Michael Smith Email & Phone Number

Cape Town Area, South Africa

My passion is helping small business to focus on their core strengths and allow me to take care of ensuring they are using the most efficient business processes and software. Having worked with data for over 30 years, I also understand the power of data analytics to provide insights that, to this point, have been hidden. This, in turn, enables positive business decisions to be made.My clients range from floor product wholesalers to designers and various professionals in the local clothing and fashion industry. My services are centred around improving efficiency, creating efficient systems and producing standard operating procedures. Data analysis and business decision support is always there as a value-add service.However, I ensure that these jobs are undertaken in bite-sized chunks so that they are not dependent on further work. My clients are always left with comprehensive documentation on completion of a task. In this way, I can leave my self open for a permanent position should a tantalising offer from a company or corporation present itself.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

Was engaged as the company’s data analytics specialist. Tools used mainly were Qlikview, Qlik Sense, NPrinting and advanced SQL coding. Was responsible for the company’s engagement with FNB Credit Card division, lasting for 12 months. Produced Qlikview analytical models and NPrinting presentations for both the Customer Service and Financial Accounting departments. Moved into a period of assisting with some of our smaller accounts, engaging in project management as well as more “on the ground” activities assisting them with management accounting data, supplier value chain management and fruit production analysis. Created Qlik Sense models for most of these accounts.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

Joined the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) team on a 12 month contract to manage the data integrity of the Teradata warehouse. My team would log and validate these issues, either educating users on correct usage or producing solution designs and logging them with the development team. Communication and liaison between users, the development and release management teams was a critical part of this role. Over this period my team was able to reduce the average days to fix and close a call - from 21 days to less than 7 days. Worked closely with Bytes during this project and was included in their move towards Agile development and SCRUM methodology.Used Qlikview to supplement my reporting to management.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

Worked as a data discovery analyst and developer of Qlikview application models in industries as diverse as clothing retail, alcohol distribution, media publishing and seafood processing/ manufacturing. Also developed complementary solutions using NPrinting, including distribution models that included web portals and email.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

Started in March 2008, LMG (aka Live Music Guide) was a printed music publication that was seen as a bastion of support for South African live music and musicians. It comprised (mainly) a national gig guide, reviews of live shows and releases (CDs/EPs/videos), and interviews and articles relating to the local scene. With a monthly print run of 8000 copies, it was distributed across the Cape Peninsula and Winelands, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. An online version was first released in 2010 and continued, mainly as a gig guide, when the magazine ceased to be printed in October 2013.Sadly, other priorities saw it decline and its last gig guide was available online in February 2016.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

LMG was a free, music, "street-press" magazine distributed monthly in Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban.Based around a comprehensive monthly gig guide, it also contained reviews of live performances and CDs/EPs, and featured articles of general interest to the music fans, bands and industry folk of South Africa.At its peak, 8000 copies of LMG were distributed to a network of over 200 locations around the country.After more than 5 years in production, the costs involved in print media proved consistently to be too high, causing a shut-down of the magazine in October 2013.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

Used SQL on a daily basis to produce reports and extracts for the Vodacom executive and internal business users, either on a specific, once off (ad hoc) basis, or as an interim measure prior to the final report being automated.This required an thorough understanding of the databases used as source data, including the Customer Data Warehouse (Teradata), Vodacom IQ system (Sybase) and OIS (Oracle). In addition to a solid knowledge of these database structures and relationships, understanding the fundamental business processes and products was critical, in order to add value to the end product provided. Strong communication skills were required in order to gather requirements, set expectations and, in some case, provide suggestions on alternative solutions. Communications skills – both written and oral - have proved to be a consistent strength throughout my career.

Sydney, Australia

I was employed as Reporting Team Lead for Medical Benefits Fund (MBF) Australia (now known as Bupa) - one of the largest suppliers of private health insurance in Australia - on a project designed to replace their legacy mainframe system with Diamond Paradigm, a UNIX system with an Oracle 9i database backend. The new system used Crystal Reports v10 with distribution based on Crystal Enterprise v10.• Reporting directly to the Senior IT Project Manager, I managed a team of 8 report developers in the analysis/creation/conversion of enterprise reports that covered all aspects of the business. With the original number of reports exceeding 600, I managed an ambitious rationalisation project that saw this number drop to around 200.• Redeveloped these reports using Crystal Reports, implementing and maintaining an enterprise-wide “distributed reports” model based on Crystal Enterprise.• Managed all development scheduling and resourcing, including hiring of developers. Used Microsoft Project extensively to manage this.• Co-ordinated solution design and development with managers from other technical areas such as Data Warehouse, Businessworks, PL/SQL programs, Java systems, systems architects and the business analysts.• Built relationship with key business managers and coordinated the collection – and ultimate delivery – of BI and reporting requirements.• Delivered and maintained a set of business-critical quarterly regulatory reports, mainly for PHIAC (Private Health Insurance Administrative Council) purposes.