge.
- 14. Feedback“In the last 11 years that I have been working at Dell. Omar is one the best TSRs that I had the pleasure working with”.....”He is team player and fun working with”.Babak Farid, Systems Consultant, DELLworked directly with Omar at Dell Canada“He is a team player with integrity and strong technical knowledge.”Mark Lewis, CISA, CISSP, Sr. Systems Engineer, Channels at Symantec (Canada) Corporation worked directly with Omar at Dell Canada“Omar's ability to work with vendors allowed him to contribute to the team's bottom line. He secured cost effective solutions to meet and exceed customer needs. I would recommend Omar to any organization.”Mark Gadzala,, GE IT Solutionsworked directly with Omar at General Electric. IT Solutions“Omar has displayed superior skills in recognizing the technical needs of clients and recommending comprehensive and efficient solutions. I have worked with many Technical Architects over my 12 years in this industry and have never seen anyone who addresses issues and provides solutions as well as Omar. There is a saying "choose your associates as you would choose those who you would stand beside in battle" I would choose Omar Amjad as he has proven countless times that he is a trusted colleague and a person that always goes the extra mile in any situation.” Joseph Carbonetto, Business Development Manager, Infrastructure Management/Data Centre Services,worked directly with Omar at Momentum Advanced SolutionsMore on Linkedin.com
Editor's Notes
- #3: I realize this is nowhere near the level of detail that can properly exemplify my strengths or divulge into a complex solution life cycles and its documentation. I have made an attempt to summarize project scope, challenges and deliverables.
- #7: Removed slide Internal Risk, External Risk , What this means to Momentum (industry first) and Technical challenges
- #9: Has unqualified estimates as it pertains to the overall final cost. E.g. our research show this will cost X number of Dollars.
- #12: All in good humour!
- #13: Features 2 tier architecture. None of the secure DMZ front/web end communicates to the backend. Least amount holes in Firewall secure layer Firewall. PCI audit ready, All 7 application are accessed via a single VPN mesh using cached/federated AD credentials. All users either remote or on LAN enjoy the same level of security, access and autonomy.Fully capable to support Phase II with hot redundant site for DR and failover purposesAny Technology changes, System changes or upgrades are tested through UAT and DEV environment before releasing to production. This minimizes possible downtime situation due to user, code or connectivity error. UAT and DEV are virtualized to maximize flexibility, Return on investment and isolation of typically stand alone applicationsCan expand or shrink on demand. Unlike a typical Hot failover site – cost of redundancy is minimal due to use of Vmware, Intelligent replication and array based mirroring. All DR nodes boot from SAN. Normally non internet friendly, applications and portals are pushed using Citrix/ Windows Terminal service to eliminate possible bandwidth constriction for cloud users and SSO challenges.
- #14: There are obviously internal lessons learnt that I have put together. But in light of this conversation and in context of my personal take aways. I feel these one’s are the best fit.