Stephen Herzig Email & Phone Number

Springdale, Ar, Us

Retired from Western Governors University. Focusing on personal pursuits as well as part time or short term consulting engagements.

Salt Lake City, Ut, Us

Made the personal decision to move into a Director role at Western Governors University which has allowed me to work remotely and travel. The Business Systems organization is responsible for designing, developing and supporting student, staff and faculty-facing systems. These systems include enrollment, registration, admissions, faculty support, and marketing. I lead a team of 75 Salesforce Administrators, Salesforce Developers, Software Engineers, AWS Cloud Engineers, managers and senior managers.* Developed and integrated a new system which has enabled students to engage in new, non-degree offerings. This has provided additional valuable student opportunities and opened the door to support corporate educational programs.* Established new, business partner engagement relationships across scrum teams. These new relationships have increased on time delivery, decreased scope creep, and increased business partner satisfaction with Business Systems services.* Implemented a new Self Service Student Enrollment Portal which has decreased enrollment processing time from 4 days to hours. It has also provided new tools for the faculty, increasing their efficiency and their ability to serve students.* Developed a proposal for the creation of a nearshore software engineering facility to augment current WGU engineering capabilities. The proposal was accepted by the WGU executive team and the facility is being staffed. This new facility will expand engineering capabilities, decrease delivery costs, and bring global, diverse ideas and perspectives to WGU.* Implementing a distributed model for the support of the Salesforce platform. This model, which engages resources outside of the IT organization, will decrease delivery times for new features and configuration changes, and strengthen the partnership between IT and the business.

Salt Lake City, Ut, Us

Appointed by the executive team to head a new organization within IT to provide enterprise-level technology and services support. The Enterprise Solutions organization encompasses Enterprise Architecture, Platform Engineering, Data Engineering, Research and Innovation, and User Experience (UX/UI).* Architecting and building a new technology platform which will carry WGU into the future, enabling student growth and the development of new student educational, certification and finance opportunities.* Implemented an AWS cloud-based Data Lake House data model which is data-centric (data as an asset), and provides decentralized, self-serve data analysis, research and reporting.* Drove a culture of UX centered product design and development, taking the UX team from a "check-the-box" step in the development process, to a respected and sought-after team of subject matter experts, that now serves the enterprise in defining and maintaining a consistent, effective user experience across all WGU products.* Develop multiple proofs of concept each quarter, demonstrating the viability of new technology integration into the WGU ecosystem to improve the student, staff and faculty experience.* Work daily with product and engineering teams providing consulting and mentorship on best practices across both disciplines. This has ensured that user and business requirements are effectively being captured, and that systems are designed and developed with quality and consistency across a common architecture.* Provide weekly Engineering training sessions. These sessions have elevated the skills of the engineers, the quality of their deliverables, and driven the acceptance of best practices.* Manage technology vendor selection, contracting and onboarding. This has increased the velocity of the engineering organization, closed skill gaps, and allowed employees to focus on high value projects. Streamlined onboarding process from 2 weeks to 3 days.

Salt Lake City, Ut, Us

Responsible for product, Agile Scrum management, project management, process and reporting, and UI/UX for the university. Also responsible for ensuring that the technology and business organizations are effectively engaged and aligned.* Certified all team members on change management, improving the way products and changes were rolled out to the organization.* Improved Agile delivery practices through training, reinforcing the ScrumMaster role, and tailoring ceremonies to the needs of the organization. Refocusing PI Planning, for instance saved WGU $10,000 per event and improved the quality of product development planning.* Focused the product team on KPIs and implemented a dedicated reporting team. This improved the quality of deliverables, and decreased outages.* Trained the team in navigation and communications skills, and the scope and accountabilities of their roles. This improved relations with business partners, empowered the team, and led to faster design decisions and deliveries.

Fayetteville, Ar, Us

Responsible for the Enterprise Systems staff charged with developing and maintaining enterprise technology services to support strategic campus goals. Also, directly responsible for the deployment of campus-wide enterprise projects. * Implemented Agile development methodology which significantly improved speed, quality, and accuracy of delivered services, and improved employee morale. * Reduced headcount by 25% while increasing the team’s ability to provide quality services through automation, cross training, leadership training, system virtualization, strategic focus, and organizing resources more effectively. * Renegotiated vendor contracts reducing costs by as much as 90%, resulting in over $2,000,000 in savings. * Led the rollout of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) which improved computing services for students, reduced support costs by as much as 50%, and provided student access to applications on any device, anytime, anywhere. * Developed and executed strategic roadmaps, work plans, and budgets to support university technology initiatives, and to refocus the organization from being a technology provider to a solutions and services provider. * Led the University of Arkansas System-wide implementation of an Identity and Access Management solution. * Led the implementation of a campus-wide Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony solution which improved telephony services, provided enhanced collaboration tools, and saved the university $1,100,000 a year in telephony expenses.

Bentonville, Arkansas, Us

Led project, program and portfolio management. Functioned as a relationship manager between the Walmart Technology Division and the Global Shared Financial Services organization. Worked with the organization to determine strategy/technical roadmap, ensure successful project execution, and manage the technology budget. Also, led 3 application development teams implementing technology including SAP, Mainframe, .NET, JAVA, C#, MVC, SQL, and Oracle.* Responsible for a $36,000,000 technology budget and 75+ resources in a matrixed environment. Delivered programs at or under budget, and assisted the organization with strategy planning to match their technology budget to their technology goals.* Worked with the program and project managers to ensure that development methodologies were being effectively followed and that all were trained on Waterfall, Agile, Rapid Development and Iterative methodologies. Increased the team project management effectiveness rating from a 2.5 to a 4.2 out of 5 within my first 3 months in position. * Spearheaded the implementation of a new hosted environment, one of the first of its kind for the company. Led coordination at an executive level with the Security, Legal, Privacy, Operations and Infrastructure teams. The initiative was projected to save $1,000,000 a year in support and maintenance costs.* Drove innovation and process improvement. Discovered a 7-year-old, significant out-of-balance account. Engaged various cross-functional teams and drove a process improvement which reduced the gap by $40,000,000.* Implemented staff training programs to help transition existing associates from older development technologies to newer technologies such as ABAP SAP. This training allowed more flexibility in staffing projects, and facilitated the migration of financial systems to newer technologies.* Led the development of a post audit data analysis application which reclaimed $450,000,000 a year from inaccurate vendor invoices.

Us

Reporting directly to the CEO, was responsible for managing all day-to-day operations and product development activities including application development, content development, customer service, marketing, and IT support. * Managed the formation of a new product team with a staff of 25 to develop the Glo software application. This included multilevel management with personnel in remote global locations. The team focused on the rapid product development of a highly complex, content and media rich desktop and iPad application. * Launched the Glo application in October 2009. It immediately placed 13th in its category on Amazon.com with nearly 30,000 registered users. Awarded Bible of the Year from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association and received the Christian Resource Media Product of the Year. * Led focus group and usability studies which validated application user interfaces, and refocused product development efforts, saving more than $1,000,000 in media production costs. * Planned, negotiated and oversaw the implementation of datacenter systems and operations. This included high-availability, scalable, development and production environments linked to cloud content delivery networks. Secure local and remote backup servers were implemented to protect company IP. * Implemented Agile development processes and a firm release schedule. This increased the accuracy and quality of releases (average post release defects dropped by 50%) and increased the productivity of the engineering team.

Provided services to various companies including technology management, product and project management, marketing, and personnel management. * Managed the implementation of technology systems for a financial services company. This included a VoIP phone system and a thin client desktop solution which resulted in a 60% savings in ongoing technology and system administration costs. * Responsible for supporting existing clients and developing various product marketing and corporate branding materials for a healthcare products company. This included print ads, trade show booth graphics, product collateral, sales packets, product catalogs, and an updated corporate web site. * Led product strategy management including resource management and prioritization for a technology company. Interfaced with clients to develop requirements documents and assisted the sales force with customer presentations. Worked cross-functionally with developers, marketing specialists, operations and customer support personnel. This resulted in increased conversions. * Implemented effective development process which included scheduled quarterly releases, QA, a product roadmap, documentation and detailed project plans. Resource management and client satisfaction improved, and releases were nearly defect-free.

Ewing, New Jersey, Us

Managed the UCC Web Technology Group and developed a project management discipline within a newly formed Technology Services organization. Responsible for the GS1 Global Registry initiative product strategy. Developed and implemented various partner programs. Also responsible for product usability and beta testing. * Led usability studies of web interfaces and web site navigation effectiveness. * Developed and implemented a project management process within the Technology Services organization which improved both developer productivity, and customer satisfaction. * Created standard branding and messaging for products and services, establishing a clear and concise brand identity. * Developed a partner certification program with technical, customer support and marketing components. The program enabled partners to market their solutions according to a common, industry standard benchmark. * Asked by executive staff to handle logistics for the launch of a global service offering (GS1 Global Registry initiative) and act as liaison between the development group and global standards teams. * Managed a staff of web developers, project managers and web content specialists. The staff provided cross-divisional web development and project management support for all UCC divisions.