Hal Amens is a management consultant with more than 25 years of broad based, implementation oriented experience. He has been a manager or team member for projects ranging from quick fixes to strategic initiatives, for system development and system acquisitions. He has a broad perspective on project management having participated from initiation through implementation for successful projects and separately, project failure analysis in support of litigation. He has worked on a wide range of assignments in different industries and locations and gets up to speed quickly. He is effective on single consultant assignments, as a member of a project team, and as a project manager. Communicates effectively from the bullpens in IT and back offices to the executive suite, from one-on-one to small groups to formal presentations, and in writing.


CORE COMPETENCIES

• Project Management	• Litigation Support
• Business Process Improvement	• Merger Integration

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management Office; business requirements; system design, development and testing; vendor selection, assessment, management, and acceptance testing; project communication. · Works with business unit managers and technical staff to facilitate communication, and to identify issues early and facilitate resolution before they impact schedules and budgets.

• Member of the Project Management Office (PMO) for the integration of retail systems and operations for the largest merger of California based banks, 15 month project completed in 13 months. · Managed PMO for merger of two for-profit educational companies with more than 900 locations nationwide on schedule. · Member of PMO for Y2K projects of two money center banks; one for planning and initial operation and the other for planning and two and a half years of operation through January 2000 · Developed and implemented processes to standardize project and contingency planning and status reporting across 50 diverse business units.
• Business requirements identification, definition and documentation to support system design, acquisition and testing for mainframe and Web based systems. · Coordination with other projects and existing systems. Represented client with outsourcing partners and have provided outsourced services. · Particularly effective with business unit managers in identifying opportunities, assuring they understand options and impacts, and facilitating change.
• Wrote, edited, trained and implemented System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) for financial services, manufacturing and for-profit education. Consistent with PMBOK and Oracle Project. Worked with RAD and familiar with ITIL Standards, UML, XML, SOAP, as-is/to-be, and supply chain.
• Managed the design for consolidation of all consumer lending systems for a major bank including mortgage, line-of-credit, direct auto, dealer flooring and auto loans, other vehicles, credit card and consumer finance. Developed requirements, system design, managed RFP and vendor selection.
• Managed project communication to geographically dispersed stakeholders via formal conferences, intranet, email, teleconferences, coaching calls, face-to-face meetings, and corporate newsletters. · Webmaster for development and operation of three corporate intranets using html and other web development tools. Project presentations to potential clients; to team members for initiation and progress; to executives for plans, progress and results; and to regulators and customers. · Included users in project management process to facilitate their participation in testing and system acceptance, and assure they were trained and ready when systems were.
• Designed and managed a communication strategy to support implementation of centralized management of corporate wide purchasing; identified and addressed opportunities and issues to assure executive support and minimize operational resistance. Cost saving of more than $100 million annually. · Published 60 issues of the HIPAA Implementation Newsletter to 400 subscribers and conducted two Webinars with more than 450 people in attendance at each.

• Business analyst for integration of a supplier/engineering/manufacturing system with a marketing/dealer system to improve product quality for a major automobile company; documented as-is processes for both systems and their interfaces, identified business and system requirements, defined and assessed five to-be options and recommended one.
• Led one of several teams to document processes, interfaces, systems, business opportunities, objectives and roadmap projects for 17 back office departments of a major bank for department level business process improvement; evaluated results with other teams to identify opportunities across departments.
• Managed a study that cost justified remote document imaging for checks and documents to and from branches, business offices and processing centers for a major bank; included assessment of customer service improvements and processing cost reductions. · Historically checks were sent from branches to central sites for processing and destruction; imaging in branches offered major improvements in service and costs but raised issues of customer information security and potential identity theft. Developed centralized management structure, polices, and processes for decentralized (branch) document destruction.
• The largest cash vault in one of the ten largest U.S. banks acquired dollar bill sorting equipment capable of processing five times the number of bills per hour; required new business processes from receipt of cash at the facility's door through processing and delivery to the inner vault. Managed process reengineering, wrote the procedures and trained users.
• Assisted a Chamber of Commerce apply customer relationship management software to improve service and revenue generation; established a database of Internet links to community services.
• A large IT organization in a major bank planned projects annually as part of the corporate budgeting process; their visible project horizon was less than a year and future planning was based largely on informal discussions with major users. Designed a queuing process for projects that allowed all internal customers to submit requests as needs were identified to improve planning and extend the horizon.
• Redesigned project initiation and management processes to support centralization of computer systems for the Asia Division of a US based international bank; trained managers in eight Asian banks.
• Designed portions of sthe automated business processes to be used for customs clearance of international air freight for the London Airport, Australian airports, and the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
• Developed the processes and training material used by a major California health plan for its privacy policy and procedures development teams; provided high-level direction supported by explanations and links to the statute and regulations.
• Participated in process redesign to move from manual order entry and delivery management to a computerized system based on hand-held computers for one of the largest soft drink bottlers in the United States; designed and managed the training for more than 1,800 salesmen and drivers.

• Requirements analysis for an ERP implementation that failed to adequately identify and describe each step in a manufacturing process; re-sequencing of system modules failed to properly re-sequence some steps and led to fatal errors that were not identified until final implementation testing; identified source of errors, inadequacies in test planning, and requirements analysis failures as the root cause. Analysis led to successful mediation.
• A workforce management ERP system began to fail in integration testing; identified primary cause of failure as inadequate change control that led to implementation of multiple conflicting changes in response to problems identified in testing. Analysis led to successful mediation.

• Member of the PMO for the integration of retail operations and systems for largest merger of California banks, 15 month project completed in 13 months. Provided neutral 3rd party point of view to PMO.
• Managed PMO for merger of two for-profit educational companies with more than 900 locations; involved integration of centralized HR/payroll and all financial systems from one corporation with site-based operations systems from the other; conversion of HR/payroll from legacy to ERP architecture and integration of financial systems including a new chart of accounts defined the critical path for the entire merger which was completed as scheduled.
• Designed and implemented project budgeting and management processes to restore management control after failure of an upgrade from legacy to ERP payroll system as part of a merger implementation left client unable to meet payroll.

President - Assignments in the US and overseas for planning and implementation of change

Manager - Established and managed industry specialized sales support groups including finance, manufacturing and printing

Consultant - Computer system acquisition and disaster recovery planning insurance and government

President - Consulting to manufacturers, magazines, and television production; facilitated executive workshops and counseling

Managing Associate - Management audits, reorganizations, productivity improvement, cost reduction, strategic and facilities planning

• BSBA University of Denver (one year in College of Law)
• MBA Harvard Graduate School of Business
• Courses in Organization Development and effective communication
• Competent in use of Microsoft office applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Project, html, css, and Web development tools

• Home Page: http://lpf.com
• Consulting: http://lpf.com/consulting
• Articles: http://lpf.com/noteworthy
• Other writing: http://lpf.com/consulting/tools/
• Who, what, where: http://lpf.com/consulting/history.html
• Speeches and Presentations: http://lpf.com/consulting/speaker.html
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lpfcom