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Telecoms & Billing Professional

Telecoms & Billing Professional

Work Experience

Summary As a Telecommunication Professional with 10 years business-, system-, application- and process development experience, I possess a strong business understanding coupled with excellent program- and project-management skills. I have successfully led the architecture, delivery and implementation of multiple large-scale projects. My strong analytical skills and ability to quickly address, assess and adapt new technologies, combined with the customer-focused approach, solidify the exceptional relations I rapidly form with both internal and external clients. Other areas of expertise include:
§ Business Process Audit, Analysis and Automation
§ OSS/BSS, Network, Mediation and Billing System Architecture and Rollout
§ Risk, Fraud Analysis
§ Product Development
§ Rationalization, Restructuring of business units

Employment History (Summary, details see bottom pages)
01. 2001- open GmbH, Zürich, Switzerland
Business Consultant, Founding Partner
small consultancy firm based in Zurich, offering specialized services to telecom operators (OLO’s). The main client over the last 20 months is Vodax GmbH, where I am the Project Director for the delivery of a B2B exchange.
1998 - 2000 Interoute Telecommunications SA, Geneva, Switzerland
Operations Director, Switzerland
Head of Network-, Billing-, Engineering and IT departments for Switzerland.
Technical Manager, Zurich
Head of Network- and Field Engineering in Zurich. Joint-responsibility for Swiss network design and rollout
Field Engineering Coordinator / Systems Engineer
Responsible for field & switch engineering activities in the German part of Switzerland.

1993 – 1997 Bell Labs Inc (Lucent Techn.), Markham, Canada
Systems Engineer, Networks & VPN R&D

1992 – 1993 Sun-Life Insurance Inc., Toronto Canada
Systems Engineer (Contract)

National Trust Inc., Toronto, Canada
Systems Administrator (Contract), Nova Corp. Rights offering, proxy distribution

1991 – 1992 Vontrade Securities SA, Zurich, Switzerland
Commodities Broker, trading futures and options on CBOT, CME, NYMEX


Detailed employment history
2001 - open Business Consultant; GmbH, Zurich
small consultancy firm based in Zurich, offering specialized services to telecom operators. It was founded by a group of telecommunications professionals with a combined 40 years of experience in switching, mediation, billing and OSS. The main client is Vodax.

§ PROJECT DIRECTOR, Vodax GmbH, Zurich (July 2001 - open)
Start-Up, building a B2B Online-Exchange and clearing house for the European telecommunications wholesale market. The company is to offer trading, delivery, clearing and settlement services comparable to any traditional commodities exchange.
Key Responsibilities:
- Architectural Design & development of OSS / BSS for trading, delivering, clearing and settling traded commodities.
- Cooperation with regulators and banking commissions in defining and adapting standards applicable to the Swiss and European telecommunications laws and best practice.
- Architectural Design & development of OSS / BSS for trading, delivering, clearing and settling traded commodities. Order handling system for all executable trades is build around Convergys’ Geneva billing system, Mediation developed independently due to the complex nature of traded commodities and their rules and regulations as well as the requirements set forth by the switching components.
- Detailed gap-analysis of differences between functionality of a telecom billing - order-handling system vs. real time environment of the traditional commodities market. The results from that analysis were submitted in a proposal to the client, covering all the key components in the system architecture: Trading environment and platform provided by VIRT-X, IP Core network (Class 4) for delivery by Cisco, real-time clearing and T+1 settlement with the custodian banks by Geneva, Mediation developed internally, TradePac™.
- Development and documentation Business Plan and assisted in Financial Planning process, capital requirements
- Another important part of the project was the close cooperation with regulator and banking commission in defining standards applicable to the Swiss and European telecommunications market.
- Business Development within Carrier Wholesale Market.
Key Achievements:
- Produced full documentation for Investor Group, including Executive Summary, Business Plan, 5-year financial plan and budget.
- Completed architectural design of OSS for trading, NSS for delivering, BSS for clearing and automated accounting for settlement
- Completed development of specialized software tools (including patent and ™ reg.)
Goal: To launch 1st spot, futures & options exchange for wholesale telecommunications services.
The client is currently seeking first round funding.


§ COUNTRY OPERATIONS MANAGER, TeleCity AG, Zurich (Jan 2001 - Oct 2001)
TeleCity is one of the leading Colocation and hosting companies in Europe. As part of their European expansion drive in 2001, they intended to enter the Swiss market.
Key Responsibilities:
- Development of business case to open Data-Center facility in Zurich
- Establish relationships with the Carriers and Authorities
- Define and evaluate target markets and products
- Adapt company specifications and practices to Swiss standards
- Assisted the construction department of TeleCity PLC in specifying build-out of the facility, conducting the tender process and selecting the general contractor.
- Development of an automated order handling system for TeleCity PLC, based on their existing “Remedy” TT system.
Key Achievements:
- Automated the order handling process, thus reducing the implementation time frame from 3 weeks to 72 hours
- Based on my recommendations and due to current market conditions, TeleCity decided to terminate the venture.


o TELECOM CONSULTANT, OLO’s (names upon request) (Jan 2001 - Mar 2002)
Key Responsibilities:
- Conduct technical audits of switching-, billing- and order handling systems, business and implementation processes, and recommended improvements to systems.
- Developed tools simplifying routine tasks between OHS, OSS, and NSS. The main focus was on the INA (individual number allocation) and PR Number portability project (TeDaS), which was launched by the regulator BAKOM in 2000 and was to be implemented by all operators by September 2001. We assisted the carriers in the successful implementation of INA in their switching and billing systems.
Key Achievements:
- Successfully concluded all projects within timeframe and budget.


o CONSULTANT “VOICE-Project”, Cablecom Business AG, Zürich (Nov 2001 - Jan 2002)
Key Responsibilities:
- Technical analysis related to a business venture between CC and a partner. In this role the contribution to the business-case was of technical nature, supporting CC in evaluating synergies related to systems. A gap analysis was conducted, potential sources of conflict identified and appropriate action recommended.


1998 - 2000 Interoute Telecommunications SA, Geneva, Switzerland
Operations Director, Switzerland (05.1999 – 12. 2000)
Promoted in June 1999 to Head of Operations for Switzerland, managing a staff of 30. Member of Swiss management board.
Responsibilities:
- Head of Network-, Transmission-, Billing-, Field- Engineering and IT. Budget responsibility CHF 14 Mio pA.
- Head of Swiss switch migration project: the scope of the project was to migrate all services from the Eicsson ANS TL4 switches to the AXE TL3 switches within a 3 month window due to increased traffic growth. As head of the program I was responsible for the planning, budgeting, controlling, and staff deployment during the project. The project concluded successfully within timeframe and budget.
- Head of Pan European OSS migration project: As the head of this project I was responsible for the successful migration from the Lifecycle Retail Billing System to the Calculus Retail/ EHPT Settler Wholesale Billing Systems. This included the documentation and definition of all requirements from sales to engineering, gap analysis, interaction with the various suppliers and consultants and troubleshooting during the migration period.
- Development of automation procedures to ensure streamlined and improved Customer Care Handling.
- Development of automation tools allowing the carrier pricing to be loaded automatically.
- Development of all monthly financial and management reports detailing sales revenues and costs, including destination margins and revenue assurance.
- Member of the steering group for Interoute’s Pan-European Network (i21)
- Head of several workgroups to ensure successful design & deployment of new technologies, QoS and revenue assurance on a Pan –European Level.
- Head of OSS migration project, BSS migration project, NSS migration project.
- Launched new services and products on behalf of Sales and Marketing department, including feasibility analysis, development and implementation plan, launch and documentation of services and products. Integration into OHS and BSS.
- Conducted strategic market analysis for UK headquarters, progress reports and recommendations for Group-marketing and sales, etc.
- Established a Carrier Sales Department incl. automation of bid/ask structure and improvement of network infrastructure utilization.
Key achievements:
- Successful management of AXE switch migration projects (€ 20Mio), Calculus/EHPT billing project (€ 5Mio) and ON-NET network optimization project (€ 16Mio)
- Successful management of UNOG (United Nations Organization) Voice Project, providing an access and billing mechanism for all UNOG staff in regional offices and the field worldwide.
- Reduced OPEX by 65% increased engineering productivity by 60% positively impacting overall EBIT performance.
- Established Carrier Sales, contributing 55% of earnings in 1999/2000, at a GM of 48%. Introduced automated wholesale purchasing and sales, streamlined pan-european network infrastructure generating savings of £20Mio. pA..
- Completed all projects within timeframe and budget.
- Successfully launched all new services and products within given timeframe and budget.
Technical Manager, Zurich (10.1998 – 04.1999)
Promoted in October 1998 to Technical Manager for the Zurich Branch, managing a staff of 7.
Responsibilities:
- Head of Network- and Field Engineering in Zurich as well as Technical support.
- Joint-responsibility for Swiss network design and implementation.
- Sales Engineering for corporate customers
- Budget responsibility CHF 3 Mio.
Key achievements:
- Project managed the deployment and migration of 2 network systems and customer database on time and within budget.
- Successfully migrated the PP Calling Card business to a new platform, optimization and expansion, thus increasing potential revenue stream by 400%
- Successfully assisted sales in winning several large corporate contracts
- Increased network reliability to 98%, reducing fault ticket generation by 75%.

Field Engineering Coordinator / Systems Engineer, Zurich (02.1998 –09.1998)
Responsibilities:
- Field-engineering activities in the German part of Switzerland, presales support, development & deployment of access services for the SME market.
- Project management of Swiss network expansion (Zurich node). Engineering responsibility for the Zurich switching node (ANS TL3)
- Swisscom Interconnection Responsibilities: I was the switching representative for Interoute AG during all interconnection meetings with Swisscom prior to the signing of the agreement between Interoute and Swisscom.
- Installation, testing and commissioning of the ANS/AXE TL exchanges. All local (including Swisscom) and international SS7 interconnections. Traffic management of signaling and speech networks. Routing administration within the ANS, including the automation of the implementation of new Least Cost routing on a monthly basis. All Interoute indirect access services and switch-less resellers services. Implementation of Advice of charge, AOC using both the functional and stimulus protocols.
- Responsible for specifying all Interoute specific patches required from Ericsson including patches to stop circular routing, enhanced Centrex features, enhanced Carrier routing features and many bug fixes required. All such patches were personally verified before activation.
- Implementation of EDSS1 PBX, ISDN Basic Rate, V5.1 and new analogue services. Deployment of SS7 and ISDN protocol analysers and simulators.

Key achievements:
- Reduced go live date at customer sites from 1 month to 2 days, thus improving overall time to market challenge.
- All interconnection projects completed within time and budget
- Successfully assisted sales department in winning tenders
- Restructured Zurich operations by recruiting key engineers, improving fault ratio from 15% to less than 1%


1993 – 1997 Bell Labs Inc (Lucent Techn.), Markham, Canada (1993/1994 & 1996/1997)
Systems-Engineer, Networks & VPN R&D
Development in the field of engineering research and speech science, including migration from circuit to packet (ATM) networks.
Responsibilities:
- Exploiting the various possibilities to guarantee acceptable QoS levels within packet switched networks for speech transmission technologies.
- R & D in the field of speech compression technology
- Design and build of ATM - Test-Networks for ABB in Europe and Asia

1992 - 1993 Sun-Life Insurance Inc., Toronto Canada (6 months)
Systems Engineer (Contract)
Contracted as O&M & data-maintenance engineer, Insurance claims systems
Responsible for operating and maintaining the life insurance claims system (UNIX OS), rectifying data input errors and dimensioning partitions of the databases.

1991 – 1992 National Trust Inc., Toronto, Canada ( 8 months)
System Administrator/Developer(Contract)
Nova Corp. Rights offering project, developed processing tools for automatic reconciliation between banks, clearing houses and clients.







Education

Education & Qualifications

2001 – 2002 Mastering Technology Enterprise (MTE), IMD , Lausanne, Switzerland
Leadership development program for technically trained managers, preparation for IMD’s accelerated Executive MBA program (start 2003).

1993 – 2002 Continuing education
- CCNA 1999; Summa4 O&M 1999, Cisco, UK:
- STP Signaling C7 (1998), Cable & Wireless College, UK: Transport Networks
- ANS TL4 O&M (1998); AXE TL3 O&M(1999); Testing 1 (1999), Ericsson, DE & IE
- UNIX Korn-, Bourne- Shell Level 1, Pascal, C, C++, Oracle Dev. I (1990-1996)

1987 – 1991 B.Sc.-(Eng.) Electrical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering (cgpa. 3.3): Microwave and communication electronics, signals and systems.

1974 – 1987 5 years Secondary/High School in Switzerland and USA
8 years Elementary school in Canada and Switzerland


Skills

Skills
Management
Management of and within departments, matrix organizations, project teams and personnel, ranging from 6 to 50 employees.
Initiated and conducted employee development and motivation programmes in line with corporate policy.
Initiated and conducted employee bonus/malus rating system, encouraging entrepreneurial spirit amongst staff. Additionally initiated team-building events.
Conducted selection, qualification, performance review, promotion and release of staff.
Leadership
Head of steering group commissioned with improving network performance, utilization and network design.
Head of switch, VAS platform and billing migration project groups.
Head of design and development of OSS for wholesale trading system.
Project and Program Management
Head of Vodax B2B Project using PMI tools
Migration and Rollout of AXE TL3/TL4 switching systems.
Migration and Rollout of new billing systems (Tempest, EHPT.
Design and rollout of X-Mate NMS Project
Migration and upgrade of Pre- and Post paid Calling Card Platforms
Development and deployment of network and billing automation tools
Technical audit and review of complex network, billing and OSS/BSS infrastructures
Subsequent implementation of recommendations within timeframe and budget.
Initiated and led tender processes up to € 20Mio, including all relevant components.
INA number portability project in Switzerland
Technologies (applied)
Switching: AXE TL3, O & M, DT2, Design; ANS TL4; Nortel, DMS 300; Siemens EWSD; Digitalk ; Cisco PSTN Gateway (VSC3000, 8850, SLT’s);ORYX VAS Platform with EXCEL switching core; SimplifiedTelesys VAS Platform Cisco SUMMA4 ; Siemens HICOM 150,300,350ext; Mitel Parlay ISDN PRA & BRA Routers
Billing: Lifecycle BS; Tempest Wave-Tsunami BS; Calculus, Alcatel; EHPT: Settler & Progressor; Ericsson BMP; Convergis Geneva; Kenan-Arbor
Protocols: SS7 ETSI& ANSI ISUP V4 &, ETSI-ISDN, INAP, TCP/IP, IP v4/6, SIP, X25,QSIG etc
Transmission: Nortel ADM1/4, Alcatel ADM 1,4, ECI T-DAX, Cisco BPX & MGX8260, 8850 (ATM), Tellabs ;Initiation of R.F.I/Q/T’s, SDH Network dimensioning
OSS, CRM, OS: Lotus Notes CSSS; MicroStrategy, Siebel, Remedy, W2K, Linux, Unix Software: Apps: Oracle DB, SQL DB, Apache, MSOffice, MS Project; Prog. Languages: C, C++, VB, PLEX, HLPLEX, Java 2.0, TCL/TK, PL/SQL, PHP, VB, JavaScript 2.0, XML
Sales & Marketing
Established carrier sales department, annual sales from €200k to €20Mio.
Supported corporate sales in winning multinational bids with UNOG, UBP, ABB
Introduction of tools designed to simplify and expedite the sales process for sales staff.
Development of statistic tools for marketing and sales, expediting delivery of KPI’s.
Finance
Development of Business Plans & Cases, including executive summary and presentation to board members and investors
Detailed cost auditing and analysis, budgeting
Development of revenue assurance programs and processes for finance
Development of tools supporting detailed costing of individual products on inter-company level
Development of tools supporting detailed margin analysis


Languages

Languages English, fluent
German, fluent
French, good


Other

Additional professional activities
Participation in Q6 and Q7 workgroups (BAKOM), responsible for all telecom regulatory affairs and standards.
Member of ProTelecom, TeDaS


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