Directeur - Business Transformation

Electric Mobility Project: Adding value to the evolution of electric mobility

I founded a company based at Paris in the transportation space. The company currently is looking for opportunities to enter this fast growing sector with a focus on electric mobility.

We have commenced operations with a fleet of five hybrid vehicles working with mobility platforms and specialized transportation companies.

Startup Support: Focus on business reporting dashboard, automation and process improvement

Kidways is located at Station F (Paris), the biggest incubator in the world and is the first company in France to offer a unique service for children who need to be "mobile", going to school and back, sports activities, point to point transportation. The service is currently available at Lille, Paris and Nice.

It's an effort to make sure children don't loose out on anything because their parents are too busy or unavailable to take them around.

The company works with a network of partner drivers who are vetted thoroughly before being deployed. All this is done with a "humane" touch and lots of enthusiasm.

I supported the team for a short but intense period of 4 weeks to build an automated business reporting dashboard, automation of the driver onboarding process and key process improvement.

Knowledge Management Project: Change Management & Cyber Security knowledge delivery

As a visiting professor, I deliver two day modules in " Change Management" and "Cyber Security" at the prestigious Insitut Mines Telecom (part of the "Grandes Ecoles" of France).

My audience is students of the Master in Information Systems program. In the cyber security module, I give them an overview of the cyber threat landscape, remedies and key inputs on fundamentals of security.

In the change management module the focus is on managing change in a rapidly changing digital landscape within companies and preparing employees to understand and adapt to change. I teach a six step change management methodology with in-class case study work.

Strategy Project: Business Transformation of a professional services firm Venture Handle - Riyadh / Paris

Scope: Internal governance, financial planning, key technology deployment, project pipeline, order to cash, RFQ process, organization design, interactive web site design, marketing collaterals (41 deliverables).

Create a playbook for the incoming management team.

This was an intense 16 week project delivered from remote for a client in Riyadh. I was the lead consultant on this project in partnership with Venture Handle. The founder of the firm wanted to retire but was apprehensive about leaving an informal and often chaotic structure in place which would impact profitability and cash flow of the firm.

Working against the clock, we completed the 41 deliverables and built a structured play book for the incoming management team.

Implementation of the playbook is currently ongoing and benefits expected are >2MM Saudi Riyal in the next 6 months, primarily coming from digitization, higher RFQ conversion rate, improved project cost management, less people turnover.

Startup Project: Establish a technology based startup in the highly regulated mobility sector

It is a startup in the mobility space offering "Cars On Demand" solutions.

I was a co-founder and set up the company at Bangalore. Besides strategy and product development, I established key processes in accounting, fulfillment, fleet security, fleet maintenance and procurement.

The accounting framework was created using "QuickBooks" with active cash monitoring. I also led the Android app development project (6 months) which led to doubling of sales. Tight control on sourcing & procurement, petty cash management, supplier terms, pricing strategy and fleet maintenance kept cash flow positive and growing.

An innovative pricing model ensured that our pricing was always in the customer sweet spot and periods of high demand were well capitalized.

The company could scale up and still maintain a positive cash flow because of automation and monitoring processes and a huge focus on cost management.

Dallas, TX, USA / Chennai, India

Turnaround Project: Improve the profitability of a service delivery center and make it world class

It is a leading US based real estate services company. They have a center at Chennai - India providing managed services in accounting, lease management and process automation to real estate management companies around the world.

I was tasked with turning around the center and taking it to world class levels in 6 months.

Following work streams were pursued:

• IT infrastructure improvement: Reduced downtime by 50%
• Supplier terms re-negotiated: Reduced big cost buckets by 20%
• Deployment of LEAN training program: 400 people trained, 50 projects closed
• Leadership development: Reduced potential attrition
• Internal outsourcing: Moved some jobs from Dallas to Chennai
• Automation: Leveraged UiPath to automate repetitive tasks
• SLA adherence: Reduced default on client facing SLA's and avoid penalties

All projects put together led to > Rs. 14,00,00,000+ (USD 2MM) savings for the client in six months and significantly improved their cash flow.

Technology Project: Create an IoT based dashboard to optimize energy consumption of buildings

As part of green initiatives and cost reduction, this project involved developing a tab based dashboard which used IoT technology to gather data from temperature control sensors and produce real time output for the facility management team.

This data was in turn used to centralize energy management and track/optimize energy consumption for building tenants.

The pilot deployed in a central London commercial building led to savings of 18% in energy cost over three months.

USA/Europe/APAC/India

Outsourcing Project: Set up a Japanese speaking service delivery center for Japanese clients

Led this project from inception to delivery from site selection, hiring, knowledge transfer to go live.

CBRE wanted to create a 30 FTE shared service center for its Japanese businesses delivering finance and lease management services from Kuala Lumpur in Japanese language.

Surmounting immense challenges of change management, resource unavailability and knowledge transfer, we went live on schedule and set up a cost saving model for CBRE of ~ USD 8MM/year in payroll and infrastructure cost.

USA/Europe/APAC/India

CBRE is the world's largest real estate company operating in all RE verticals like development, financing and management.

This project involved building, testing and deploying a 15 language invoice processing platform which integrated document management, workflow, payments and vendor helpdesk.

This platform could process 10,000+ invoices in a month and saved >$5MM/month for CBRE and improved their cash flow tremendously.

Zurich, Switzerland / Hyderabad, India

Service Delivery Project: Deliver managed services: insurance claims, invoice processing, sourcing

Zurich Insurance Group is one of Europe's largest insurance companies .

This was a huge project reporting to the executive committee of Zurich and involved managing a 500 FTE center at Hyderabad - India.

This project involved providing services of insurance claims processing (> 5000 claims/month), invoice processing and payments (>10,000 invoices/month) and sourcing and procurement activities for an annual spend of ~USD 2Bn.

My team worked on tight timelines and went live in just 3 months including knowledge transfer and complete staffing.
Using LEAN and continuous improvement we increased process efficiency and used workflow/e-invoicing deployment to drive automation in processing and payments.

Savings realized by the client by this project: $10MM/year.

By focusing on category management, e-auctions and low dollar spend analysis we also achieved > $ 5MM productivity in just 12 months.

Strategy Project: Strategic assessment of a global finance function & reduction of transaction cost

CSC Corporation was the world's largest technology services company at that time.

This was a huge project to map the global finance function - people, processes, technology of CSC globally which meant all their offices and project sites.

The global finance function consisted of 5000+ people with more than a dozen platforms and tools being used.
Desired outcome was to have a roadmap of integration and standardization of processes and technologies so that cost per finance transaction could be reduced.

I led a team of 10 consultants to complete this project in 3 months and provided a playbook to the client to launch multiple projects which ended in savings of >$20MM over 2 years.

London, UK / Kolkata, India

Technology Project: Deploy e-invoicing platform ARIBA and onboard suppliers

RELZ (Reed-Elsevier-Lexis Nexis) is the world's largest publishing house for scientific, medical, legal journals and repositories.

This project involved deployment of the e-invoicing platform ARIBA across all Elsevier business units in Europe and onboarding all suppliers.

This led to automation of the Procure to Pay process and doubling of invoice processing volumes with reduction of headcount.

Timely payments were leveraged to extract discounts from suppliers and avoidance of penalties (for late payments). Approximate cash benefit for the client was > GBP 5MM over 12 months.

Cashflow Improvement Project: Increase free cash flow of a healthcare business in EMEA region

GE Healthcare is one of the biggest players in the healthcare equipment and services market in Europe and MEA .

I managed a working capital portfolio of >$1.5 Billion with the objective of increasing cash flow from operating activities.

Leading a team of 4, 6 Sigma project specialists, I improved the end to end order to cash cycle to yield less defects and drive sustainable improvement in cash flow. Other initiatives included reduction of inventory, supplier terms renegotiation, facilities consolidation, linking sales incentives to cash collection.

Focusing on the Order to Cash cycle, with a team of >100+ collections agents across Europe, I increased collections and reduced past dues by more than $250MM in 3 years. I improved the quality of orders so that disputes over payments reduced and past dues decreased.

Overall the company realized free cash flow benefits of >$300M over three years and deployed a robust operating model for the future.

Integration Project: Financial integration of European and Asian entities of a healthcare provider

As the Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Manager based out of the European HQ of GE Healthcare, I led the integration of the finance functions of the European and Asian businesses directly involving >50 finance people and dozens of operational stakeholders.

This integration involved system integration (Oracle) and processes of more than 20 entities in Asia and Europe.
Post integration, I led the joint financial planning & analysis process for the combined European and Asian entity and developed detailed dashboards for the management committee.

Increased efficiency and automation led to significant cost savings of ~$5MM.

Six Sigma Project: Reduction of cost of after sales service for medical equipment

Led Cost Reduction Programs across Europe, using 6 Sigma Methodology in a $450M healthcare service business with about 2000 field engineers .

Key stakeholders: Service GM's of all business units in Europe

Built comprehensive manpower planning model to optimize service delivery. Coached and closed 15, Six Sigma projects. Delivered $5M benefits.