Winston Ram Email & Phone Number

Liverpool, Gb

Manchester, England, Gb

Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Gb

London, Gb

A pivotal member of the Enterprise Architecture team with ultimate accountability for the data domain. Key duties included:• Defined the global data strategy and principles as well as the roadmap• Accountable for the architecture and design of the Enterprise Data Lake, ODS & Data Warehouse• Responsible for selecting and approving suitable technologies for data storage and transfer• Provided architectural support for data governance, master data management and other data initiatives• Owned the Enterprise Data Model (EDM) and accountable for its upkeep• Provided oversight of data modelling and design for NoSQL, relational and dimensional data stores• Acted as the technical design authority from the data perspective• Responsible for initial engagements, produced conceptual solution designs and conceptual data models• Created ontology style views of the Contract, Counterparty and Product domains.Managed a small team of data architects, modellers and engineers to primarily work on the Enterprise Data Lake, ODS & Data Warehouse, as well as data governance, master data management and other data initiatives. The architectural aspects to support design and development of these data solutions comprised:• Producing detailed designs from the conceptual designs• Defining the logical and physical data models • Maintaining the Enterprise Logical Data Model• Creating reusable patterns for dataflows, workflow management, logging, error & exception handling, etc.• Establishing anonymisation, obfuscation, retention & purging patterns for implementing the global data policies

Berlin, Berlin, De

An engagement to document the Business Partner and Address (location) domains. The remit was to focus upon the core systems (i.e., article submission, publishing/production, marketing, CRM, MDM, sanctions, ERP, DW & reporting, etc.). Artefacts included:• Business Process diagrams that covered the lifecycle – i.e., from lead to opportunity to customer.• Data Landscape that illustrated the dataflows between systems. This needed to show where the Business Partner and Address data is authored, mastered, validated, synchronised and consumed downstream.• Dataflow Catalogue that provided a concise but comprehensive view of dataflow information such as: source, target, description, business rules, data classification, encryption, refresh type, frequency, transfer mechanism, error & exception handling, etc.• Conceptual and Logical Data Models were constructed for the core systems by reverse-engineering their physical data models.• Taxonomy diagrams were created to illustrate the customer type hierarchies associated with the customer data in each of the core systems.Technologies: SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP CRM, SAP ERP, SAP BW; GCP tools such as Big Query.

Cambridge, Cambs, Gb

Engaged to lead the design of a new data warehouse to industry standards and best practice. • Worked with business users and data owners to understand the requirements, processes and metrics.• Defined the domain model and developed conceptual data models for each domain.• Focused upon the Sales & Customer domains to produce the logical data models then guided the subsequent physical data model design.• Provided pragmatic guidance for data governance and data security.• Defined principles for data ingestion, processing and provisioning.• Outlined a high-level approach for collating and disseminating the data quality measures.• The incumbent approach was to persist the received data in silos and provide integrated data for report development via multi-layered semantic views – this adversely impacted performance. • To improve performance, advocated that the integrated data layer was persisted in HANA whilst the received data silos moved to cheaper storage – i.e. the data lake.

Basingstoke, Hampshire, Gb

The primary role was to provide architectural oversight, assurance and guidance to the CMD (Customer Master Data) team. The CMD solution was developed in a Consolidation Hub style using the following technologies: Informatica MDM, PowerCenter, Data Quality and Data Director, as well as Oracle Exadata. Duties included: defining patterns for sourcing and loading data; refining the data model; ensuring that the match & merge rules were fit for purpose.The aim of the Data Deletion initiative was to establish best practice for managing sensitive data and compliance with GDPR regulations. Produced the design patterns and guidelines for the following areas: deletion; anonymisation & pseudonymisation; archive & restore; candidate key list; error & audit logging. Coached the systems designers in how to determine the most suitable mechanism by assessing the singling out, data linking and inference risks.The key objective of the Strategic Permissions project was to ensure that the recording of marketing permissions was in accordance with the GDPR regulations. Duties included: high-level design; mapping requirements to systems; providing impact assessment and solution options for the CRs.

London, Gb

Produced the strategy for Managing Data Quality. This included: defining the DQ measures & rules, implementation approach & solution design followed by the subsequent rollout plan. Provided architectural oversight and guidance during the proof of concept phase. The POC was conducted on the (financial) Instrument domain using the following technologies: DQ rules were defined using Easy Rules and stored in a YAML file; Telegraf was used for metrics collection and stored in InfluxDB; DQ reports and dashboards were created using Grafana.Produced the Data Modelling Strategy to develop an Enterprise Data Model. This included: defining the data modelling approach, identifying the top-level domains and the rollout plan. Conducted a modelling pilot for the Product domain. The following artefacts were created for the Product pilot: “as is” physical model, enterprise conceptual & logical model, taxonomy and business process/lifecycle (this included UML state machine diagrams). After the pilot, produced data modelling guidelines to aid the team to model the remaining domains.Provided architectural support and guidance for the Database Right-Sizing initiative.

London, Gb

Helped to shape Sainsbury’s data strategy to migrate from in-house data warehouse appliances to a cloud-based approach using Snowflake. Defined the principles, standards and templates for various design artefacts.Solution architect for Smart Product and responsible for designing the Product Matching solution. Provided architectural oversight, technical assurance and guidance to the project team. The solution was developed in an AWS cloud environment using the following core technologies: Ab Initio for ETL, PostgreSQL for the matching data store, initially R and then Python for the algorithm, ReactJS & NodeJS for the UI.

Newport, Wales, Gb

Reviewed the current data landscape (this included: data & metadata catalogues, information asset repositories, processes for accessing data, existing data structures, security policies, etc.) and identified core capabilities to outline the current state (COM). Produced a high-level view of the target state (TOM) along with a roadmap to deliver ONS’s vision of “better statistics, better decisions”. Defined a common set of data principles (derived from best practice) that were applicable to all areas within ONS. These principles were agreed with the key stakeholders and subsequently baselined. Outlined the approach for data governance, metadata and data management as well as for documenting standards and guidelines. This included identifying the relevant high-level tasks and key deliverables. Provided leadership and mentoring to other architects within the team.

Windsor, England, Gb

The MI team (part of the wider Data Insights & Customer Value Management team) were responsible for the delivery of various business performance management services such as daily operational, business performance, executive-level KPI and external regulatory reporting. Managed a team of data architects, designers and modellers to produce the MI solution designs. Technologies included: Hortonworks Hadoop Data Lake, Hive MI warehouse and the MicroSoft BI toolset for dashboards, reports and analytics.Accountable for the creation and maintenance of all design artefacts and the associated quality assurance mechanisms. Responsible for providing estimates, managing resource availability and planning. Ensured that the designs were delivered on time and within budget. Also responsible for making key design decisions as well as providing innovative solutions to troubleshoot performance and other issues. Mentored and coached team members according to best MI practice. This included establishing a centralised repository of best practice documentation.Successfully streamlined the design process by using standardised templates, review checklists and implementing quality gates. This expedited throughput.

London, London, Gb

Responsible for thought leadership and guidance to senior IT and business stakeholders on all matters relating to the data domain, as well as providing input to the data strategy and roadmap for the DWP 2020 Vision. A key aspect was to ensure that the new Data as a Service (DaaS) paradigm was aligned to this vision (DaaS consisted of a Data Lake based upon Big Data technologies). The role also encompassed overseeing the existing EDW.Therefore, the current architecture was reviewed prior to the development of a target architecture and roadmap. Templates were created for various architectural artefacts as required. Data principles and guidelines were defined to ensure that industry standards and best practice were followed. Guided the assessment of a number of visualisation and analytics tools. Also ensured that the Data Lake was based upon a robust, resilient, scalable and extensible component design.Provided architectural oversight, governance and assurance for the design of DaaS and other solutions by the delivery partners and in-house teams. Also reviewed new data requests and outlined the various strategic and tactical options that were available and recommended the most appropriate for the solution architecture team to progress from detailed requirements gathering through to design and build.

Solna, -, Se

Worked as a Technical Design Authority for all BI/DW projects for TeliaSonera across multiple lines of business such as: TeliaSonera International Carriers; Sergel (debt collection & factoring); Mobility and Broadband. Acted as a gatekeeper with reference to the artefacts produced by both the onshore and offshore teams. Provided oversight and due diligence before sign-off with delivery partners.Was a pivotal member of the Solution Governance Review Board (SGRB) and Data Modelling Governance Review Board (DMGRB). Therefore, responsible for organising and planning the meetings, reviewing the submitted solution designs, data models and mappings. Ensured that the documentation was of a satisfactory quality and adhered to the standards, principles and guidelines. Also responsible for ensuring that the data modelling complied with the Teradata reference models (CLDM and FS-LDM) as well as the existing BI-TS models. Instrumental in improving and streamlining the governance processes to align with industry standards and best practice. Established and maintained the standards and guidelines as well as the documentation templates.

Bracknell, Berkshire, Gb

Attended the Knowledge Academy’s TOGAF 9.1 training course (parts 1 & 2) then sat the TOGAF Level 1 and Level 2 exams.

Southborough, Ma, Us

This was a short-term assignment to help Virtusa put together a proposal for the delivery of a finance reporting mart for their client HomeServe. The proposal initially included several tactical options along with the associated benefits and challenges. The recommended approach was then elaborated upon and a delivery plan with estimates provided. This was followed up with a comprehensive solution design to provide an outline of the architecture from the agnostic component, data, technical component, data integration and infrastructure perspectives. The solution design thus set the stage for the subsequent low-level design, build, testing and deployment activities. Technologies included: Pega, Oracle 12c, QlikView Enterprise Edition and Talend Enterprise Data Integration (including the Quartz Scheduler) and ERwin Data Modeller.

Windsor, England, Gb

Joined a small team of 7 BI solution architects to work on several concurrent projects. Responsible for the solution architecture and design for BI, MI and other data-related systems integration. Also responsible for ensuring that the vision, strategy, principles and standards are adhered to.Duties included: evaluating various options and recommending the most appropriate, documenting the solution architecture and design, ensuring alignment to the requirements, providing design assurance throughout the project lifecycle.British Gas has a number of large-scale enterprise systems and data repositories including Big Data (Hadoop), Teradata, SAP BW, SQL Server PDW, SAS, Business Objects, QlikView and MS Office BI. Therefore a broad range of technical knowledge and experience was required.

Paris, France, Fr

This was a short-term assignment for Nordea Bank on the FATCA project to optimise an under-performing data warehouse. The data warehouse was an almost like-for-like physical implementation of the Teradata FS LDM with very little materialisation in the semantic layer. Analysed the architecture of the semantic layer, the physical data model, the DDL for the impacted objects, the interdependencies of these objects, query explain plans and query execution statistics, etc. to identify the cause of the performance issues. From this analysis recommended changes to the statistics collection, primary indexes, secondary indexes, join indexes, partitioning, materialisation, etc. Applying these changes reduced runtimes from around 15 minutes to sub 5 seconds. In addition, suggested changes for the future (e.g. soft referential integrity) that could further reduce the runtimes.

Gogarburn, Gb

Produced the terms of reference for the Current State project that will provide an understanding of what data has been sourced and loaded into the UK Located Shared Data Warehouse (first phase) – a Teradata appliance. The information will be collated using Informatica Metadata Manager (IMM), Erwin Data Modeller and Teradata Mapping Manager (TMM). The data will be mapped to the RBS LDM (based on the Teradata FS LDM). The Current State catalogue will not only reduce duplication and inconsistencies but it will also reduce the impact upon source systems, ETL processing times, project delivery time and effort as well as aiding data lineage. Another key deliverable is the operating model processes and procedures for maintaining the currency of the catalogue content as well as a forward view of data to be acquired. Collated the metadata relating to the data feeds as the first stage in the documenting the Current State.

London, London, Gb

Sainsbury’s PLC has recently agreed to buy out Lloyds Banking Group’s 50% stake in its bank, taking full control of its back-office operation over the next 42 months. To further Sainsbury’s Bank's transition planning, the Current Operating Model (COM) was defined and documented and a roadmap was produced to facilitate the move to a revised Target Operating Model (TOM) that enhanced the bank’s capabilities and streamlined processes.

Copenhagen, Dk

Responsible for the design and development of a reporting suite for vessel Uptake Management (UTM). Global vessel scheduling and shipment booking information from the various operational systems was cleansed, conformed and consolidated into a Teradata enterprise data warehouse using optimised stored procedures for the transformation. The data in the EDW was stored in 3rd normal form with a dimensional semantic layer. The subset of data for the UTM data mart was loaded into a SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) cube where complex calculated measures were created using MDX. Predefined “canned” reports were created using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and ad hoc reporting and analysis functionality provided using Excel pivot tables and charts. The reports were presented to the users via a SharePoint portal as well as scheduled email subscription.

Seattle, Washington, Us

Data Architect for a financial services client (Police Mutual Assurance) on a project to design and deliver a Master Data Management (MDM) and data consolidation solution to feed into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, thereby providing the business with a single customer view. The solution was based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (Enterprise Edition) technologies for the databases, SSIS for the ETL and Master Data Services (MDS) for MDM.Both transactional and reference data was collated from multiple operational systems via a messaging service (MS MQ). SSIS was used to not only to cleanse, conform and consolidate the data ,but to match and dedupe the customer master data prior to loading into MDS. This master data was then merged back with the transactional data in the Operational Data Store (ODS). The combined master and transactional data was then loaded into the MS Dynamics CRM system to provide the unified single customer view.Responsible for ensuring that the solution met the requirements and would integrate with other new components as well as existing systems. Led a team of ~10 people (both onshore and offshore) in all aspects of project delivery including requirements gathering, design, build, test and deployment.

Paris, France, Fr

Under the current PAYE system (which has remained largely unchanged since its inception in 1944), employers report details of payments and deductions to HMRC once a year. With the introduction of RTI (Real Time Information), employers will be required to report these details at the time that payments are made. This will ensure that the majority of individuals are subject to the correct deductions thus minimising the need for end-of-year adjustments and thereby reducing the administrative burden and operating costs for both HMRC and employers. RTI will also support the implementation of Universal Credits by DWP.The BI aspects of the overall RTI solution compromised of an Oracle 11g R2 data store, SAS 9.2 for analytics and Business Objects XI R3 for MIS and compliance reporting. Expected data volumes were ~100 million RTI records per month. Data was integrated from various Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server sources.Responsible for taking the high-level design of all the BI elements from requirements gathering through the design, build and test phases as well as implementation and hand-over to Live Services. Also responsible for ensuring that the solution met the requirements and complied with HMRC and CG Aspire strategies and policies. Accountable for all technical aspects of the project delivery from the BI perspective. In addition, ensured that the BI components would integrate with other new components as well as existing systems by working collaboratively with external suppliers, HMRC and CG Aspire teams.Provided the BI contributions to the broader context documents such as the Full Solution Architecture and System Physical Design. Produced the BI specific design artefacts such as the Component Design Architecture, Capacity Model, Interface Design, Deployment & Configuration Guides, etc.

Jeddah, Western Province, Sa

Data Warehouse Solution Architect on an ARAMCO project to setup a new energy research centre (KAPSARC). Designed an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) that initially consolidated data from 5 SAP ERP systems and 7 non-SAP systems into a centralised data store (3NF), with subject area specific data marts for the dimensional models. To fulfil all the requirements, the EDW was based upon SAP NetWeaver BW technologies, SAP MDM and the full BO Enterprise Information Management (EIM) suite. BO Enterprise tools were used for the BI and semantic layers to provide dashboards, canned reports, ad hoc reporting, analysis, data exploration and mining functionality. The EDW was fully integrated with the BO EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) and GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) applications.Data Architect on the KDDMS (Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining System) project for a public-sector client. The system was designed to collate structured and unstructured data from 40+ disparate indusrtries for analysis and data mining in both English and Arabic languages. It was built on cutting edge IBM data warehouse, EIM, Federation Server and Content Analytics technologies in conjunction with the i2 visualisation tools. Dimensional modelling techniques were used to boost query performance.

Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Gb

CDA (Consolidating Data Applications) was a programme to define an integrated data architecture across both group and local data systems. The first step in this programme was to define a common Group Finance Information Model (GFIM) that was initially implemented in the group-level consolidation applications (both planning and actuals). The master data for the new GFIM data model was managed using the Oracle Data Relationship Manager (DRM). As a result, it was necessary to replace the existing Central Data Hub (CDH) with the new Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). EDW was based upon the following technologies: Oracle 10g for the various database and data mart layers, Informatica PowerCenter 8.6 for the ETL and Business Objects XI R3 for reporting.Led a team of business analysts and technical designers during the analysis and design phases to gather requirements, design the EDW solution and build prototypes. Worked closely with the programme design authority to ensure that the design was architecturally sound and adhered to AZ enterprise architecture standards and principles. Collaborated with other solution architects to ensure that the solution would fully integrate with the source and target systems.In addition, worked closely with third party suppliers, IS team leads and business leads to ensure that the design documents, as well as the functional and technical specifications, were produced to a high quality and were fit for purpose. In this quality assurance role, also produced document templates that conformed to QMS/LDMS standards initially and then subsequently to IS PDM standards as required.

Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Gb

Responsible for creating a suite of complex business reports using SSRS and SSAS, including use of MDX, for a green-field data warehouse. The solution was devised using Microsoft best practices.

DMI (Digital Media Initiative) was a high profile programme to deliver a digital production and media asset management platform for the BBC. Within this programme was a requirement to create a centralised reporting data warehouse that extracts and collates data from the archive and multiple work-in-progress systems to provide a number of pre-defined reports and ad hoc reporting functionality. The technologies used were SQL Server 2005, the associated BI tools (SSIS, SSRS and SSAS), SharePoint (MOSS 2007), UML and the Rational toolset. The architectural approach was defined using industry-standard data warehousing methodologies to provide a robust and scalable solution. Thus, the data marts were designed using a Kimball approach. The resultant technical documentation was provided to meet very stringent Siemens/BBC standards.Worked with external suppliers and other members of the delivery team to identify the data sources and define the ETL process. Ensured that the data warehouse would integrate with all the other DMI systems and meet the security requirements by working collaboratively with Siemens, BBC and external supplier system architects. Also, provided hardware, software and data storage recommendations jointly with the Infrastructure Architect.Produced the project plan and resource profiles for recruitment with the project manager. Led a team of 4-6 business analysts to gather the requirements. Supervised 4 data modellers to map the requirements to the Project Logical Data Model (PLDM). Led a team of 4 developers to design and build the databases, ETL packages and reports. In addition, worked with the data migration team to define the reference data and their ETL approach – the toolset was Oracle 10g and Business Objects Data Integrator.

Dallas, Texas, Us

Employed as the principal resource for Finance in a team of 7 developers working on the Briggs BI solution (LBI). This consists of a SQL Server 2000 data warehouse with Crystal Reports XI, SmartNotes and Excel for the user layer. Pivot tables are used to interrogate the Analysis Services 2000 cubes. These cubes have been replicated in SSAS 2005 and are currently being tested with ProClarity.The primary data source for LBI is the Lawson M3 ERP system that uses a DB2 database running on an IBM iSeries server. The Lawson Business Performance Warehouse (BPW) tool was used to speed up and simplify the ETL development process.Duties included: requirements gathering, data mapping, ETL design & development, creating the dimensional models, report writing (Crystal), and cube development. Each stage of the development process was fully documented. Worked closely with key users to define the business requirements and to ensure that they were being met.

New York, Ny, Us

This was a green-field project to supply a complete Management Information solution using the SQL Server 2005 toolset for a new sub-prime mortgages business unit within Merrill Lynch. Worked in a small team of 2-5 developers to design, develop and implement a working architecture to tight deadlines. A suite of business reports were also developed and delivered using Reporting Services (SSRS). SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) was used as the ETL tool to load data from other SQL Server databases and flat files.As the primary dedicated resource on this project, the main responsibilities were the complete ETL process, the creation and maintenance of the databases and their associated objects. Worked closely with the business analyst to make certain that the business requirements were being met by the functionality. Also liaised with the DBA team to ensure that security, performance, scalability and supportability requirements were attained.

Deerfield, Il, Us

Employed as the lead in a team of 5/6 developers on Alliance Pharmacy’s Sales Data Warehouse. The current live Sales Data Warehouse consists of SQL Server 2000 databases, ~2Tb combined size, with ~20 Analysis Services cubes. All the ETL code has been constructed in ~200 DTS packages. The larger cubes have been partitioned by month and optimised by usage to boost performance. The user layer utilises Cognos PowerPlay to present the data cubes and Cognos ReportNet for reporting. Erwin was used as the data modelling tool.Solely responsible for the effective running of the live environment at both coding and data levels. Led the development and enhancement of the Sales Data Warehouse functionality to rigorous deadlines. Mentored and advised team members as appropriate. Supported the live environment to users as required, from investigation through to solution provision.

Swindon, Wilts, Gb

Worked on Nationwide’s Risk Data Store (RDS) project with 100+ other people to allow Nationwide to comply with the requirements of the Basel II Accord. The RDS data warehouse comprised of SQL Server 2005 databases that are currently ~8-10Tb in size on the test server and expected to grow to ~60Tb in production. At present there are ~170 data feeds – some with multiple files – loading into the RDS.Member of a team ~6 specialists that conducted performance testing on the RDS data warehouse. Used Perfmon, SQL Profiler traces and actual execution plans to identify the causes of poor performance. The server configuration settings were modified to boost overall performance. Very large tables were identified as candidates for table partitioning and the manual update of statistics. The indexes were reviewed. Narrow bridging tables were implemented to aid joins. Alternative coding strategies to avoid performance issues were suggested to the ETL developers.

95877 Bezons, Fr

Sale, Cheshire, Gb

Houston, Texas, Us

Norwalk, Ct, Us

Broomfield, Co, Us

Carrollton, Texas, Us

Clinton, Massachusetts, Us