Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Timeline
Generic

Irfan Merchant

Atlanta,GA

Summary

Driving Excellence in Program/Project/Product/Portfolio Customer Management and operational efficiency by empowering teams, providing strategy and vision, transforming strategies into successful results, and focusing on process improvements. An execution-focused and result-oriented leader with over 25 years of experience in Information Technology / ERP systems, and over 12 years in Fintech, Payment ecosystems, product development, and program delivery. Focused on customer success, client relationships, operational efficiencies, and business results.

Overview

30
30
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Senior Director – Global Program and Portfolio Management

Fiserv
07.2021 - Current
  • Leading a PMO group of project management professionals (program directors, senior project Managers, and project managers) to successfully deliver complex and cross-functional projects for the Fiserv IT department
  • Established a lightweight program management methodology, communication plan, and standardized program templates to ensure that projects are delivered consistently with high customer satisfaction
  • Used a combination of both Agile and Waterfall methodologies to deliver on a $55 million portfolio with an average business benefit of $110 million yearly
  • Below are examples of projects and yearly savings: - Migrated on-prem virtual desktop to cloud solution provided by VMWare/AWS to improve service response and realized cost savings of over $4 million. - Migrated Global IT service desk to 3rd party for over 70K resources with savings of over $5 million and expanded support to 24x7 globally while reducing wait times by over 70%. - Collaborated with Global Real Estate to support site closures and expansions to drive over $35 million in benefits. - Established unified messaging for North American associates using Microsoft Teams and realized cost savings of $2 million. - Domain Consolidation resulting from Mergers and Acquisitions benefiting the company by over $5 million. - Proactively identify and mitigate technical and compliance risks throughout delivery life cycle projects, so the team is ready for internal and external audits. - Partner with security and compliance functions to ensure products meet all cyber security requirements. - Drive IT strategy and budget through annual operations planning
  • Monitor and control to manage performance targets. - Provide leadership, supervision, coaching, and guidance across teams in the achievement of internal priorities and goals. - Establish vision, identify, and champion internal/external best practices, tools, and ideas to improve execution and quality
  • Drives an organization of efficiency, accountability, and ownership. - Brought efficiency to the Project Management Office and saved the Fiserv IT department over $4 million in 12 months through people and license efficiencies
  • Established a transparent portfolio governance process for Project Intake, Definition, Sizing, Prioritization, Execution, and Delivery
  • Analyzed existing projects and reduced portfolio size from 147 to 81 projects and team size from 24 to 12 project managers while maintaining over 95% manager satisfaction rating with direct reports.

Director – Digital (Mobile) Program/Product Management

Fiserv
03.2017 - 07.2021
  • Delivered innovative digital payment solutions to our clients to enable them to compete in the world of Mobile commerce and with a connected consumer
  • Below are some highlights. - Managed a portfolio of work that exceeded $25 million in annual revenues with weekly collaboration with executive management on portfolio performance and vertical priorities using Power BI business intelligence/analytics tool to ensure data-driven decisions. - Enhanced delivery, financial, and capacity models for IT and Product teams resulting in a 30% increase in revenue and a 25% increase in profit for the mobile commerce team at Fiserv. - Managed client-facing engagements to ensure that projects were structured, delivered, and operationalized on time
  • Also, ensured that future engagements were evaluated, sized, and implemented effectively using Agile development methodology. - Responsible for prioritizing product initiatives by evaluating them against ongoing customer demands and resource distribution
  • The focus was on rapid delivery and continuous improvement to maximize revenue and profit. - Worked with the product team in defining the roadmap for future enhancements in mobile commerce. - Assisted sales team, in a consulting capacity, to help secure new mobile commerce opportunities with clients such as connected cars, petroleum, quick service restaurants, retail, and large event venues (stadiums and concert halls). - Successfully delivered mobile/cloud commerce projects and built partnerships with clients like Amazon, Google, Ford, Exxon, Chick-fil-A, Albertsons, Milwaukee Bucks (Levy), and others in the Petro, Grocery, QSR, and Stadium verticals. - Drive well-educated decisions across product, engineering, and design teams. - Worked with product owners to understand market needs and translate that vision into capabilities.

Director – SMB Program/Portfolio/Product Management

Fiserv
01.2014 - 03.2017
  • Managed the Global SMB strategic plan to help us meet/exceed our revenue and profit targets
  • Delivered product planning effort involving 18 product teams to determine a 12-month roadmap and 3-year vision based on established performance objectives. - Managed a portfolio of work that exceeded over $60 million in annual revenues with weekly reporting to executive management on vertical priorities, and portfolio performance, led rationalization efforts and improvement recommendations. - Ensured that all new projects were aligned with our SMB strategy and that we maintained a prioritized list of all the projects, business justifications, planned benefits, and dependencies impacting our portfolio
  • Engaged product leadership monthly to evaluate the roadmap, cross-functional collaboration, structure initiatives, develop mitigation plans and the associated key operations performance metrics to ensure that we were meeting our revenue and performance targets. - Realized year-over-year software revenue growth of 18% while managing the portfolio. - Established close relationships with our bank partners (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC, and others) to manage expectations, facilitate timely communication on our roadmap, and ensure the successful launch of our products. - Evaluated and approved new projects/initiatives based on alignment with organizational goals, return on investment, and market demands. - Worked with IT and commercialization teams to ensure timely delivery of projects/initiatives
  • Ensured that IT demand matched our revenue and strategic goals. - Fostered open communication between Sales, Relationship Management, Program Management, Product Owners, and technology development teams to help projects efficiently move through the demand management lifecycle and into completion.

Program Director – Product Delivery and Commercialization for key initiatives

Fiserv
07.2012 - 01.2014
  • Responsible for simultaneously managing and commercializing two major initiatives at Fiserv (Chip & Pin Technology, and Rapid Connect)
  • Led all the cross-functional / matrixed Fiserv teams including Architects, Engineers, Product, Certification, Marketing, Billing, Boarding, Customer Service, Compliance, Legal, Hardware Services, Sales, and Bank Partners / Distribution systems teams to deliver the solutions and realize revenue /operational benefits. - Europay, MasterCard, Visa (EMV) – Chip&Pin: Delivered four platforms over 2 years to ensure compliance with card brands. - Rapid Connect: Delivered a new platform that currently manages billions of transactions for Fiserv today.

Director – FinTech Program Management

InComm
08.2011 - 07.2012
  • Led a group of program managers to deliver highly visible, multi-dimensional projects
  • Below are examples of programs managed. - General Purpose Reloadable (GPR) Card
  • Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) sites. - Rebuild of core transaction processing system
  • Enhancements to the existing transaction processing system.

Senior Manager – Enterprise Projects

Benchmark Brands (Footsmart)
10.2009 - 07.2011
  • Effectively managed Portfolio and Programs for both for both Web and Enterprise projects
  • Highlights below. - The Ecometry product upgrade was a time-sensitive upgrade to ensure that the company remained PA DSS (Payment Application Data Security Standard) compliant
  • The upgrade project was one of the most challenging projects Benchmark Brands had ever undertaken
  • The upgrade required a cohesive effort among Benchmark's various departments, including Purchasing, Accounting, Call Center, Warehouse, Merchandising, Catalog and Internet Marketing, Web Operations, and Information Technology
  • The CEO of the company recognized it as a perfect example of a well-executed project
  • The project utilized only 78% of the total budget.

Senior Program/Portfolio Manager – Production Operations

Cox Enterprises
10.2004 - 09.2009
  • Managed Portfolio and Programs for the CIS Operations team at Cox Enterprises
  • Below are a few examples: - IT Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC). - Remedy Asset/Change/Incident/Problem Management: Delivered BMC’s Atrium Suite of products. - Operations Metrics Dashboard – Business Intelligence: Created CIS management dashboard. - PeopleSoft team Lead: Production Assurance for Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). - Technical Project Manager: PeopleTools, Control-M, and MS SQL Server.

PeopleSoft Global Services – Technology Practice Manager – Systems Administrator

PeopleSoft, Inc.
09.1997 - 09.2004
  • Brought in over $16 million in annual revenue by managing a team of 44 technology consultants with one of the highest profits and utilization percentages in PeopleSoft Global Services
  • The profile of the consultants included Systems Administrators, Database Administrators, Developers, Architects, Security, Conversion Specialists, and Technical Project Managers. - Consistently maintained high external utilization percentages by motivating consultants to be experts, versatile, and to provide superior customer service
  • The average utilization over three years was more than 90% against a 72% target. - Grew the team from 18 to 44 consultants – a 122% increase – while still maintaining profitability. - Responsible for managing people, hiring, performance management, compensation administration, and reviews. - Worked with Delivery and Sales teams to position PeopleSoft in pre-sales activities with the customers. - Consistently gave appropriate recognition, maintaining an elevated level of motivation in the team.

PeopleSoft Consultant / Systems Engineer / Project Manager

Various Companies
  • Consistently recognized by clients, managers, and peers for successfully delivering client solutions.

Senior Technical Consultant / Account Executive – Northeast Region

American Power Conversion
06.1994 - 06.1997

Education

Bachelor of Science - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Georgia Institute of Technology

Skills

  • Project management methodologies
  • Product management
  • Agile development
  • IT/Finance Governance
  • Business Solution Development
  • IT Service Management
  • Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
  • IT Operations
  • Budget/Vendor/Resource Management
  • Compliance and Risk Management
  • IT, Product Strategy
  • Client Relationship/Communication/Delivery Management
  • Leadership
  • Strategic Alignment
  • Structured Query Language (SQL)
  • Business Processes
  • Software Development
  • Risk Assessments
  • Microsoft Office
  • Long Term Planning
  • Application Development
  • Decision Making
  • Strategic IT
  • Process Improvements
  • Change Management
  • Negotiation
  • Business Value Creation and Financial Forecasting

Certification

  • Project Management Professional (PMP)
  • Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
  • Six Sigma Green Belt
  • ITIL Certified

Timeline

Senior Director – Global Program and Portfolio Management

Fiserv
07.2021 - Current

Director – Digital (Mobile) Program/Product Management

Fiserv
03.2017 - 07.2021

Director – SMB Program/Portfolio/Product Management

Fiserv
01.2014 - 03.2017

Program Director – Product Delivery and Commercialization for key initiatives

Fiserv
07.2012 - 01.2014

Director – FinTech Program Management

InComm
08.2011 - 07.2012

Senior Manager – Enterprise Projects

Benchmark Brands (Footsmart)
10.2009 - 07.2011

Senior Program/Portfolio Manager – Production Operations

Cox Enterprises
10.2004 - 09.2009

PeopleSoft Global Services – Technology Practice Manager – Systems Administrator

PeopleSoft, Inc.
09.1997 - 09.2004

Senior Technical Consultant / Account Executive – Northeast Region

American Power Conversion
06.1994 - 06.1997

PeopleSoft Consultant / Systems Engineer / Project Manager

Various Companies

Bachelor of Science - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Georgia Institute of Technology

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Irfan Merchant