Daniel Gowens Email & Phone Number

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Since 1998, Project Consulting Group (PCG) has been a leading provider of Management Consulting Services and Project Resources.We get up every day to enable and deliver business outcomes for our clients.We do this by driving for EXCELLENCE while demonstrating EMPATHY and bringing our EXPERIENCE each and every day

Eagan, Minnesota, United States

Drove the formation and optimization of the PMO by defining a workforce and service strategy that reduced the workforce by 30% while simplifying services across five practice areas for a large portfolio. Managed a multi-million dollar operating budget and cut costs significantly while delivering on the value objectives of the portfolio. Transformed with delivery rationalization and consolidation of six federated teams into a central organization while standardizing on workforce and staffing strategy, service standards, service strategies, and an optimized cost of service target. Slashed a significant amount in operating costs as a result while dramatically improving engagement and transforming the culture of a large organization.Led the definition of the Transformation Center of Excellence’s (CoE) services, operating and organizational models. The CoE focused on operational excellence rooted in Lean Six Sigma and Design Thinking frameworks. Co-led & partnered in defining a lean product operating model for the enterprise. Spent 18 months designing and implementing agile teams in partnership with IT and business leaders. Partnered to define a product operating model which included business team restructuring, portfolio/product and service operating model definitions. This included a centralized Transformation Value Office structured with services and teams to lead, govern, and mature the ongoing transformation and supporting operating model.

Eagan, Mn

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Aon Benfield is the world's largest and leading reinsurance brokerage firms and the only one that has a common global reinsurance brokerage software platform. With the global IT development organization in Bloomington, MN, active interactions with all corners of the world happen on a daily basis to fully understand the growing needs of the business partners as it relates to enabling them with technology. The Global Project Management Office (PMO) was fully accountable for facilitating the governance, in full global partnership with the business stakeholders, of all projects and strategic initiatives to continually evolve and mature the products and service offerings to offices and processing centers in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, the UK, and Asia Pacific. Additionally, the PMO provided project, program, and portfolio management services to the organization for systems' maturity and sustainment activities. As the IT global services footprint spread the PMO's service offerings flexed. We employed a focused and actionable strategic plan that was tightly coupled with overarching organizational and technological strategic goals. Aon is a firm of 60,000+ employees stationed in 200+ countries.

Led the North America IS Project Services and Enterprise Services team. Managed 19 people and an operating budget of $9M. Defined project methodology maturity roadmaps, standards, and governance for the North America portfolio. Created formal guidelines, tools, policy, practice, and training for the management and execution of all projects. Established and facilitated the monthly Steering Committee, annual budgeting process and project portfolio planning with executive leadership team. Led and monitored application and business process support analysts in servicing business customers within stated service level agreements. Facilitated strategy assessments for Engineering, eCommerce, CRM, and Marketing in establishing a web catalog presence. Led the development of a holistic strategy for eCommerce focused on: customer experience, portal/touch-point strategy, leveraging existing technology, and assessments of organizational capabilities and readiness

Led a functionally aligned team of Microsoft and Great Plains developers of 5 people to serve Operations, and Accounting organizations. Was hand selected to be instrumental in starting up a formal IT Project Services group. Project Manager for several large enterprise-wide initiatives using PMI project management and Agile methodologies. Development Team Manager and project led for enterprise solutions primarily in and around inventory, distribution, and supply chain automation. Projects were comprised of business process analysis, extensive ROI and TCO analysis, vendor research and negotiation, implementation planning and development, systems development including both object oriented Windows applications and backend systems integrations. Led project teams from project inception through implementation. Primary liaison between IT and business units. Work extensively with other partners in the industry for business collaboration and technical initiatives. Was unanimously elected to serve the role of Vice President of Technology for the Home Medical Equipment Standards Association (HMESA); an industry-wide association focused upon establishing standards for the supply chain between manufacturers and durable medical equipment providers.

Mentored new developers and served as lead resource for entire team. Designed and implemented financial software for city governments. Established coding and user interface standards for product. Defined and implemented standardized development life cycle processes and teamwork dynamics. Designed and developed back end data system. Established the process and standards for peer code and design reviews for all new development, enhancements, and maintenance. Reviewed specification documents and lead team related training sessions.

Established and lead the enterprise’s technology objectives for the nation’s leading holiday décor designer and distributor. Directed a multi-disciplined team of domestic based IT employees involved in applications development, planning and development of financial analysis tools, systems support, training, LAN/WAN and Global networking. Directed IT operations and two managers for branch office in Yonkers, NY as well as operations in Hong Kong, SAR. Company closed in November of 2001.

Served as coordinator and project leader for developers authoring in Microsoft development environments. Applications Developer for the following environments: MS Visual Basic, MS Visual C++, MS Access and Office integration, SQL, Great Plains Dexterity, JavaScript, Pascal, HTML, and Lotus Notes.