Pawel Smolak Email and Phone Number

I was responsible for Information Technology within Connect Financial Solutions (Pty) Ltd - JD Group’s Financial Services Company - as well as the group’s CRM. Part of this portfolio was to ensure architecture alignment, solution design and service delivery.I was accountable for operational and team management as well as vendors and service suppliers. Designing, implementing and maintaining appropriate, flexible and robust solution architecture standards and deployment practices, including development and integration. Defined portfolio operational and service plans in alignment with strategy and business goals. Identified and recommended suitable solutions to new and existing business requirements (changes and projects) to allow for continuous improvement of processes and solutions. Drove the aforementioned from concept to implemented solution and oversaw full SDLC.Ensured portfolio and management reporting was produced in a timely manner for all stakeholders. Built and maintained relationships with IT and portfolio stakeholders, to define and implement a continuous improvement plan and drive collaboration within the organisation.Systems under my portfolio included: SAP Loans Management, CRM, Business Rules Framework as well as FICO’s Capstone and Blaze. Interactive Solutions’ APT suite. First Data’s VisionPLUS and TRIAD.

Turn strategy into reality. Set up IT strategic project governance model and ensure adherence within group IT by monitoring and ensuring compliance to standards, policies, and procedures. I was responsible for the development of project plans and their and implementation, in line with business’ long-term strategies and objectives. My project portfolio focused on the development of new products, enterprise architecture alignment, and initiatives designed to reduce operational costs, defects or waste. Examples included Rochester Furniture's migration onto SAP and the implementation of SAP Loans Management in the Financial Services division of the group - including data migration off of VisionPLUS.Managed team human resources, vendors and associated costs effectively.

During my employment with EOH SAP Retail division, I have been responsible for the following areas: incident management, application support and IT operations, business analysis, system design, development, testing and release management. In addition IT projects fell under my list of responsibilities. This covers the full credit life cycle from a production support and SDLC perspective. Systems experience include custom GUI application screens (Java), Capstone (workflow - including calls to credit bureau, web services), Blaze (decision engine), SAP CRM, SAP PI, VisionPlus (account management etc.), SQL ODS, APT (collections, prospecting, customer care).My experience includes business as usual support and improvement, systems enhancements / change requests as well as projects. Examples of projects: new product development (personal loans, lay by's), score card implementation, system migrations, system development from concept to deployment (prospecting, customer care, voluntary surrender management systems, Collections systems, improvements to origination processes, integration with credit bureaus, integration with 3rd party payment platforms like EasyPay etc.)

I am responsible for Customer Value Management systems from Credit Applications / Approvals to Account Management. This also includes Collections and Marketing strategy as well as workflow systems that cater for the Collections, Customer Care and Direct marketing functions. (This includes Capstone, Blaze, Vision Plus, TRIAD, and APT) Primary functions include Business Analysis & Functional Design as well as aspects of development, testing, release management, post production monitoring as well as 3rd line operational support for some of these applications.

As the business owner of certain technologies, I'm responsible for the collections, voluntary surrender, customer care and prospecting systems for the group. These systems operate within Contact / Call Centre as well as Operational environments like branches and warehouses. The main focus is workflow management with an element of collections and escalation strategy. Currently busy with project Evolve - De-coupling TRIAD off of APT, implementing Vision Plus and TRIAD as well as Capstone for originations and CRM.

Initially worked as the Financial Manager of Morkels, Supreme and Hi Finance (a credit granting chain offering finance to traditional cash retailers like Hi Fi Corporation and Incredile Connection.) Later on I was responsible for business intelligence and analysis within JDG's Corporate Finance Department. (Delivery of presentable and useful management information and reporting tools. Design, implementation and maintenance of various statistical and financial analyses / reports / databases and financial models. Project management.

My responsibilities were to conduct internal audits at Store, Warehouse and Head Office environments. I also prepared statistical and business analysis reports using data analysis tools such as ACL and Microsoft Access in a central data warehouse environment.