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                                       Background Information

Shahzad (Shaz) Gagan

Cell Phone: (847) 337-3187
shgagan@resume4shaz.com


   

 

 

Shahzad A. Gagan

Objective: To be a member of BI Professional Services team involved in development and implementation of Business Process Management and Enterprise Reporting Systems.

Summary of Qualifications:                                                                                                             

  • Five years of extensive experience in BI technologies including developing Cognos reports, Cognos Models, Power Cubes, Catalogs, and Dashboards for internal and external clients.
  • Extensive utilization of Framework Manager to manage relationships, data source, namespace, query subjects, query items, packages and publishing to Cognos 8 portal and Report Net environment.
  • Extensive experience in design and development of metadata models utilizing Framework Manager.
  • Solid database skills and experienced with SQL*Plus, Stored Procedures, Enterprise Manager, and Analyzer.
  • Experienced developing various reports and queries utilizing Report Studio, Query Studio, Analysis Studio, Report Net, Impromptu and Power Play for both internal and external clients.
  • Insight in troubleshooting issues associated with building models, cubes, reports and dashboards.
  • Solid experience with developing dashboard representation of complex data utilizing Cognos Report Studio within Cognos 8 MR1 environment.
  • Comfortable with installation and configuration of Cognos 8 with MS IIS 6.0, Report Net 7.0, Transformer 7.3, Impromptu, Dashboards, and Visualizer.
  • Enhanced cubes for efficient and better performance by creating partitions leading to shorter execution time of Power Play reports.
  • Experienced with extract, load, and transformation (ETL) including Informaticaâ for data extract from disparate systems. 
  • Hands on with data integrity associated with data extracted from data source leading to accurate data in data mart tables and reports.
  • Experienced with Access Manager, LDAP integration, Active Directories, Stored Procedures, PLSQL, SQL*Plus, Enterprise Manager, Analyzer, Toad, OLAP Models, web-page design and portal development.
  • Worked with Visual C/C++, Java Applet, Xinos JCreator, XML/XSL, JSP/ASP, Web infrastructure and networking protocols in n-tier environments, Remote Desktop connections, WebEx, PC Anywhere and FTP tools.
  • Comfortable with collecting business requirements and presentations of end products to members of management teams and end users.

 

CURRENT EMPLOYER                                                                        September   2005 – Current   
Downtown Chicago, IL 60601
Senior Technical BI Consultant

State Street Global Advisors

Estee Lauder Cosmetics

AOL

Current Employer

 

 

HEWITT ASSOCIATES                                                                            March 2002 – Sept. 2005 
120 S. Riverside Plaza                
Downtown Chicago, IL 60606
Cognos Specialist

  • Extensive experienced working with Cognos Suite versions 5.x, 6.x and 7.x including the Cognos Report Net 1.x (Report Studio, Query Studio, and Framework Manager
  • Experienced with Power Play Enterprise Server to insert Cubes and Power Play reports and publish them to Upfront portals to be accessed by Report Net.
  • Responsibility included but not limited to installing, upgrading, configuring and administering of Report Net, Impromptu, and Power Play.
  • Experienced with utilizing Transformer to create Models, Cubes and Power Play Reports
  • Planned and designed Report Net Frame Work Meta Data Modeler for more control over company data and its access from different networks across the nation.
  • Implemented Link Segment Models from Master Model in Report Net Frame Work Manager.
  • Created ad hoc list and cross tab reports and modified existing reports and templates for both internal and external clients utilizing Cognos Enterprise Reporting Suite. 
  • Implemented administrative features of Impromptu such as creating Alias Tables and Joins, analyzing and building Filters and Calculations, extensive use Functions and Summaries, configuring ODBC and database (Oracle and SQL) connections, Namespace, providing secure data mart access to end users, administering Access Manager and configuring Run Time Active Directories.
  • Experienced with OLAP/Cube development, deployment, and solutions to our clients providing multi dimensional views of critical company data for decision support systems.
  • Researched and resolved Extract Transform and Load (ETL) in Enterprise Reporting Administration which involved the process of data being extracted from data warehouse or Source Data and splitting into data files, uploading of data files into data mart tables such as catalogs and cubes and final destination of being queried by Impromptu or SQL command.
  • Extensively utilized Enterprise Manager and SQL Query Analyzer to add, modify, and refresh database tables and columns for data mapping and data extraction.

Technical Support Specialist (Third Level)
  • Primary responsibility to take calls from Systems Analyst, Programmers, and other Technical staff and resolve them in a timely fashion.
  • Researched the cause of the problem by gathering information on clients’ platforms, operating systems and other relevant information, conduct a thorough research, recreate clients’ problem issues, trouble shoot and test the resolution on appropriate platform/operating system and resolve issues in a most efficient way.
  • Demonstrated expertise in front as well as backend of Solution Series® written in COBOL and proprietary COOL (Cobol Object Oriented Language) with various interface components written in third and fourth generation languages, Java, C/C++ and SQL respectively.
  • Reviewed and relayed assistance with connectivity issues relating to Web clients as well as Admin clients connected to proprietary Cyborg Application Server (CAS) in an n-tier environment setup.
  • Researched and resolved various application (Solution Series, Interactive Workforce, Cognos Admin/Client, Web-Clients and others) occurred during installation in Windows, Unix, AS400 and z/0s.
  • Drafted Problem Notifications if a bug existed in the system and forwarding clear and concise instructions based on recreation of clients’ issues to development.

Quality Assurance
  • Assigned to a major project where considerable amount of scheduled time was devoted to analyzing and testing Cognos PNs (Problem Notifications)
  • Coordinated with developers all over the world especially India, Canada and UK
  • Accountable for taking ownership of Problem Notifications cleared by development for testing.
  • Prioritized testing tasks based upon the level of urgencies.
  • Multitask and test PNs/issues in the most economical and innovative way by utilizing all available resources and tools.
  • Designed logical and algorithmic instructions involved in the testing phase to the resolution of the problem issue.
  • Communicated and explained resolutions to clients.

HEWITT ASSOCIATES                                                                         March 2002 – February 2004     
World Headquarters
100 Half Day Road
Lincolnshire, IL
Client Support Associate

  • Responsible for providing highest quality service (Five Star) to our HR client base
  • Administered over 20 servers and implementing user rights and access.
  • Directed workstations updates, upgrades, service packs installations and reformat C drives
  • Managed installation of Windows NT/2000/XP and other applications from shared drive.
  • Coordinated remote troubleshooting and resolved problems/issues for internal and external clients.
  • Researched the cause of the problem by gathering information in Windows environment by conducting a thorough research, recreate clients’ issues and resolve them in most efficient ways.
  • Volunteered to cross train in our payroll client base and building Impromptu/Power Play reports for upper management in Marketing, Accounting, and Call Centers.
  • Analyzed and organized needs and wants of the query and building a solid foundation before transforming critical information in a report format to upper management team.
  • Integrated and transformed raw data into powerful report information having a positive impact to the bottom line of the business.
  • Assisted many clients with LDAP configuration and its features and administration.
  • Counseled and assisted clients streamline network access (both Windows and Novell) with data mart (i.e. cubes/catalogs) access utilizing single sign-on features.
  • Resolved complex database administrator’s issues associated with accessing cubes and catalogs in remote networks including Citrix connections.

SIMPLESOFT SOLUTIONS                                                                        June 2001 - March 2002  
Assignment: Bankers Life and Casualty Insurance Co.
Downtown Chicago, IL
Technical Consultant/Programmer
  • Assigned as the main point of contact with one of our clients, Bankers Life Casualty Insurance Company.
  • Responsible for smooth operation and function of the multi-tiered web-based application.
  • Administered a proprietary software application designed to keep tract of all phone calls, local, long distance and overseas, made from 282 branches across the continental United States.
  • Programmed and modified codes for the application in C/C++ and ASP linked to SQL/OLAP database.
  • Implemented smart functions () to the back-end written in C/C++ resulting in data entry payroll savings.
  • Developed custom designed layout for Executive Reports utilizing Crystal Reports and Pivot Tables.
  • Managed to save the company over $5000 by trouble shooting Primary Domain Server,configuring the IIS and applying the latest patch.
  • Trained end user to become efficient by demonstrating and coordinating systems features.
  • Created and published application’s training manual in an easy to understand language.
  • Assisted clients edit Unix Bourne Shell script and add functions to add end users’ login credentials.

APAC                                                                                                              June 1995 – May 2001   
E-TOYS &COVAD COMMUNICATIONS
Deerfield, IL
Help Desk Support Manager

  • Promoted to management position after 3 years of service as a Technical Support Specialist.
  • Responsible for 45 to 60 Technical Support Specialist and department that provided global end-user support in a 24x7x365 environment.
  • Responsible for meeting or exceeding and overall success of the Technical Support department.
  • Major responsibility was to adhere to our Service Level Agreement with our clients.
  • Held periodic conference call meeting with different management team to identify problematic issues and propose innovative resolutions.
  • Constructed and build Cognos reports to identify trends in the market and suggested training opportunities for Support Specialists.
  • Ensures Quality Assurance Measures were on tract and being performed on a monthly basis.
  • Ensure that Root Cause Analysis process executed and provided a monthly report to clients describing the root cause analysis performed during the prior month, together with its findings and recommendations.
  • Schedule monthly team meetings with Team Leads and Managers to review performance of the department and support specialists.
  • Share critical information with Managers to ensure that procedural information is communicated and shared with all professionals.
  • Kept an open line of communication with the Management team and Account Managers.
  • Identified and pursued additional revenue and service opportunities within the client's business units.
  • Responsibility included server’s maintenance and implementing user rights and access.
  • Directed workstations updates, upgrades, and service packs installations.
  • Analyzed and troubleshooting issues with over 200 workstations and 12 NT servers.
  • Conducted remote troubleshooting utilizing PC Anywhere to resolve issues for our clients.
  • Coached and followed activities of support specialist with problem-solving support to end-users.
  • Assisted Support Technicians in solving non-routine software, hardware, and procedure problems utilizing procedural manuals and knowledge base databases.
  • Coordinated installation of hardware, software, and implementation of procedure changes.
  • Communicated with fellow staff, supervisors, and support specialist to determine requirements for new or modified software and hardware.
  • Implemented policies and procedures regarding how problems are identified, received, documented, distributed, and corrected.
  • Evaluated new information systems products or services and suggested changes to existing products or services to better aide the end users.

 

APAC                                                                                                               June1995 – May 1998   
E-TOYS & COVAD COMMUNICATIONS
Deerfield, IL
Help Desk Support Specialist
  • Responsible for providing highest quality service to our client base.
  • Recreation of clients’ issues, problem resolution and effective communication
  • IBM’s Tivoli, Clear Quest and Customer First application for logging incidents/tickets
  • Clear, concise and logical steps in writing a problem notification for development team
  • Translation of complex technical concept into layman’s term to clients
  • Set clear expectations with clients in the very beginning of the call
  • Trouble shooting issues and problems for clients with AS400, UNIX, AIX, Sun Solaris, and Windows Operating Systems.
  • Accountable for taking ownership of incidents/tickets and resolve issues on a timely fashion based upon different levels of priorities.
  • Multitask and resolve issues in the most economical and innovative way by utilizing all available resources and tools.
  • Identify the cause of the problem by gathering information on clients’ platforms, operating systems and other relevant information, conduct a thorough research, recreate clients’ problem issues, trouble shoot and test the resolution on appropriate platform/operating system and resolve issues in a most efficient way.
  • Suggest resolutions to client in person and over the media.
  • Connect remotely to client’s system via Web Ex or IBM’s Sametimeâ to resolve issues.
  • Writing Problem Notifications if a bug exist in the system and forwarding clear and concise instructions based on recreation of clients’ issues to development.
  • Exporting clients’ resolutions to the knowledge base intranet for all clients to take advantage.
  • Develop innovative ways to improve various procedures, processes, and standards by incorporating economic variables.                                                                    

 

TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION                                                                                          

SAP BW                                                                                                August 2006 
Chicago, IL
Trained in SAP BW Presentation Services including BEx Analyzer, BEx Query Designer and BEx Web Application Designer. Hands on training on Information Modeling such as Info Cube Data Model, ODS Object Data Model and Business Content data warehouse solutions.                                                                        

ONYX 5.x                                                                                             June 2006  
Philadelphia, PA
Trained in OEP, OEAS and OED

COGNOS                                                                                             May 2004
Schaumburg, IL
Certified Impromptu Product Professional

WILLIAM RAINEY HARPER COLLEGE                                           May 2001
Palatine, IL
Certification in C/C++

CHUBB PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES                                           August 2001
Villa Park, IL
Top Gun Pro Program Certification
Web Technologies with emphasis on OOP, OOD, Java1.2/JSP, VB6.0/VBScript, Oracle PL/SQL, and XML

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY                                               Dec. 1995
Bachelors in Computer Information Systems
DeKalb, IL

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS                                                                               

  • Awarded Team Member of the Year in 1998 from APAC for exceptional client services
  • Awarded several Team Member of the Month during the course of employment at APAC
  • Deans list at Northern Illinois University, Fall 1993

 

 

Professional Profile:                                                                

Shaz Gagan is a Senior Consultant in Technology Delivery Group. His key project and work experience includes the overall, planning, analysis, design, development and implementation of business intelligence and data warehousing solutions. Shaz’s business experience spans a number of industries, including Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Human Resources/Payroll, Banking, E-Commerce and Telecommunication.

Shaz has extensive experience implementing business intelligence solutions using a variety of tools and technologies. He has managed projects within both SQL and Oracle database environments, and has worked with operating systems such as Windows, UNIX, OS390 and z/OS. His strength and expertise is with Enterprise Reporting tool such as Cognos Report Net 1.x, Framework Manager, Transformer, Visualizer, Power Play, Impromptu (5.x, 6.x and 7.x), Oracle Discoverer Administrator, Oracle Plus/Desktop and ETL program including Informatica. Shaz is Cognos Partner-Certified in Report Net and Impromptu and also possess a certification in C/C++.

Shaz worked with the largest outsourced Human Resource and Payroll Company in the world. He was a Cognos specialist and made a major contribution in development, administration, troubleshooting and Quality Assurance in all areas of Business Intelligence Enterprise Reporting Solution.

 

Business Experience:

Development of Cubes and Dashboard for world’s largest asset management company, State Street Global Advisors.

Shaz was responsible for designing and development of cubes and dashboard. He was also responsible for ongoing gathering of requirements and design specifications. He used Cognos 8, Framework Manager, Transformer 7.3 and other Cognos tools to design and develop cubes. Once the cubes were developed, Shaz published it using Congos Connection and Framework Manager. Once the data source pointing to the cubes were published, they were accessible from Analysis Studio, Report Studio, Query Studio and Metric Studio.

Shaz accomplished development of cubes and a dashboard within proposed time frame. He also presented a demonstration of his creation to a panel of local and international power users and sales executives. The demonstration concluded with applause and was called ‘Brilliant piece of work’.

There were some data corruption issues which prohibited development of cubes in the development environment. After manipulating data types in the database and introducing few dimensions at a time to the dimension map area in Transformer, Shaz was able to successfully overcome the issue.

Development and modification of a model (EUL) and reports for Estee Lauder Cosmetics, a Global 2000 Cosmetic Company

Shaz was directly involved in a project responsible for gathering requirements and building reports for a large retail company based in England. He successfully collected specifications, planned and developed Oracle portal and built a customized Portal-Level security on the portal. He also managed to implement Row-Level security on the database level.

Shaz major accomplishment was to successfully implement both Portal-Level and Row-Level security which filtered data not only on the line of products specific to employees’ position titles but also their resident countries. Within the short duration of the project, he managed to designed, developed and modify reports and templates utilizing Oracle Plus, Oracle Desktop and Oracle Administrator based upon required specs.

Development and modification of Cognos model and reports for a large Health Care Provider

In this project, Shaz was responsible for direct involvement in gathering requirements and developing reports for a major Health Provider company. He was responsible for building a model using Framework Manager according to the specs. Shaz made modifications and updates to the model and successfully published packages to the Report Net Server. He designed and developed List and Cross Tab reports adhering to the specs provided.

Development of Enterprise Reporting Solutions for Fortune 500 Beverage Company

This was one of the largest projects which involved the setup of Enterprise Reporting System with the development of database, ETL and standard ‘canned’ reports utilizing Cognos Reporting tool.

Shaz was a part of a large team and was the main point of contact for any and all Cognos related issues such as design and development, upgrade and updates, technical support and troubleshooting. He was directly responsible for development and troubleshooting of Models, Power Play Cubes and Impromptu Catalogs. He was the main point of contact for all Cognos related issues such as design and development, installation as well as upgrades/updates. One of his initial responsibilities was to design and develop ad hoc, list and cross tab reports for both internal and external clients.

He was also involved in administrative features of Cognos Enterprise Reporting Solutions such as creating Alias Tables and Joins, analyzing and building Filters and Calculations, extensive use Functions and Summaries, configuring ODBC and database connections, namespace, providing secure data mart access to end users, administering Access Manager and configuring Run Time Active Directories

Shaz worked closely with managers, project leads, and developers to ensure timely delivery of all Cognos related development tasks. He managed communication between all parties to identify development tasks, determine priorities and timelines, and track resource allocation. Using weekly conference calls with developers and managers nationally and around the world, Shaz closely tracked and communicated development activities both within the Cognos team and throughout the Enterprise Reporting team.

He also managed the database reporting activities of his team. He gathered reporting requirements for customers, created implementation timelines for report delivery, and worked with program and product managers to identify and define reporting specifications and capabilities. These activities included both design and development of dynamic as well as static reports on the web.

Model development and reports for a Fortune 500 Financial Services Company

Shaz was a part of an Enterprise Reporting Solution team which was responsible for design and development of Models using Framework Manager Tool and construction of reports to be published and be accessible from the company’s Intranet.

Shaz made a major contribution by developing the models according to client’s specification which involved data from tables located in multiple data sources. After successful completion of models, Shaz worked along with his team members in creating and implementing relationships joins, outer joins, calculations, filters in reports according to client’s specifications. With his background in ETL, Shaz was also responsible for data integrity and to ensure that data extracted from Master database conforms to the data retrieved in reports.

ETL enhancement for Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical Company

Shaz was assigned to a project along with a team where the client had a need to replace their existing ETL program with a customized ETL transformation programs. As a member of the team he made a major contribution in design and development of a customized ETL program written in UNIX scripting language. He also helped design and develop the architecture of the Extract, Transformation and Load process. The project involved successful scheduled extraction of a Master database through the population of Cognos data mart.

Shaz’s primary responsibility was the smooth operation of data extraction. He made a major contribution in administering the ETL process and was responsible for data management and data integrity. The process involved Enterprise Reporting Administration which extracted data from the master database to a large flat file, splitting of flat file into smaller files, process of mapping and sorting of smaller files, uploading of files into corresponding Cognos data mart.

As senior member of the team, he provided mentoring and training for new team members.

Internal project of Technical Support and Quality Assurance in the area of Enterprise Reporting for a Fortune 500 Human Resource/Payroll Consulting Firm

Shaz volunteered his expertise in the internal project in a high profile project of the roll out of new proprietary payroll which among other soft wares was also connected to Cognos applications. His primary responsibility was to recreate client problematic issues on respective platforms, create PNs (Problem Notifications) if problem existed and resolve issues. He worked directly with other Cognos professionals in India and Canada including Cognos developers to determine the cause and resolution of complex issues.

Maintenance of a web based application for a Large Multinational Insurance Company

Shaz was assigned as the main point of contact. He was responsible for smooth operation and function of the multi-tiered web-based application. The assigned proprietary software application was designed to keep tract of all phone calls, local, long distance and overseas, made from 282 branches across the continental United States.

Shaz programmed and modified codes for the application in C/C++ and ASP linked to SQL/OLAP database. He implemented smart functions written in C/C++ which resulted in labor cost for data entry personnel. Shaz also had an opportunity to develop custom designed layout for Executive Reports utilizing Seagate Crystal Reports and Pivot Tables.

He managed to save the company over $5000 by trouble shooting Primary Domain Server and configuring the IIS for optimum efficiency. Shaz took the initiative to train end user to become efficient by demonstrating how to coordinate systems features and shortcuts. Shaz also created and published application’s training manual in an easy to understand language.

 

Industry Summary:                                                                                           

  • Consulting
  • Financial Services
  • HR/Payroll
  • Telecommunications
  • E-Commerce
  • Computing/Technology
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Food Beverage/Retail

 

Technology Experience:                                                                                   

Applications: Cognos 8 (Report Studio, Analysis Studio, Query Studio, Metrics Manager), Cognos 7 (Report Net), Framework Manager, Power Play, Transformer, Visualizer, Impromptu, Oracle Discoverer Administrator, Oracle Discoverer Plus/Desktop, Crystal Reports.

Programming Languages: SQL; C/C++, Visual Basic, HTML/XML, JSP

Operating Systems: Windows 2000/2003/NT/XP. Worked with UNIX; OS390 and z/OS

Database Platforms: SQL Server and Oracle