Ben Schaffer Email & Phone Number

Westford, Ma, Us

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Boston

The Baupost Group is one of the largest hedge funds globally, managing over $20B in assets under management (AUM). As part of the Business Support group, I deliver strategic products and solutions across the firm to support priority business and IT initiatives.• Team Leadership: Provide daily management, oversight, and mentoring for a team of high-performing and experienced direct reports.• Project Leadership: Lead project management and business analysis for the Private Investments, HR, Admin Services, and Infrastructure teams.• Strategic Planning: Conduct quarterly strategic planning, project prioritization, and resource allocation to ensure successful project delivery.• Execution and Delivery: Create and manage project plans, leading cross-functional teams to execute and deliver on those plans.• Risk and Issue Management: Oversee risks, action items, issues, and decisions for all projects, escalating to senior management as necessary.• Stakeholder Communication: Prepare and deliver regular status updates to stakeholders, including C-level reporting to the CIO, CFO, and COO.• Project Intake and Scope Definition: Facilitate the project intake process, defining project scope, goals, deliverables, and tasks.• Salesforce CRM Implementation: Led the implementation of Salesforce CRM to streamline the Private Investment team’s business development activities, increasing the success rate of new business deals through a shared contact database.• Reporting Portal Development: Managed the custom build of a secure centralized firmwide reporting portal to enable on-demand reporting and reduce risk.• Automation and Efficiency: Automated numerous Excel reports to streamline operational workflows, saving several days’ worth of man-hours each quarter.• Strategic IT Initiatives: Managed the delivery of strategic IT initiatives, including the rollout of new Microsoft O365 features and video conference technology upgrades to enhance collaboration and productivity firmwide.

Responsible for project management and business analysis for all projects and applications related to Public Investments, Trading, HR, Compliance, and Corporate Accounting.• Managed the implementation and delivery of SAP Concur to streamline the corporate expense reimbursement process.• Delivered multiple middle office system enhancements to streamline reporting and workflow for the Compliance team.• Led the build of a custom Outlook add-in to enable tracking and reporting of meetings with public officials and executives. • Managed the implementation and rollout of the firm’s VMWare remote access solution to reduce IT maintenance costs. • Led an HR project to synchronize employee contact data from the HR system to contact lists in Outlook and mobile devices.• Migrated the corporate accounting system from external to internal infrastructure to mitigate information security risks.• Co-managed implementation of the EZE OMS trading platform to improve operational workflow and efficiency for the Traders. • Maintained technology roadmaps and backlogs to ensure project plans and priorities were aligned with business objectives.• Facilitated working sessions with business stakeholders to elicit business requirements and capture meeting minutes.• Documented user stories, current and future state workflow diagrams, data flow diagrams, storyboards, and wire frames.• Defined scope and objectives for releases and sprints, coordinated story estimation, and attended daily scrum meetings.

Greater Boston Area

Product Manager for the multi-year $12M rewrite of a proprietary Portfolio Order Management and Trading System used by the High Yield and Emerging Markets Businesses to manage $125B in leveraged company assets.• Led product roadmap development and annual delivery team planning to set priorities and objectives. • Managed product backlogs and facilitated quarterly release planning, bi-weekly sprint planning, and weekly backlog grooming.• Coordinated, prioritized, and communicated business requirements across a highly matrixed technology organization consisting of seven scrum teams located in North America, Ireland, and India.• Led all business user engagement including requirements meetings, design reviews, product demos, UAT, and end-user training.• Attended regular steering committee meetings to review project status with the CIO and other senior technology leads.• Documented SDLC artifacts including business requirements, user stories, and business process flow diagrams.• Performed systems and data analysis including gap analysis, context diagrams, data flow diagrams, and SQL data extracts.• Managed defect triage and approval of QA test automation scenarios using FitNesse.

Greater Boston Area

Project Manager and lead business and systems analyst responsible for implementation of several multi-million dollar software development initiatives in support of the High Yield investment team. Roles and responsibilities included: Manager - High Yield Reporting• Managed project management, business analysis, and development activities for two direct reports. • Migrated approximately 100 Crystal Reports sourced from SQL Server to WebFOCUS reports sourced from Oracle.• Delivered over 25 tactical report projects per year including reports for senior business heads and the board of directors.Product Manager - High Yield Research Applications & Fund Launches• Led the end-to-end SDLC process for a new High Yield workspace application built on Envision .NET and Oracle. • Led the migration of legacy High Yield research applications to next-gen research applications shared across departments. • Managed all project tasks for new fund launches including resource planning, analysis, development, and delivery.

Greater Boston Area

Responsible for project management and business analysis leadership, best practices, and deliverables. • Project lead for the industry mandated NASDAQ and Options Symbology initiatives. Coordinated overall program management and analysis involving 100+ stakeholders across 6 Fidelity companies and 70 brokerage applications.• Managed key SDLC artifacts including objectives, scope, requirements, risks, and dependencies.• Facilitated working sessions across multiple departments to elicit functional and non-functional requirements.• Managed change requests and performed requirements traceability to control costs and enhance quality assurance.

Greater Boston Area

Managed an Agile initiative to replace a client-server enterprise application with a next-generation, three-tier web-based solution built on .NET. Served as onsite client relationship manager for a 35-member offshore development & QA team.• Managed project plans, issues, risks, and change control.• Conducted stakeholder interviews, documented business requirements, and reviewed monthly sprint deliverables.• Documented functional and non-functional requirements and technical specifications for the offshore team.

Greater Boston Area

Managed the Portfolio Investment Management System (PIMS) for North America supporting Fixed Income & Equity Portfolios.• Managed project plans, issues, risks, change control, and delivery for several quarterly releases of PIMS.• Led analysis and quality assurance for a strategic data warehousing project using Eagle PACE to consolidate firm-wide portfolio & security data. Efforts reduced data redundancy and established a global hub for mission-critical data.• Delivered reporting and data integration specifications for the Asia Pacific region during a major accounting system consolidation. Efforts enabled the bank to recognize significant operational cost savings.

Greater Boston Area

I/T SpecialistI/T Specialist with IBM’s Boston Center for e-business Innovation. The Innovation Center focuses on unifying strategy, design and technology to deliver lasting business value to clients and their customers. Clients and Projects Included:• Staples: Ported the B2B website from Net.Commerce 3.1 to WebSphere Commerce Business Edition 5.4• Fidelity Investments: Developed a new Global Pricing Workstation to calculate daily NAV for Fidelity Mutual Funds.• BostonCoach: Developed a web-based limousine locator system using GPS and geographical mapping technology. • Traveler’s Insurance: Streamlined annuities processing with a new annuity workstation built with Java Swing.• L.L.Bean: Developed an online search component into the existing e-commerce site leveraging Net.Commerce.• Foxwoods Resort & Casino: Redesigned the public web site introducing multimedia Flash technology. • Amica Insurance Company: Developed new online bill payment and policy inquiry systems. • John Hancock Financial Company: Provided development and QA services for a John Hancock’s demutualization. • Liberty Mutual Insurance Company: Provided Y2K infrastructure, data management, and remediation services.