(note: this is the extended version of my resume. There are also shorter versions, here.)

Chris Palmer - jobs@chris-palmer.com
127 W. Lakeview Ave, Columbus, OH, 43202
cell: (619) 512-2159

Work Experience:

Work Experience:

The Ohio State University (2010 - Present)

July, 2010 - Present Senior Business Analyst

• Functional Lead (Curriculum.osu.edu - Kuali): led the new Curriculum workflow system through many key upgrades which both the Vice Provost for Academic Programs and the Associate Registrar cited as being effective, user friendly examples of products IT should be delivering. Responsibilities included leading weekly meetings with Office of Academic Affairs, gathering and prioritizing requirements, creating design documents and mockups, working directly with developers and leading testing and migration of all Curriculum changes.
• Functional Lead (Campus Community - PeopleSoft): primary contact with various business units involved in Campus Community. Service Matter Expert (SME) for Student Health Insurance, the extensive bolt-on that OSU uses to manage insurance for 60,000 students a year. The primary business user noted, "You make my life easier!"
• Backup Functional Lead (Student Records - PeopleSoft): led projects including implementing Student Legal Services, an opt-out process for Columbus campus students that includes Student Self Service and Administrative pages. Acted as primary backup for Student Records functional lead.
• Backup Functional Lead (Admissions - PeopleSoft): managed projects including implementing Online Payments of Acceptance Fees (integrating with CyberSource's hosted order page). Acted as sole backup to Admissions functional lead.
• Assisted with development of projects that required more challenging HTML, JavaScript / AJAX or CSS maneuvers. This included mentoring developers on how to use FireBug to debug 3rd party integration, developing JavaScript to fix printing difficulties and writing HTML and CSS to be W3C compliant and meet accessibility standards.

University of San Diego (2006 - 2010)

March, 2009 - June, 2010 Manager, Portal & Integration Technologies

• Continued to act as Business Analyst for high-profile projects, such as integrating the Bookstore with Banner. Managed team in charge of project coordination (both BA and PM work) for other integrations such as Studio Abroad, online voting and many more.
• Managed teams in charge of MySanDiego (the University's community portal for Applicants, Students, Faculty, Staff and Alumni), MySDMobile, and 3rd party integrations with SunGard's Banner (the University's student information system).
• Launched MySDMobile, the smart-phone targeted version of MySanDiego. In the first few weeks almost one in eight students at the University of San Diego downloaded just the iPhone version (Blackberry and mobile web versions also available). MySDMobile features a GPS-enabled campus map, class list, person search, events, athletics, live tram tracking, library and more. Details at my.sandiego.edu/mobile.
• Forged partnerships with other departments for cost sharing resulting in about $150,000 of additional resources for our department amidst a University-wide hiring freeze.
• Asked to lead the Portal Team after two issues during peak usage. First project was to upgrade Luminis (the software that runs MySanDiego, our community portal) to parallel deployment, where a single server was split into multiple tiers. This upgrade, along with setting up a Nagios alerting system and moving to a more structured on-call rotation, has resulted in MySanDiego running smoothly through multiple subsequent peak times (including two online registrations).

October, 2008 - March, 2009 Project Coordinator

• Led business analysis with functional users, created specifications and worked with programmers to create interfaces between the Banner student subsystem and other systems including Footprints, CS Gold, T2, ACES, StarRez and more.
• Created Project Portfolio to manage all projects (using MS Project) for our department, combining half a dozen project lists into one. Centralization increased ability to coordinate between teams and quickly layout long term plans. Director can now quickly see a dashboard view while managers can update their individual detailed plans.
• Continued to increase coordination with Help Desk and our department by creating initial set of 'Level 1 Help Desk Scripts' for a couple of key systems. Then trained coworkers to create their own which helped our department become the leader in IT for Help Desk integration.

March, 2008 - October, 2008 Independent Consultant

• Worked with many University departments to plan, implement and document business processes and program changes during the Banner/Luminis (ERP) implementation.
• Designed and managed special Online Registration support desk including multiple phone, email and instant messenger channels to provide superior support to students during first registration on the new system. This system was re-used for the next several registration sessions until we fully handed over to the Help Desk. The experience became the basis for a SunGard Summit (annual conference) presentation I gave in 2009.
• Invited to join team that redesigned the online Help Desk ticketing system (Numera's Footprints). Our changes resulted in superior cross-departmental coordination and reduced response times on customer tickets.

August, 2006 - January, 2008 Attained Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of San Diego

September, 2007 - December, 2007 University of San Diego & San Diego Union-Tribune - Principal Investigator (during MBA)

• Worked with a team of two other students in a consulting project for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Created surveys and facilitated focus groups with over 100 participants to study the information acquisition habits of 18-29 year olds.
• Final report and analysis to be presented to president and vice presidents of San Diego Union-Tribune in mid-December.

January, 2007 - June, 2007 Intern - Technical Support Center (during MBA)

• Researched and collaborated with the Help Desk to determine important metrics and practices to measure. Contacted comparable schools to gather data and created a final report including current practices, near-future trends and specific recommendations for USD to improve their support services.
• Report presented to the Director of Desktop Support Services and the Chief Information Officer.
• Public version of report (without the recommendations or other confidential sections) was sent to responding schools and is available online.

NSB Group - leading software solutions provider for specialty retailers (1999-2006)

February, 2006 - August, 2006 Triage Manager & Manager of Development Support

• Created processes to organize Product Maintenance by adding a structured defect identification, mitigation and resolution process. In three months after I joined the division went from being named the leading cause of client dissatisfaction to being widely praised by clients and executives for rapid response, clear ETA's and reliable results.
• Formed the Triage Team to enforce and adapt organizational procedures that provided a buffer and escalation point for the development group in Product Maintenance.
• Continued role as Manager of Development Support while creating and managing a new department.

August, 2004 - August, 2006 Manager of Development Support

• Helped shape strategy for the Development department including participating in weekly management meetings, preparing SWOT analysis of our products, and crafting policies to enable a relatively small company become a dominant player in POS software for specialty retailers.
• Managed the team responsible for internal MIS, future technology research, and test lab (including volume test lab) setup, maintenance, configuration and testing.
• Hired excellent talent and turned a small internal support team in to what the Development Director referred to as, "the best technical asset in our organization."
• Responsible for internal MIS support of Columbus office, supporting approximately 85 people, 150 PC's and 10 servers.

March, 2001 - August, 2004 Technical Team Lead, Level 3 Support

• Guided the department responsible for the highest level support for clients running NSB Connected Retailer, a retail suite for specialty retailers including JC Penny's and Staples.
• Taught several training classes for clients as well as educating our Montreal office. Even two years after training was outside my duties, our largest distributor requested that I lead their technical classes due to my reputation as a superior instructor.
• Helped draft and improve Service Level Agreements (SLA's) for a variety of clients.

May, 1999 - March, 2001 Technical Analyst

• Built systems (including networked servers, registers and workstations), and worked with clients to plan and implement large-scale installations (some clients have over 1,000 stores).

Universal Advertising Associates, Inc. - publisher of single and multi-sponsor maps (summer, 1998)

May, 1998 - August, 1998 Cartographer

• Created GIS maps using MapInfo computer software. Used archived data to create base layers, then combined them and modified them as per updated information.
• Rewrote and added to a program that enabled users to dynamically grid, number and letter maps. Learned MapBasic (a proprietary programming language) for the originally unpaid project.

Attachmate Corporation - Software company providing connectivity solutions (summer, 1997)

May, 1997 - August, 1997 RLN Testing Lab Co-Op

• Maintained over 70 workstations and 6 servers: automated tests, cut and crimped RJ45 and telephone cable, installed and configured DOS and Windows (3.11, 95 and NT) computers.
• Tested Remote Lan Networking, a product that allows remote computers to connect to a network. Critical components of the new version were ISDN and multi-sync support.

Earlham College - full time undergraduate student & Computer Science major (1995-1999)

1997 Teacher's Assistant - "Programming & Problem Solving"

• Aided professor in grading student projects and exams.
• Tutored, both with 'office hours' in the PC labs and individual sessions.

Education / Certification:

• MBA, University of San Diego (2008); 3.95 GPA
• GMAT score: 760
• B.A., Computer Science, graduated with honors from Earlham College (1999); 3.58 GPA
• Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) for both Windows NT4.0 and Windows 2000. MCP ID #1864292

Keywords:

• Background: Business analyst, technical manager, help desk, technical support, higher education, project management, expert troubleshooter, integration & middle ware, ERP, leadership under pressure, budgeting, inventory, team player, retail software, documentation, collaboration with diverse teams, considerate, driven, bridge builder, Help Desk Institute (HDI), Net Impact.
• Some stronger technical skills: PeopleSoft Campus Solutions (8.9), Kuali Workflow (Rice), SunGard Luminis (IV, Parallel Deployment), SunGard Banner Student Information System, Numera Footprints, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, Visio, Project), Siebel Help Desk, Windows 7 - 3.1, MCSE, Linux, web services, PHP, Perl, JavaScript, JQuery, AJAX, XML, XHTML, HTML, SQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server.