My clients for intelligence analysis have included the military, law enforcement, and two Fortune 500 companies. My clients for database & application development have included law enforcement and several Fortune 500 companies --- two of which (Wells Fargo and Ameriprise Financial) have been repeat clients 5 and 7 times, respectively.
My clients have given me experience in their varied industries and with their business problems, technologies, and best practices. I have been able to build on these though my own study and insights.
Here on my website, you can read case studies and see work samples for some of my work. I have given you links to them on this page, but you can also find them categorized on the "Projects" page available from the menu, above. Click "Awards" in the menu to see those I won for my work in the Army and federal law enforcement.
Ameriprise Financial
Minneapolis, MN
For the Human Resources department, I added many enhancements to a training tracker database used internationally. For the Clearing division of the company, I provided application development from requirements gathering through development to user acceptance testing. For Clearing, I also provided lean metrics implementation. This included working with managers to identify where and how to measure productivity as wells as modifying applications to capture, deliver, and report those metrics.
WHEN
7/2008; 4/2009 - 7/2009; 8/2011 - 12/2011; 6/2014 - 3/2015; 9/2015 - 12/2015; 6/2014 - 3/2015; 9/2015 - 12/2015
PROJECTS
- Development: Created or modified dozens of special-purpose financial applications with MS Access, VBA, and Oracle. Served as business analyst to gather requirements, compose use cases and test cases, and conduct user acceptance testing. Performed quality checks on work of 11 other developers.
- Process improvement: Implemented lean metrics capture, serving as business analyst to identify what to measure in a business process and where. Helped managers to make their processes more efficient before implementing lean metrics capture. Reviewed all other developers' work and conducted all user acceptance testing. Trained new developers (on-shore and off-shore) on the project.
SKILLS
Application development; user acceptance testing (UAT); requirements gathering; use cases; user stories; process improvement; lean; training; process documentation.
SOFTWARE
Oracle, MS Access, VBA.
Anchor Bancorp (now Old National Bancorp)
Apple Valley, MN
Anchor Bancorp was the parent organization of 18 Anchor Bank branches in the Greater Twin Cities and Mankato, MN. Anchor provided consumer and business banking products and services. It was acquired by Old National Bancorp in 2017.
WHEN 12/2001 - 11/2002
PROJECTS Customer journey mapping; retail site locating; philanthropic research.
SKILLS Geomarketing; journey mapping; quantitative & qualitative research; multi-dimensional research.
SOFTWARE Banking CRM, MS MapPoint (GIS software), MS Access.
Best Buy
Richfield, MN
WHEN 7/2019 - 3/2020
PROJECTS
Created an automated system for pricing tens of thousands of products daily. Served as business analyst in gathering requirements, writing use cases and test cases, and conducting user acceptance testing. Prepared data from old system, performed quality checks, and loaded it into new databases. The system I created consists of:
- Teradata stored procedures to conditionally apply pricing rules based on strategy and conditions.
- Teradata database to hold pricing results and pricing rule components needed to set prices.
- MS Access user interfaces to review the defined prices and maintain the rules and other pricing components.
- MS SQL Server database to support user interfaces and feed pricing rule components back to Teradata.
SKILLS
Requirements gathering; use case & user story composition; user acceptance testing (UAT); user interface design & creation; data quality assurance.
SOFTWARE Teradata; MS SQL Server; MS Access; VBA; MS Teams.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota
Burnsville, MN
WHEN 5/2015 - 8/2015
PROJECTS
Created two MS Access/VBA/SQL Server applications to support regulatory compliance. Features included:
- Importing, parsing, and performing hygiene on million-row text source files.
- Creating stored procedures in MS SQL Server using T-SQL.
- Producing regulatory reports and customer correspondence in MS Word using VBA commands in MS Access.
SKILLS Requirements gathering; application development; user acceptance testing (UAT); data quality assurance.
SOFTWARE MS SQL Server; MS Access; VBA.
Drug Enforcement Administration
Philadelphia, PA and Newark, NJ
WHEN
10/1992 - 4/1993 (DEA Philadelphia Field Division, Philadelphia, PA)
4/1993 - 8/1994 (Northern New Jersey HIDTA Task Force, Newark, NJ)
PROJECTS
- Identifying intelligence analysis needs of law enforcement investigators.
- Designing & implementing an intelligence production system.
- Developing new analytical methods, documenting them, and training others to perform them.
- Providing research & analysis to investigations.
- Automating reports.
- Creating databases.
SKILLS
Requirements gathering; use case & user story composition; intelligence analysis; algorithm creation; training; management; process documentation; process improvement; qualitative research; quantitative research; data quality assurance.
SOFTWARE DBase; NADDIS; project management software.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
Global Traffic Technologies
Oakdale, MN
GTT is a seller of equipment, software, and services to regulate street traffic. This includes devices for emergency vehicles and public transportation to get right-of-way at traffic lights.
WHEN 3/2011 - 12/2011; 1/2012 - 3/2012; 9/2012 - 10/2012
PROJECTS
- Created self-serve reporting tool for marketing.
- Researched market size and penetration.
- Identified & collected information on every U.S. municipality with a population of 5000+.
- Helped create algorithm for estimating demand for any client.
- Performed data hygiene of NetSuite data.
SKILLS
Requirements gathering; use case & user story composition; intelligence analysis; algorithm creation; training; management; process documentation; process improvement; qualitative research; quantitative research; data quality assurance.
SOFTWARE
MS SQL Server; MS Access; VBA; NetSuite (CRM software).
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
Medtronic
Mounds View, MN
Medtronic is a manufacturer of medical devices.
WHEN 3/2016 - 12/2016
PROJECTS
Quality assurance in large post-acquisition database conversion, composing >100 test scripts in Oracle PL/SQL.
SKILLS Data quality assurance.
SOFTWARE Oracle; MS Access; VBA.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
Minnesota Orchestra
Minneapolis, MN
The Minnesota Orchestral Association is the parent organization of the Minnesota Orchestra, one of the world's highest-regarded symphonic orchestras. Besides providing classical music concerts, the Association also hosts concerts with or without the Orchestra in other musical genres. It also rents its concert hall for non-musical events.
WHEN 11/2002 - 3/2006
PROJECTS
- Customer segmentation.
- Campaign planning support for direct mail and email.
- Sales & campaign analysis.
- Website maintenance.
SKILLS Quantitative analysis; segmentation; geomarketing; process improvement.
SOFTWARE
MS SQL Server; MS Access; VBA; ColdFusion; HTML; MS MapPoint (GIS software); concert venue CRM software.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
MTS Systems
Eden Prairie, MN
MTS Systems is a manufacturer of testing equipment. This is equipment that shakes, twists, bends, squeezes, stretches, and spins things for quality testing. They also sell the software, services, and after-market parts to support that equipment.
WHEN 8/2008 – 3/2011
PROJECTS
- Price-setting support.
- Application development.
- Datamart design, creation, and maintenance.
- Creation of customer-facing automated reports.
- Customer survey design & analysis.
- SAP/ERP data maintenance.
SKILLS Application development; survey design; survey analysis; foreign currency conversion.
SOFTWARE SAP/ERP; SurveyMonkey; MS SQL Server; MS Access; VBA.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
Nabisco (now subsidiary of Mondelez International)
East Hanover, NJ
I worked as a contractor for three months in the Marketing department of the biscuit (cookie) division before being hired as a full-time employee in the Operations department of the Refrigerated Foods Division. I provided administrative support in both roles. After six months in Operations, I was promoted to the position of Quality Coordinator in the Quality department of the Refrigerated Foods Division where I worked for the next three years. That is where I did my most significant work, which involved process improvement and competitive intelligence (described on this website).
In July 1998, four months into my fourth year at Nabisco, the parent company, RJR Nabisco, shutdown the Refrigerated Foods division after failing to find a buyer. Nabisco itself changed ownership twice and is now a division of Mondelez International.
Nabisco Refrigerated Foods produced margarine under the Parkay, Blue Bonnet, and Fleischmann's brands. It also produced microwavable omelets (Easy Omelets) and yogurt (Snackwell Chocolate Yogurt). RJR Nabisco sold these brands to ConAgra in 1998.
WHEN 3/1995 – 7/1998
PROJECTS
- Implementing a competitive intelligence production system.
- Coordinating process of reviewing & approving product specifications (ingredients, formulas, packaging, and quality).
- Tracking & analyzing consumer product feedback.
- Observing & reporting on consumer focus groups.
SKILLS Research & analysis; quality assurance; process improvement; application development.
SOFTWARE MS Access; VBA.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
Target (Roundel digital advertising division)
Minneapolis, MN
Roundel provides digital advertising to clients not only on the Target website and app, but also on social media, search ads, audio, and even TV. It leverages its knowledge of its customers and their demographics and tracks the performance of ads. It also provides services to support digital advertising.
WHEN 9/2021 – 8/2022 (remote)
PROJECTS
- Research support for setting prices of digital advertising products.
- Price analysis algorithm development.
- Application development.
- Process automation.
- Data quality assurance.
- Dashboard creation.
SKILLS
Quantitative research; algorithm development; application development; quality assurance; process mapping & process improvement, extract-transact-load (ETL) operations.
SOFTWARE Hadoop/HiveQL; Domo; MS Access; VBA; WorkFront; Salesforce; Confluence; SharePoint.
Toppan Merrill
Saint Paul, MN
Toppan Merrill is an international financial printer that provides the specialized services needed to report financial information --- by print and digital means --- to shareholders, prospective investors, and regulatory agencies.
WHEN 9/1998 – 1/2001; 8/2001; 1/2007-11/2007; 3/2019 - 7/2019
PROJECTS
- Intelligence production system creation.
- Due dilligence for acquisitions & alliances.
- Intranet site creation & maintenance.
- Competitive landcape mapping.
- Research of new technology.
- Database creation.
- Customer segmentation.
- Application enhancement & code refactoring.
SKILLS
Intelligence production system creation; SWOT analysis; quantitative & qualitative research; HTML; application development; user acceptance testing (UAT).
SOFTWARE
Morningstar; Dow Jones/Factiva; Lexis-Nexis; SEC EDGAR; EDGAR Online; US Patent & Trademark searches; ICANN lookup; WestLaw directories; Thomson Reuters FindLaw; Oracle; MS Access; VBA.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
Case study: "XML, XBRL, and the Financial Printing Industry: a Case Study in Competitive Intellingence"
US Army
Boston, MA; Fort Huachua, AZ; Fort Riley, KS; Fort Irwin, CA; Fort Meade, MD; Frankfurt am Main, GERMANY; Philadelphia, PA.
WHEN
Regular Army (active duty): 9/1987 – 8/1990
US Army Reserve (including 10 months active duty): 1/1992-3/1995
PROJECTS
- Intelligence production system creation.
- Development of new analytical methods.
- Intelligence analysis.
- Management (personnel & equipment).
- Training.
- Process documentation & improvement.
- Market research & marketing strategy (recruitment).
SKILLS
Intelligence production system creation; SWOT analysis; decision support; qualitative research; training; management; planning.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
Wells Fargo
Minneapolis, MN
For the Home Mortgage division, I provided competitive intelligence support. For the Corporate Trust division, I provided business analysis, application development, and Windows upgrade preparation. For the corporate-level Data Management & Insights Group, I provided business analysis and process documentation for a data warehouse project.
WHEN 4/2006 - 10/2006; 6/2007; 2/2008 - 5/2008; 1/2012 - 6/2014; 5/2020 - 12/2020
PROJECTS
- Recruiting support.
- Creating MS Access applications for managing billion-dollar housing bond issues and other special rule investment products.
- General application development, enhancement, and code refactoring.
- Windows/MS Office upgrade preparation (risk identification & mitigation).
- Root cause analysis.
- Data warehousing: control point documentation; process documentation; coordinating system-of-record onboarding.
SKILLS
Webscraping; application development; requirements gathering; process documentation & process improvement; risk identification & mitigation; root cause analysis.
SOFTWARE
Oracle; Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications (OFSAA) specifications via Oracle.com website; MS Access; VBA.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
YMCA of the North
Minneapolis, MN
YMCA of the North is the parent organization of 26 YMCA branches in the greater Twin Cities area and Rochester, MN.
WHEN 1/2017 - 12/2018
PROJECTS
- Identification of early indicators of member defection.
- Research of new member behavior and its correlation to long-term membership.
- Campaign analysis & recommendations.
- Campaign support (A/B testing; URL tag creation; contact lists).
- Creating UTM taxonomy for Google tags to facilitate analysis of website and email marketing campaigns.
- Survey design & analysis.
- Multi-dimensional research on member retention.
- Retention forecasting.
- Class scheduling rationalization.
- Report automation.
- Competitive intelligence.
SKILLS
Application development; requirements gathering; forecasting; website & email analytics; quantitative research; qualitative research; A/B testing; survey design & analysis.
SOFTWARE
MS SQL Server; Google Analytics; health club membership CRM software; MS Access; VBA.
CASE STUDIES & WORK SAMPLES
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