Ashley Edwards Email & Phone Number

Promoted to Director in recognition of overall strong performance and leading role in a strategic transformation program intended to impact delivery operations and client satisfaction.

As a Senior Manager at Symend, I was engaged in a number of roles to enable the organization to meet its goals. Client Insights Team LeadershipManaged a team of seven Behavioral Scientists and Business Analysts that delivered behavioral science consulting services as part of platform trial engagements. Responsibilities included: trial contract review, client deliverable review, management of client engagement escalation, team member development and coaching, and process improvement.Client Success Team LeadershipJoined the Delivery Leadership Team and assumed leadership over Client Success Management and a team of seven Client Success Managers in June 2021 prior to commencing maternity leave in September 2021. Oversaw the implementation of, and co-managed, a process and forum to communicate and prioritize client product requests for Symend’s existing platform while the organization pursued development of its new platform.Onboarding Team ManagementRecognized for excellence in client delivery – specifically in working with large enterprise clients (Tier 1) – and promoted to the Onboarding Management Team. Led a team of senior Project Management and Business Analyst professionals with a mandate to foster client onboarding experience excellence within the team to scale our ability to deliver to Tier 1 clients.

Calgary, Canada Area

Recruited as Symend’s first project manager, I was responsible for delivering on projects to onboard new clients to our platform. Achievements and select project experiences include:- Recruited as Symend’s first Project Manager; managed three client go-lives within five months of joining, including the company’s first Tier 1 client – one of North America’s largest telecommunications providers.- Retained a role with the Tier 1 client as a Client Success Manager due to trust cultivated during the onboarding process - while also continuing to deliver subsequent onboardings with new clients.- Created and road-tested standard project management and requirements gathering processes and artifacts; establishing the organization’s initial playbook for onboarding clients.

Responsibilities included: working with industry sector leaders to develop go-to-market strategy, coordinating execution of strategy across internal teams, stewardship of account management best practices on priority accounts, and oversight of sales team operations.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

As a Manager within the Technology Advisory practice, I was responsible for leading consulting engagements to improve IT governance, agility, and cost effectiveness across various industry verticals and geographies.Achievements and select project experiences include:- Technology workstream lead on an enterprise cost optimization engagement for a utility client – identifying $11-17 M in addressable technology cost savings over a 3-5 year timeline.- Engaged by a multinational internet and media group to implement an IT governance and risk framework across nine of its technology businesses. Applied knowledge of agile practices and IT governance to develop a creative assessment methodology and approach to risk and governance discussions, resulting in meaningful improvements independent of organization size, maturity, or vertical.- Engaged by a banking client to identify barriers to agility prior to embarking on a strategic shift in operating model. Recommendations included use of cloud and micro services architecture, improved data management capabilities, and increased operational responsiveness through enhanced governance.- Worked with the Head of the PMO of a provincial pension fund client to develop a two-year business plan outlining the PMO mandate and capabilities. Developed PMO artifacts incorporating multiple project types (e.g. agile vs. traditional) and sizes, an executive level PMO dashboard, and a project delivery playbook.- During an internal secondment, worked with the Technology Advisory leadership team to manage consulting practice operations. Areas of responsibility included: annual strategy development and execution oversight, analysis of practice financials and KPIs, capacity and recruitment process management, and pipeline management. Improvements enabled team to meet competency targets across all industry sectors and achievement of annual competency sales, revenue and margin growth targets.

Calgary, Canada Area

As a Senior Associate within the Technology Advisory practice, I was responsible for assessing, designing and presenting pragmatic solutions to business problems.Achievements and select project experiences include:- Completed technology project health checks on initiatives ranging from short-term, time-sensitive projects to long-term, multi-million dollar technology transformations for various private and public sector clients.- Implemented project improvement recommendations such as the development of practical decision governance and communication mechanisms for a multi-year technology program.- Developed content and provided mentorship to a public sector client on a business case submission for a high visibility, multi-million dollar technology initiative. The resulting business case was not only approved but was used as a leading practice example for future business case submissions within the ministry.- Engaged by a public sector client to re-define their intake and prioritization processes as part of an initiative to transform how the ministry manages the review and selection of capital investments in technology.- Worked closely with stakeholders across both technology and accounting teams and coordinated with systems vendors to successfully deliver an eInvoicing system implementation, while also delivering on a light PMO methodology to improve consistency of project delivery at a mid-size energy company.

As the Manager of the IT PMO, I was responsible for implementing and enforcing compliance to Brookfield Residential’s IT project methodology and successfully executing on a comprehensive IT transformation roadmap.Achievements and select project experiences include:- Advised on and approved project remediation plans for two enterprise-wide initiatives (impacting over 1,000 employees) and successfully led the deployment of these changes to 500 office and field users within Alberta.- Minimized churn of contract resources and preserved the organization’s industry reputation in a deadline-driven and rapidly changing work environment by encouraging open dialogue between the PMO and its project managers.- Drove the completion of the first post-merger Active Directory (AD) classification of all employees across twelve North American offices.- Created a functional representation of the organization and a classification schema by collecting and analyzing Records Management, IT, Human Resources and Accounting data.

As an IS Projects Coordinator, I was responsible for the coordination of IT service delivery to all active construction and sales office sites within Calgary, as well as the delivery of a number of IT projects. Achievements and select project experiences include:- Selected by VP IT & Chief Information Officer (CIO) to develop a pragmatic IT Project Methodology including governance, processes and templates to support the standardized execution of enterprise-wide IT projects. Was asked to take over management and complete the implementation of the IT PMO within six months of being assigned to lead the initiative and within one year of joining the organization.- Led the implementation of a web-based eInvoicing system across five business units and 21 vendors while meeting scope, cost and schedule requirements. By leveraging historical data to develop a vendor conversion strategy, I successfully on-ramped double the recommended number of vendors by product specialist.- Coordinated internal and external resources to deploy IT services at remote field offices across Alberta and provided inventive IT solutions to meet business needs and timeline demands for offices within communities in varying stages of development. I also volunteered to document, validate and improve upon site deployment processes to simplify planning and decrease site set-up timeframe while also executing on other initiatives.

As an SAP Consultant I worked closely with the Supply Chain project team at Suncor and was focused on the Materials Management module, which is used for Procurement Handling and Inventory Management. Achievements and select project experiences include:- Collected and presented metrics and priority service orders to increase coordination across the project team, on-site super users and on-site management.- Built client partnerships outside of the core project team that were leveraged to resolve issues during supply chain data conversions, resulting in three successful deployments.- Selected to take over a senior Testing Lead role coordinating a team of technical consultants and subject matter experts to complete testing and resolve system deficiencies within allotted timeline.- Provided client with recommendations to improve workflow efficiency by designing a database to house supply chain data and perform targeted data mining based on the business processes driving data creation.

As an Associate consultant I assessed, designed, documented and advised on IT process improvements in alignment with best practice (ITIL) to enable IT organizations to maximized business value to their internal customers. Achievements and select project experiences include:- Designed and presented process designs to a retail organization during their IT process improvement initiative. - Chosen by client to lead business analysis on an enterprise-wide IT Service Management tool implementation as a result of pragmatic and personable approach to advisory. - Facilitated and co-facilitated client interviews and assessed client documentation to provide a comprehensive assessment of the current state of IT capacity for a government organization. - Achieved excellent customer reviews attributed to strong listening skills and ability to identify key client needs.