Overview
Over 8 years experience in SAP FICO Consultant (Specialization in CO, Product Costing & COPA) focusing on implementing SAP systems for companies in a wide range of industries. I am MBA Finance graduate and over 10 years of professional experience. My project experience includes all aspects of a project lifecycle with 3 full life-cycle implementations (O-I, Cal Portland, and The Galliker Dairy Company). In these projects I have developed skills in requirements gathering, integrated business process design, system configuration, testing strategy, data conversion/migration strategy and communication skills to effectively work with people with varied backgrounds, working styles and organizational levels.

My area of expertise is focused on delivering solutions for processes related to overhead cost management, profitability analysis, controlling month-end close, Profit & Loss reporting. In general these solutions leverage my knowledge and hands-on configuration experience in the following SAP applications: Product Costing, Profitability Analysis, General Ledger, Customer and Vendor Accounts, Cost of Sales Accounting (Functional Areas), Cost Center and Profit Center Accounting, Internal Orders, these solutions incorporate my understanding of the integration of the Finance and Controlling modules with Sales & Distribution, Materials Management, and Production Planning.

Prior to gaining the experience described above, I held Project Manager and business analyst positions in industry where I gained an understanding of managerial and accounting practices and issues. During this time I obtained my Master in Business Administration (Corporate Finance) from Confidential, TX.

Highlights of Experience

• As FICO team member I engaged in the design, realization, and testing, cutover and post go-live support phases resulting in implementation.
• Sound use of SAP’s proven implementation ASAP methodologies, at various client sites to reduce risks and speed implementation
• Implemented successful integrations of FI with MM & SD & PP that could handle the complete Purchase to Pay andOrder to Cash cycles for all the Vendors and Customers respectively at Cal Portland.
• Effectively established the Product Costing (PC) system for computing the product cost estimates at The Galliker Dairy Company including construction of Costing Sheets.
• Designed and implemented Profitability Analysis (CO-PA) and Financial Reporting system at Cal Portland, this project entailed the maintenance of all required Characteristics and Value Fields. In collaboration with the team from Ontario, Canada - constructed Characteristic Derivation rules to meet the specific reporting needs.
• Drafted highly descriptive and clear BPP (Business Process Procedures), Blueprints apart from conducting Gap Analysis.
• Conducted many Training Workshops and one-to-one training sessions for users in Cal Portland and The Galliker Dairy Company.
• Developed unit and integration Test Plans, Test Cases for all FI & CO transactions and drafted acceptance criteria for trained users.
• Designed user-friendly Reports with Drill-down capabilities using Report Painter functionality that exactly matched the needs and the requirements of the client
• Constantly provided on-call production/project support during off-hours in order to ensure smooth running of the project and avoid production stoppages

PROJECT EXPERIENCE

Confidentia (From Sep 2009 to Present

Owens-Confidential is the world’s largest glass container manufacturer and preferred partner for many of the world’s leading food and beverage brands.

Responsibilities

• Designing Product cost model.
• Implementing COPA
• Defining activities based on manufacturing process.
• Defining process for direct and indirect allocation.
• Defining profiles to enter activity costs in different currency other than controlling area currency.
• Calculating activity prices based quantities and costs and allocation process.
• Resolving currency exchange issues in while calculating activity price calculations.
• Calculating standard cost estimation for manufacturing materials.
• Resolving standard cost estimation issues, like prices were not calculating for a cost center.
• Configuring Costing Variant for planning and actual, valuation variant.
• Configuration of cost component structure.
• Resolving issues of cost component structure.
• Configuring controlling area settings for each year.
• Writing Functional designs(FD) for substitute profit centers to complete RICEF
• Working with business users about COPA characteristics and value fields.
• Defining COPA characteristics and value fields.
• Defining derivation rules for COPA.

Confidential (From Nov 2008 to Aug 2009)

CalPortland is a major building materials and construction solutions provider serving in the Western United States and Canada.They are expertise in cement production, ready mix concrete, aggregate, asphalt, construction services, as well as concrete products and other building materials.

Responsibilities

• Configured the Cost Element Accounting, Cost Center Accounting and the necessary Standard Hierarchy for the West Americanregion, Canada and Mexico.
• Configured Order Management to handle marketing costs of different brands –and quality products. Created various settlement rules for settling the orders to the appropriate cost objects.
• Configured Costing sheets, Cost Component structure and created Costing Variant to calculate Standard Cost Estimate and simulating standard cost estimate for different scenarios based on seasonal changes of raw material costs (lime stone).
• Configuration of Work-In-Progress (WIP) calculation for manufacturing Orders in Cost Object Controlling
• Configuration of Variance calculation Settlement rules and generating reports for Planning costs vs. Actual costs and Target costs vs. Actual costs.
• Designed and implemented Profitability Analysis (CO-PA) and Financial Reporting system at Cal Portland, this project entailed the maintenance of all required Characteristics and Value Fields. In collaboration with the team from Ontario, Canada - constructed Characteristic Derivation rules to meet the specific reporting needs.
• Designed the unit and integration testing strategy to ensure that required system modifications met business process needs.
• Managed testing execution by Process team and coordinated their efforts with the technical team to ensure adequate testing of end-to-end business processes.
• Managed resolution of defects found during testing to ensure their completion required for system delivery on time and with quality.
• Developed strategy with help of team lead to support 350 end-users, after system go-live. This strategy required coordination with existing production support processes to ensure effective knowledge transfer from project team members to permanent production support organization.

Confidential (From Nov 2006 to Oct 2008)

The Galliker Dairy Company has been produces the freshest and most nutritious dairy products, iced teas and fruit juices for nearly a century

Responsibilities

• Played a major role in the team that analyzed the Organizational Structure, Financial Architecture and As-Is & To-Be systems. Drafted the Blueprints for project planning, realization process, final preparation and going live on support as per ASAP methodology.
• Successfully defined and mapped the enterprise structure components for FI-GL, FI-AP and FI-AR. Worked jointly with the ABAP consultant for importing GL, Vendor and Customer master data from the legacy system.
• Implemented a robust Automatic Payment Process that could handle payments to more than 500 vendors and other alliance partners. The implementation could handle major foreign currencies with multiple of payment methods.
• Provided solution to handle complex R&D expenses through creation of Internal Order specifically designed to capitalize such costs in some cases. Defined Settlement Profiles for settling these Internal Orders to Cost Centers.
• Organized training workshops to coach and support business users to optimize the functionalities from the FI and CO modules that were implemented.
• Detailed documentation was also provided to all the SAP users. Customized Assessment and Distribution and set-up cycles for Period-end closing this included definition of the segments and specifying the Sender and Receiver and their respective rules.
• Configured Order Management in Controlling Area – This included defining Order types, Maintenance of Number Ranges, Settlement Profiles and Allocation Structures

Confidential (From Aug 2004 to Oct 2006)

Tesla Motors designs and sells high performance and super efficient electric cars.

Responsibilities

• Gathered Requirements and designed the Business Process’s according to business. Configured Automatic Payment Program for checks, wire transfer, outgoing payments in Accounts Payable.
• Configured customer account groups, number ranges, maintained accounts for discount and residual payments, and configured bills of exchange payable, foreign currency valuation and realization of exchange rate gains and losses, dunning procedures and automatic interest calculation procedures in Accounts Receivable (AR).
• Configured Lockbox setup, defined control parameters for BAI2 file import, for handling incoming payments from customers.
• Configured Transaction types and posting rules for Electronic Bank statement Processing.
• Performed major configuration changes in the areas of CCA, PCA, I/O, product Costing COPA.
• Designed and configured new cost component structure according to business requirement.
• Configured new Costing Variants for Budget Cost estimates by defining costing type, valuation variant, date control, quantity structure control, transfer control and reference variants.
• Modified costing sheet to include combination of Quantity based overhead for materials and Percentage based overhead for Labor costs by defining calculation bases, percentage overhead rates, quantity based overhead rates and credit Keys.
• Modified the pricing strategy for Materials and activity types in the costing Variant used for Standard Cost estimate.
• Configured settings for standard cost estimate with structures like BOM, Routing, and made settings for additive costing to add transport and insurance costs to the material cost estimate.
• Provided support for end user’s to resolve issues while executing the costing run to cost, mark and release standard cost estimate for materials.

Confidential
(Through Infosys)

AA is world leader in world airline industry

Responsibilities

• Played a primary role in understanding the business vision and processes from the key stakeholders to document the high level Business Requirements Document
• Evaluated business applications from a business, industry, and technical perspective. Responsible to drive business to identify various business processes and core business rules. Elicit business requirements, draw conclusions, develop innovative solutions, and create detailed Business Use Case, Process flow & Data flow diagrams. Ensured requirements comply with user and business specifications.
• As the Product Owner, played a key role in conveying the business vision, timelines and detailed requirements to all the project team members (Product Manager, System Analyst, and Development & QA).
• Conducted weekly review meetings with the stakeholders (to ensure that their interests are included in the release) and the development team to make sure the release is developed by the deadline and within budget.
• Answered questions and provided direction by making tough decisions to determine which features will produce the most business value and are most important to be developed
• Created the Story Boarding and Focus group reviews, Usability Assessment surveys, UAT Test cases, Training and Help files and actively involved in world wide implementation, training and rollout
• Drafted online documentation including training materials, online help and FAQs.
• Reviewed different documentation for functional accuracy including product news, release notes, tutorials, user guides, and instructions.
• Monitored personal project timelines and identified deadlines that cannot be met or are at risk of being missed.