Mark Richards Email & Phone Number

Burbank, Ca, Us

I built a 10 person Data Science and Analytics team responsible for development of dynamic add forecast modeling and analytics for the digital entertainment and sports businesses including ABC, FreeForm, FX, and ESPN. Forecast Modeling - The team focused on delivering self-service solutions including web based front ends for the forecast models so the business stakeholders could take greater control of the forecasting process themselves. Continuing to automate and drive out manual processes around data queries and analysis allowed the business stakeholders to focus on higher value analytics. Analytics - The team developed interactive Tableau views on consumption and traffic metrics across the digital portfolio including entertainment, news and sports allowing users to slice through the data at different levels to answer questions. Setup quarterly engagement meetings with key stakeholders to get feedback on changes to their business and how we can drive additional insight through our data. Data - I setup a "Data Czar" role on the team to act as the point person to ensure that data flow and storage was optimized in Snowflake for use in both forecasting and reporting. The team developed extracts of Adobe data using the Adobe API for use in quality checking the data.We built out a data quality process that leveraged existing high level data loading checks along with report level checks to catch new meta data items or busts in the data at a more granular level.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Hired and developed a team of Business Intelligence Engineers, Data Engineers and Data Scientists that are responsible for the providing the architecture, data, analytics and machine learning necessary to support the Health, Safety, Security and Sustainability organizations at Amazon.

Bentonville, Arkansas, Us

I built and lead teams across the big data & analytics and financials space. This included leading teams building new application platforms for customer, marketing, pricing, sourcing, and internet of things. I had responsibility for setting up the Data Café’s that became a hub for analytics and visualizations from these new platforms. The Data Café also features analytics built for Omni channel, Sam’s Club membership, weather, and marketing. My team included 9 direct reports, 110 associates (70 onshore/ 40 Offshore) and 200 contractors representing disciplines across data science, statistics/analytics, machine learning, finance, visualizations and data staging.

Bentonville, Arkansas, Us

Responsible for leading the second phase of the Walmart Financial systems redevelopment project. The focus of the second phase was around BI, planning and analytics. I ran the SAP BI team that was responsible for supporting the BI needs of the new SAP ledger that was implemented to replace our home grown system. The SAP BI team also was responsible for supporting the BI needs of all of the new modules such as SAP Treasury that were deployed. I was also responsible for running the project to implement SAP Business Objects. I also had responsibility for the Finance team and tools that supported the Walmart Inc. consolidation and close. I ran an effort to select a new planning tool and Oracle planning was chosen as the planning tool of choice. The Finance team began to deploy Oracle Planning as the tool for annual budgeting for the 4,000 Walmart stores. I was also the IT lead in the multiyear effort to deploy Oracle Hyperion Financial Management as the consolidation application for Walmart globally. Created a position on the team to act as the advocate for Tableau. The advocate worked with IT to get licensing; worked with the vendor on enhancements; and created a user group from the business to share best practices.

Bentonville, Arkansas, Us

Lead the Finance team responsible for the close consolidation, budget, forecast and actuals reporting for all of the operating areas of Walmart including Walmart stores, Sam’s Clubs, Logistics, Health & Wellness and Corporate. Drove the deployment of Oracle Essbase from a few hundred users to over 5,000 users. Built the first Oracle Essbase database for annual budgeting of the 4,000 US Walmart stores including developing an input Excel template with VBA. Direct responsibilities for Sam’s and Walmart Oracle Essbase database development and support for budgeting, forecasting and closing in Essbase. Oversaw the implementation of Oracle Hyperion Financial Management as a replacement for the home grown Oracle Essbase and Excel consolidation solution for reporting consolidated Walmart Inc. results to the street. Developed training materials and gave classes to hundreds of Oracle Essbase users from the home office and the field. Oversaw the addition of Oracle Planning to replace the home grown budgeting system for the 18k associates at the Walmart home office.

Lead reporting and BI team with responsibilities for setting up the Oracle Essbase databases for financial reporting. Developed the monthly and quarterly close packages for reporting variance analysis of actual, plan and forecast. Responsible for setting up and maintaining projects in Essbase to get recapture of dollars where we would partner with the government or other companies for the mapping of different genome models. Brought in Oracle Planning to move to a purpose built planning tool for the annual budget.

Lead Oracle Essbase database administrator responsible for helping to move from a home grown reporting platform to Essbase as the BI solution for the company across five primary business units: U.S. credit card, U.S. consumer branch, U.S. home equity, commercial and international finance.

Responsible for building and analyzing the annual budget for total International revenue and exploration costs. This involved working directly with the Controller, VP of Exploration and the finance leads in country to consolidate all of the exploration programs and other projects. Prepared and delivered variance analysis on the budget to the Controller and executive management. Based on feedback from the presentations I would make changes to the budget working directly with the in country finance leads to generate multiple budget options for executive management to consider. Responsible for generating the monthly forecast by working closely with exploration managers to analyze the exploration portfolio to come up with dry hole estimates across the total portfolio. Generated all analytic and presentation packages for analysis of forecast to actuals on a monthly and quarterly basis for review the Controller, other home office executives and in country finance & exploration leads. Oracle Essbase database administrator responsible for building and managing the first Essbase database for budget, actual and forecasting for all of International reporting and analysis. Admin responsibilities include building the database, calc scripts, security, and developing and giving training to all users. Accounts payable team lead with a team of 6 people responsible for global payments related to the oil & gas properties including international wire transfers, a petty cash office, and 1099 generation for vendors.

Managed a set of oil & gas properties in Southern California and West Texas. My responsibilities included recording revenue, paying lease holders, researching ownership issues with our Land and Title resources to insure correct property ownership. I also visited properties with engineers to determine if the schematics for meter locations matched the settlement statements from our gas buyers on our leases and pipelines. I did a 3 month assignment in our Bakersfield CA office to review contracts for properties purchased from Tenneco to setup accounting procedures. Built and maintained Excel spreadsheets for each property showing incoming and outgoing flows of gas and conversion to different pressure bases.