Ralph Walker Email & Phone Number

I am currently an independant IT consultant at Aon Benfield.

London, Gb

London, Gb

Application Support Manager2008-Present• Responsible for starting and managing the application support team.• Supervise level I and II support staff.• Support of 33 applications, 4000 users.• Set up and provide security rights for new and existing users within Grids software.• Provide 24/7/365 support of Grids software via a rotating on call schedule.• Point person for significant incidents, escalation and subsequent actions/resolutions.• Collaborate with quality assurance team to supplement testing and discovery of defects.• Joined forces with developers, technical leads and business analysts to enhance and correct application defects.• Provide direction to the deployment team whose responsibility is to deploy Grids software in a timely fashion, while adhering to a strict SDLC.• Provide critical data extracts for senior management within the company including IT, finance, audit, legal and compliance departments.• Work with Sarbanes-Oxley team to ensure compliance, control testing and remediation.• Disaster recovery planning and implementation.• Provide support and direction to our Support team in the United Kingdom.• Spent 4 weeks rolling out the reinsurance software and training users in our Australia office.

London, Gb

•Responsible for setting development direction and procedures.PEOPLESOFT INTERFACE•The original process to export reinsurance data to a Great Plains (general ledger) was changed to feed a PeopleSoft system.•The feed was also initially enhanced to include a new revenue feed over and above the original fiduciary feed (debtors, creditors, cash etc)•When the company changed from US GAAP to UK GAAP, which was regulated under FSA rules, the feed had to be considerably enhanced to account for changed in revenue recognition and segregated funds rules.DOCUMENT IMAGING•Core architect of the original and current document management system that AON Benfield uses today as a reinsurance documentation repository. •Architected, managed and developed with several developers the EDE (Enterprise Document Explorer). This application is tightly integrated with all of the other core reinsurance applications within our company and is a core component that users work with dailyVB.NET BUSINESS FRAMEWORK DEVELOPMENT•Developed new .net business framework that replaced document imaging •Initially developed by my team for the EDE application, but soon used by all subsequent .NET applications.•Implemented OOP principles including inheritance and encapsulation.WEB APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT •Reinsurer ExtranetAllows reinsurance companies to view information about contracts/invoices claims•Cedent ExtranetClient facing application that exposed similar information to our clients•GRiDS Sales ManagementAllows brokers to track information ranging from opportunities, prospective clients and revenueGLOBAL APPLICATION ROLLOUT•To ensure successful rollout of our reinsurance software; I worked on location with a variety of users, developers and IT personnel in the United Kingdom over a period of 12 weeks. I assisted with requirements gathering, conversion development and developer training.

Minneapolis, Mn, Us

• Web based medical reinsurance system development for MedRe using ASP.• E-commerce development for Marshall Fields, Target and Mervins websites, using ATG Dynamo.

London, Gb

• Worked with a team to replace the legacy WANG reinsurance application suite • The applications that I wrote included • Contact Management System• Receipt and cash allocation process• Great Plains accounting software interface• Enhanced database level trigger scripting to ensure data integrity• VB6 Business Framework development• Integral in the development and design of our VB6 business and control frameworks that are still a corner stone for reinsurance software today:o Object-oriented programming (OOP)o Business framework (DLL)o Custom control libraries (OCX)