Ron Elkins, MS, PMP

Innovative Technology & Program Management Executive

Experienced Leading IT and Business Operations, Product Development, & Strategic Change in Corporate, Government, and Start-Ups

General Summary 

·   Over 20 years professional experience in business leadership, program management, software product development, and enterprise IT services

·   Over 17 years in positions leading departments, divisions, enterprise programs, product groups, support teams providing mission critical operations

·   Experience across Business and Technology including Governance, Compliance, Budgeting, Vendors, PMO, IT Strategy & Architecture, BI, BPO, & BCP/DR

·   Formal Masters education in both Business and Technology including Finance, HR, Project Management, Computer Science, IT Architecture and IT Security.

Business & Technology Management Experience

·   Experience leading global teams with staff in up to 6 countries, accelerating schedules by providing 24hr/day work coverage

·   Experience leading major enterprise programs and multi-national technology implementations for large organizations including Fortune 100's

·   Experience managing multi-year program budgets of $90+ MM and managing matrixed teams of 100+ total FTE resources

·   Experience leading procurement and implementation of major enterprise solutions and managing large multiyear master agreements valued at $40+ MM

·   Experience managing major outsourcing arrangements including transition of data centers and core IT services to both domestic and offshore operators

·   Experience leading PMO's including PMO establishment, standards development, and supervision and mentorship of PM's and support staff

·   Experience leading full lifecycle product development using both Waterfall and Iterative (MS / Agile / RUP) methodologies and leading SCRUM teams

Experience Producing Significant Results & Driving Strategic Change 

·   Experience leading transformational change including enterprise program leadership for both Fortune 100 companies and State and Local Government

·   Experience leading the IT side of Mergers & Divestitures from both sides, including creating new IT operation for a PE acquisition from a Fortune 100 firm

·   Experience leading Enterprise Infrastructure programs including Data Center Migrations, Server Virtualizations, and Enterprise-Wide Technology Refreshes

·   Experience leading enterprise development of custom and COTS-based ERP, EMR, EDM & SCP solutions for transformational business process change 

·   Responsible for new strategies that have resulted in dramatic improvements for organizations, examples include :

o      $300,000 one time and $200,000 recurring annual savings for a large national F500 firm through systems and data retention policy optimizations

o      300% increase in eCommerce revenues producing $70 Million annually while significantly reducing transaction processing costs

o      27% reduction in human assisted calls and significant improvement of customer satisfaction scores at an organization servicing 2+ million customers

o      18% increase in the use of web-based customer self-service tools which resulted in a significant cost avoidance of hiring 6 new FTE’s to meet targets

o      Winner of 2 National Awards for creating top custom B2C and B2B portal solutions

 

Education & Certifications 

MBA in Progress – Global Executive Masters in Business Administration (Class of 2016) – IESE Business School, University of Navarra –New York, NY/ Barcelona, Spain

MS – Computer Systems Management/Information Resources Management (2006) - University of Maryland, University College - Adelphi, MD
GC – Graduate Certificate in Homeland Security Management (2007) - University of Maryland, University College - Adelphi, MD
BA – Communications/MP, Minor in Business Administration (2003) - University of Houston - Houston, TX

PMP - Project Management Professional Certification (2005) Project Management Institute (PMI) PMP ID#291690 – Credits complete for Sept 2015 renewal

Language Skills 

ENGLISH – Native/FluentSPANISH – Functional/StrongGERMAN, FRENCH, & PORTUGUESE – Basic

 

Professional Experience    

Principal / Executive Consultant / Interim Executive                            December 2013 – Present

Ronald Elkins & Associates, LLC

Providing Interim Executive Leadership and executive level Technical Strategy, IT Architecture, Road Map Development, Market Strategy, Program and Project Management, Product Architecture, Security Strategy, and Compliance Management Consulting Services for firms including startups and Fortune 500 multinationals.

 

Recent roles have included:

•                                      Interim Chief Information Officer (CIO)
•                                      Interim PMO Head
•                                      Senior Corporate IT Strategy Advisor
•                                      Enterprise Program Lead

Current and recent clients include:

·                                                           Calpine Corporation ·                                                           The Hawaii Health Connector ·                                                           Global Gas Corp / Global Energy Group Companies

·                                                           Gerson Lehrman Group, LLC ·                                                           Pennsylvania Power & Light ·                                                           Multiple early stage startups

 

 

Director of Technology                            December 2012 – December 2013

Hawai’i Health Connector - Hawaii’s State Based Marketplace and Health Insurance Exchange (SBM/HIX)                            Honolulu, HI

Budget:  Over $90 Million for the 2012-2014 fiscal period.
Staff:  Over 100 total project staff, including 6 direct reports supervising matrixed program staff and vendor resources

Key areas of responsibility included:

·            Supervision of key departments/functions including:

o    Program Management Office (PMO) providing standards for and supervising internal and vendor PM's and processes

o    Chief Security & Privacy Officer (CSO) including IT & physical security for offices and 3rd party independent security assessment vendors

o    IT Operations & Service Desk including network, telecom, helpdesk, remote worker support & office logistics

o    Independent Validation & Verification (IV&V / Audit & Compliance functions)

·            Financial planning and management including:

o  Connector’s 2 year technology budget of over $90 million and multi-year vendor contracts and outsourcing service agreements

·            Technical Leadership:

o   Development and launch of technology systems, software and hosting environments UI design, and data center outsourcing services

o   Leadership of program planning for the HHC and the State's SMB/HIX Portal and supporting services

o   Technology planning, vendor management and support of the Joint Customer Service Call Center for HHC & Hawaii MedQUEST

 

Manager of IS Infrastructure Services                            2011 – 2012

Calpine Corporation                            Houston, TX

Management of company-wide IS Infrastructure Services and supervision of additional IT infrastructure and security initiatives for enterprise of 93 power plants & offices providing 28.5+ Gigawatts of power to 24 Million homes and business in North America.  Accomplishments included:

·   Data Center Outsourcing Program - Management of the $5.9 Million budget, along with preparation activities and transition services for a Data Center Outsourcing program migrating 850+ servers hosting 1200+ databases and 300+ terabytes of data over 1000 miles to the two new locations.

·   EMS System Migration & Upgrade - Management of the simultaneous upgrade and relocation of the Calpine Energy Management System (EMS) which provided centralized real-time operations control for Calpine’s 90+ plants. This involved the coordination of resources from over 20 different organizations for the live nation-wide migration of dedicated data links, custom data integrations, servers, networks, security and real-time services with markets and partners including CAISO, ERCOT, NYISO, NEISO, MISO, PJM, PG&E, SPP, PHI, Reuters & Bloomberg.

·   Produced $300,000+ one time and $200,000+ in Annual Cost Savings by leading a Data & Server Rationalization and Data Retention Policy Update effort

·   Established governance structure of a new oversight committee and program for compliance with new federal NERC CIP physical and cyber security rules.  

 

Senior Project Manager (Contract)                            2010 – 2011

NRG Energy, IT Plant Operations Division                            Houston, TX

Project Management of scope development, technical roadmap, procurement, and vendor relationships for a large enterprise IT project that integrated with and extended the functionality of the Maximo Plant Management System and Primavera Scheduling systems used for NRG’s Power Plant Operations.  The new custom extranet portal system is used by NRG and its Prime Contractor companies to provide both local plant and corporate management with the tools to effectively manage large capital projects across the nation-wide fleet of coal, gas, oil, and biomass power plants.

 

Program Manager, North American GIS Services (Contract)                            2009

BP North America / NAG SBU                            Houston, TX

Directed program encompassing all Geographic & Geospatial Data Services (GIS) and projects for BP North American Gas.  Supervised teams and budgets of both onshore and offshore staff with resources in 6 countries. Responsibilities included oversight of:

·   Program Management overseeing 3 Project Managers, 2 Architects, and a global delivery team.

·   IT infrastructure including the physical and virtual environments of the new enterprise hosting platform shared across the Western Hemisphere BU's

·   Data Architecture & Management including new standards for standard data models and metadata requirements using a common datum and lexicon.

·   Standards Development & IT Governance including creation and implementation of control and review processes and a new governance committee

·   Relationship Management with 11 Business Units, Advisory Board, IT Architecture Board, and vendors.

 

Senior Project Manager                            2007 - 2009

Idea Integration, Inc.                            Houston, TX

Managed multiple large projects including proposal development, client executive presentations, and leadership of development and implementation teams. 

Notable Engagements: 

·   “IQ System” – Fortune 500 Client –12,000 Hr Project – Development of a custom Enterprise E&P Supply Chain System that integrated 11 data sources with MOSS & GIS for a Fortune 500 client.  The system was provided full top down visibility into all global operations.  This custom system was one of the first solutions in the industry to provide full end-to-end workflow integration of the E&P process including Econometrics, Financials and Logistics.

·   “Phoenix” Healthcare PMS System – Commercial Healthcare Client –4,000 Hr. Project

Development of new Healthcare Practice Management System (PMS) that added provided patient demographics, scheduling and POS record modules to their existing commercial claims management system allowing them to offer expanded service offerings to their clients.  The system provided a highly visual user interface created in Silverlight and system based on the MSCUI standards and used a SharePoint portal integrated with an oracle database.

•                                        Other clients in my portfolio included Samson Energy and the City of Houston using ESRI, .Net, Oracle, MS SQL, MS Sharepoint and MS Silverlight

 

Head of eGovernment & Information Delivery Services Group (Director Level)                            2005 - 2007

City of Dallas, Communications & Information Services Department                            Dallas, TX

Reported to the CIO and directed operations of a key division of the CIS department, servicing over 2 million external customers and 13,000 employees of the nation’s 9^th largest city.  Supervised 4 levels of Managers, PM’s and staff with a permanent team of 18 and project staffs of up to 35+.  Planned and managed annual division budgets of $7+ Million and multi-year programs with budgets of up to $15 million.  Was responsible for all of the City’s eCommerce operations, producing revenues of over $70 Million.  Services provided by my division included:

•     BI & DW – Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance Reporting and Data Warehouse Services on MS SQL, Oracle, and DB2 using Cognos and Crystal.
•     Application Development –Development of and custom VB.Net, ASP.Net, C#.Net, ColdFusion and Java applications.
•     eCommerce & Internet Services –Management of The City’s web portal and 38 other websites and the Enterprise eCommerce and Payment systems
•     EDM/ECM –Document Management / Content Management Systems across the enterprise.
•     CRM & IVR – Customer Relationship & Call Center systems including 120+ position Call Center and 50 IVR‘s.
•     Library Information Services – IT Systems for 25 branch / 7.6 million volume library system
•     PMO Leadership – Member of team that established the PMO and developed standards and procedures for IT Project Management at the City.
•     ERP Deployment – Part of the section committee for and part of the oversight team for the implementation of an SAP system for the Dallas Water Utilities
•     EDM Procurement – Lead the RFP development, vendor selection and SOW definition for a $12.5 million enterprise document management system.
•     Emergency Management & Security - Part of the Emergency Management team and lead a physical & cyber security assessment with recommendations

 

Founder & Principal (Small Business Executive)                             2001 - 2005

Ronald Elkins & Associates                            Houston, TX

IT Architecture, Software Development and Project Management Services for Fortune 500 and other clients.   Noteworthy projects include:

•     Kraton Polymers Divestiture from Shell Oil – 2001 - 5 Month Engagement - Management of the IT side of the Kraton divestiture from Shell including design and implementation of the new self-sustaining IT & Telecom infrastructure for the organization that a PE funded spin-off
•     PRTS & LIMS Projects for Champion Technologies Inc. – 2002-2004 – 23 Month Project – Analysis, Design, Development and Project/Vendor Management
•     SAP/R3 Migration Project for Champion Technologies Inc. – 2004- ERP selection and Roadmap Process

 

Executive & Academic Appointments 

 

 

Board of Directors Member (Appointed Public Official, Local Economic Development and Utility Projects Board)              2010 – 2013

Manvel Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)                             Manvel, TX                           

 

Adjunct Faculty, Computer Science Department                            2011 – 2012

Brazosport CollegeLake Jackson, TX
 

 

 

 

Details of Technical Skills, Training, and extended Employment History from 1992-2000 available upon request.