Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Software
Certification
Interests
References
Timeline
Hi, I’m

Sankar S

IT Director
San Antonio,TX
You are never too old to be what you might have been.
George Eliot
Sankar S

Summary

  • Results-oriented professional with over 22 years of experience in managing large scale projects for multiple clients, mostly in the Health Insurance and Life Sciences space.
  • Delivered million dollar projects harnessing teams' potential across multiple geographies while establishing relevant processes throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Continually seeking new ways to improve management expertise, enhance team experience, boost company morale and improve overall team focus, across co-located and remote working environments. Passionate about achieving order out of chaos.

Overview

22
years of professional experience
5
Certifications
4
Languages

Work History

Cognizant Technology Solutions
San Antonio, TX

Associate Director
05.2014 - Current

Job overview

  • Worked on a bid for multi Million project to revamp and modernize Claims adjudication engine (Indian Health Insurance client)
  • Successfully setup an Org Structure comprising of over 110 engineering team members (across US, India and the Philippines) and leveraged 'Balanced Scorecard' to set aggressive targets for employees to drive company success and strengthen motivation.
  • Reduced waste and pursued revenue development strategies to keep department aligned with profitability and employee engagement targets.
  • Successfully implemented multiple projects spanning all 4 LOBs - Commercial, Medicare, Medicaid and FEHBP - leading 4 agile teams (comprising of ~50 engineering team members) across 3 geographical locations
  • As Scrum Master and interim PO, built performance/compliance dashboards and developed a plan that helped maintain a healthy backlog at least 1.5 times the sprint velocity.
  • Analyzed the team's sprint metrics/deliverables to improve planning and sprint velocity by 20% (via cross KT, better sized stories, work items for post prod issues)
  • Established partnerships with key stakeholders to progressively elaborate the vision for end product while also tracking milestones for artifact approvals (Model, Mapping, UAT etc)
  • Standardized the onboarding process (Asset/ID requests, Mandatory trainings, Tools/Software setup and accesses) which helped trim it by 50% (4 days to 2)
  • Spearheaded adoption of a monitoring service (DataDog) across 12 teams in a quarter (up from 4) by launching training sessions, triage with internal infra teams and the external vendor
  • With the Enterprise strategy to migrate to Cloud, steered my scrum teams to accomplish the Reporting changes (Oracle to RedShift migration) 2 sprints ahead of planned end date
  • Facilitated the team to setup SMART KPIs for the Production Support of 13 Apps (entire Pharmacy distribution, from Inventory/Order fulfillment to Mail Order/Dispatch and Refills) which became part of the Weekly Reporting/Status update

UnitedHealth Group
Multiple (Gurgaon, Hyderabad And Manila)

Project Manager
04.2007 - 05.2014

Job overview

  • Successfully initiated and established steady state for Claims edits/rules migration from legacy to Pega PRPC. This project was the first Agile project for one of the largest claims application.
  • Restructured the entire new-joiner on-boarding through mentor-mentee relationships, subsequently accelerating setup of new teams in Hyderabad and Manila. Resulted in a cost avoidance due to reduced KT period by roughly 15-20%.
  • As one of the pioneer BSAs in the offshore/captive operation, setup the System Analyst practice for the Provider Systems team - Trainings, Templates, Processes, JAD sessions etc. Recognized with a Sustaining Edge award by UHG India Leadership.
  • Improved employee engagement / innovation by instituting Eureka Effect, Defect Hunter and Quality Champion awards, for which we created customized trophies. Other teams eventually adopted similar approaches.
  • Streamlined TriZetto/FACETS Migration approach for multiple regions, ensuring prerequisites tracked and completed consistently before Claims move.
  • Provided critical support to the new Learning & Development team, during initial days of the captive unit, to quickly ramp up over 100 new joiners on Health Insurance basics and application landscape.

Cognizant Technology Solutions
Chennai

Senior Associate
07.2001 - 03.2007

Job overview

  • Instrumental in piloting a data processing/integration tool that helped the client cleanup their databases (mainly text fields like addresses) to ensure better match with Enrollment/Prescription data that was critical to process commissions accurately. Improved matches by 25-30% which reduced the need for manual scrubbing. Won an appreciation award for stellar execution.
  • Delivered multiple staging routines to parse/process incoming HIPAA X12 files (834 - Enrolment, 837 - Claims, 835 - Payment) and successfully tested by rapidly generating X12 files using automation scripts. Won appreciation awards for delivering over and above expectations.
  • Single-handedly developed the existing CDHP (Consumer Driven Health Plan) payment routines for the client's MidWest region. The underlying Sybase cursors, although updated for new fields, are still in use without major maintenance.
  • Piloted Coordinated Testing - Reused test cases across SIT and UAT, reducing planning effort by around 15%

Education

Birla Institute of Technology And Science
Pilani, Rajasthan

Masters in Management Studies
04.1997 - 2001.05

University Overview

  • 7.71 GPA
  • Extracurricular Activities: Led Planning and Publicity for the Dept. Fest in 1999
  • Research Project (Practice School I and II): Library Management System, Depositories and Business Intelligence

Skills

Agile Project Management

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Software

AWS Practitioner

JIRA/Confluence/Azure DevOps

MS Visio, MS Project Plan and other tools

Pega

Trizetto FACETS

Vality MatchWare

Sybase Cursors

Shell Scripts

HIPAA EDI X12s

Mainframe (JCL, COBOL, CICS, REXX)

Certification

AWS Cloud Practitioner

Interests

Les Mills certified Bodypump Instructor

References

1. Name: Babu Dhandapani

Organization: Cognizant Technology Solutions (Part of Babu's team for over 4yrs)

Email: Dhandapani.Babu@gmail.com

Phone: +91.9566178606


2. Shweta Choubey

Organization: UnitedHealth Group (Reported to Shweta for around 2yrs)

Email: Shweta.Choubey@capgemini.com

Phone: +1.847.834.1055


3. Ravi Iyer

Organization: CarelonRx (Reported to Ravi - Client Director - for around 2yrs)

Email: Ravi.Iyer@elevancehealth.com

Phone: +1.404.308.0194

Timeline

AWS Cloud Practitioner

08-2023

SAFe 4.0 Practitioner - Scaled Agile

07-2018

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) - Scrum Alliance

10-2017

Associate Director

Cognizant Technology Solutions
05.2014 - Current

Project Management Professional - PMI

01-2013

PAHM (AHM250) and AHM530 - AHIP

09-2010

Project Manager

UnitedHealth Group
04.2007 - 05.2014

Senior Associate

Cognizant Technology Solutions
07.2001 - 03.2007

Birla Institute of Technology And Science

Masters in Management Studies
04.1997 - 2001.05

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