Dara Carr

As an Accenture Song Delivery Lead, I provided consultative digital business services to assist clients implement effective commerce digital solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. I tracked and reported progress and spending and act as the point person for all communications and logistics related to programs and project teams.

• Respond to RFIs and RFPs to articulate understanding of client goals, identify potential solutions that currently exist in market, and likely budget
• Develop fixed fee, time and materials, and managed services contracts to include scope of work, staffing model, indicative timelines, RACI, ways of working, assumptions, fees, and billing terms
• Create cross-functional roadmaps using agile, waterfall, or hybrid methodologies to drive product vision and business value
• Build and scale agile teams to attract top talent with relevant role experience while aligning with budget and profitability targets
• Drive discussions and provide consultation around digital transformations and customer digital journeys to ensure application designs, functional requirements, and technology solutions represent business goals
• Lead teams to confer with internal and external stakeholders to analyze as-is and to-be processes to define and capture functional and non-functional requirements
• Oversee implementation of multiple projects and managed services including design, development, testing, and deployments while mitigating delays and budget obstacles
• Create dashboards, reports and status updates to facilitate C-Suite stakeholder meetings
• Maintain forecast and work with finance stakeholders to pre-bill and invoice according to terms of contracts

As Principle of Dara Carr Consulting, I worked with Solution Integrators to assist their clients to define e-commerce strategies and solutions by representing stakeholders to define vision and prioritize roadmap(s) to build and enhance integrated software applications.

• Provided and set standards for project definition to deliver mutually agreed upon schedule and requirements which are then translated to internal and external IT teams
• Successfully and independently handled ambiguous situations and developed practical plan towards achieving clarity while defining strategy, functional behavior, business rules, data attributes, etc…
• Facilitated project requirements, prioritization and planning, and leadership status updates meetings
• Conducted research and analysis of viability of requirements as well as elated strategic feasibility studies for clients
• Facilitated scrum cadences including backlog management, sprint planning, story grooming and estimation, and facilitating demos
• Managed development, testing, and deployment of relevant, stable system applications
• Provided client end-user training and business user enablement documentation

As e-Commerce Business Architect within the Speed Commerce organization, I had strategic analytical responsibilities for mission-critical back office systems for clients while working with Speed Commerce team members and other partners to enhance those systems to deliver stellar customer experiences. The principal outcome of my role was to support the strategic development of robust, sustainable e-commerce platforms that maximize customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Performed gap analysis and presentations for preparation of pre-sales and sales meetings
• Facilitated working sessions with cross-functional resources; lead objective-based work teams as required
• Assessed under-performing software and developed actionable improvements
• Created migration strategies to bridge development gaps between existing software architecture and future updates
• Designed various business process and system modeling tools including, but not limited to, data flow diagrams, business process maps, business cases, process decomposition, and use-case scenarios
• Effectively managed time, prioritized work, multi-tasked across many assignments and worked collaboratively with others across multiple intra- and inter-departmental functions and levels of responsibility
• Contributed ideas and suggestions in team meetings and delivered updates on deadlines, designs, and enhancements
• Participated in weekly meetings with clients to discuss project direction and milestone achievement

As Director of e-Commerce, I managed all aspects of the e-commerce strategy for the Nest brands including sales, marketing, technology, and management expertise to develop a plan that delivers a superior brand and shopping experience for customers.

• Responsible for management and oversight of three domains; doubled order count and increased sales 60% while reducing and/or eliminating recurring COGS
• Managed e-commerce team including Developers, Graphic Designers, Marketing Specialists, Social Networking Specialist, and PPC/SEO Specialist
• Used analytics to evaluate performance and opportunities for improvements in merchandising, site activity, and user behavior
• Directly oversaw web initiatives and advertisements and developed all marketing strategies including email and social networking campaigns, SEO, and PPC strategies for financial price optimization
• Created requirements and executed projects using Agile on all three sites including complete graphic redesign(s) and shopping cart redesign to conform to SEO best practices and better usability
• After implementing shopping cart redesign, order count increased 75%
• E-mail campaigns open rate and conversion rate increased 300% while social networking went from virtually no presence to actively maintaining Facebook business ads, Twitter account, and Tangle
• Social networking fan base increased over 800%
• Increased overall traffic and doubled conversion rate and launched one multi-site domain internationally
• Implemented new deployment, bug-tracking, and project management processes