Services pricing had not changed in more than five years and service margin goals were not being met. Management resisted changes to pricing because of a fear that customers might decrease orders.
Newer technologies required a higher level of understanding, interaction, skill, and significant changes in deployment tactics; acted as a member of cost analysis team that reviewed current ongoing projects. The effort required to deploy new technologies was measured using man-power assessments, hours on the project, and training requirements. New services pricing for new technologies were developed from the data.
Service margins improved, increasing revenues 100% in 2005 and a record high of $400 million in 2006. Awarded the General Manager Recognition award for outstanding business results tied to the cost analysis and budgetary work performed on the service margin project.

Company's engineering department's productivity was being hindered by customers calling to ask questions not related to revenue-generation projects. Team was dedicated to customer service and did not want to reject customer's inquiries, but could not afford to tie up resources that would otherwise be used on revenue-generation projects.
Proposed and secured approval to create a Technical Liaison role; an engineer was appointed as sole point of contact for all customer questions relating to existing infrastructure, future expansions, concerns and issues, and miscellaneous projects that were not related to an active project. Time spent on non-project-related issues was easily tracked.
The data collected was used to sell customer support package which generated more than $3 million in additional sales and system of single point of contact allowed team to focus on projects without disruption.

Projects were often delayed because engineers specializing in one expertise were working on other projects and could only be used on limited equipment sets. Operations and Program management used headcount to determine project scheduling, not skill sets and experience levels.
Developed a competency document that tracked the skill set development of each Engineering employee which was used to staff projects with engineers; engineers indicated a comfort level with skill sets and were matched to projects. Document could also identify opportunities for highly skilled engineers to train a less experienced employee, creating a mentor role that enhanced leadership capabilities and increased team's flexibility. By highlighting the holes in the team's knowledgebase, it was easy to demonstrate to Operations the need to prioritize opportunities to cross-train.
Project delays were eliminated and team staffed twice as many projects, impacting revenues more than $100 million.

Company was in the process of rolling out a new product nationwide but many of the proposed markets did not have adequate resources within existing systems to support new equipment. The equipment had already been sold and shipped to several markets and the engineering team was being pressured to resolve the issue for continued deployment.
Analyzed problem and identified where resources were utilized and whether resources could be released to support the rollout. Developed a UNIX shell script that ran on the main system operations platform and created a file that contained the system's resource data; created an Excel spreadsheet that pulled information from the resource data file and showed a graph that identified which devices were using the resources. Extrapolated which devices could be adjusted to free resources.
The process to identify resources was sold as a service to the customer as a prerequisite to the new product introduction. Process was performed on 30 markets nationwide in less than two weeks, securing nearly $300,000 in additional revenue. The resource adjustment data was passed on to the customer.

Nearly 300 Ethernet cables needed to be connected to larger networks being deployed and no labeling standard was in place that would meet space constraints and durability. The close proximity of the cables would require labels that could move when cables were adjusted and be identifiable.
Researched labeling options and determined that a durable label that wrapped around the cable and left a flap like a flag with the cable identification information was suitable. Labels were found at a national stationary chain; produced a set of mailing labels that contained the necessary data for the cable sheets using Word and Excel. Two copies of the mailing labels were printed and one label was fixed to each end of the Ethernet cables. A color code was also printed on each label for easier identification of the function associated with the cable.
The labeling method could be applied to all deployments that used similar cables, resolving the labeling problem in an efficient and highly cost-effective manner; saved $300,000 annually.

The software that built the database for the interface between the base station and the switching network was prone to error during the first deployments of high-speed data solution for cellular networks. Deployment of data solutions needed to be completed quickly and resources were stretched thin.
Analyzed the white papers, development materials, CISCO documentation, and database components to understand the relationship between each component and how components were linked in the configuration database; wrote a manual process for fixing, deleting, and adding database components at a base level so database build errors could be easily corrected.
Process reduced deployment time, saved five to six months on the nationwide project, and eliminated need for further resources to correct errors, saving $250,000 in Systems Engineering services.

Acted as lead engineer on the Iridium satellite communications project involved in testing fax and data functions; the software was in development and untested in the environment.
Developed and wrote the test cases to verify the functionality of faxing and sending data across the Iridium network at a systems level; interpreted the results of the testing. Log files, which often were thousands of lines long, were produced. Created a software program to interpret the log files and showed the data transfer in a graphical format. Determined that every tenth data packet was getting lost, slowing data rates.
The software code was corrected and the problem was cleared. The graphical data was very easy to show to management so the problem could be shared and illustrated in an easy to understand format.

A lack of risk management to Account team's projects was significant and impacted the ability to resolve issues. Typically, the team accepted the risks and resolved issues passively. Situation was unacceptable because the scope of the project differed from the norm and the cost of mitigation was significantly impacting project profitability.
A Risk Management evaluation and mitigation document was developed that utilized standard project management techniques for quantifying and qualifying risks. The document outlined the potential for risk, the impact, the cost involved, and proposed mitigation solutions along with cost analysis and other recommendations.
For one project, the risk analysis highlighted a potential loss of $1 million in revenues. The proposed solutions and mitigation strategies cost less than 5% of the potential impact.

A 30-market deployment was approaching and the implementation plan was inadequate and had underestimated the scope of the rollout. Traditionally Operations and Program Management developed the deployment plans but resisted the involvement of Engineering teams for fear of losing control of project.
Broke down the 30-market deployment into smaller and more identifiable tasks; created a schedule the facilitated the most project completions in the least amount of time and met the customer's needs. Matched the list for priority markets and delivery dates for equipment; identified staff and created a dedicated team of engineers.
Rollout was successful with many markets being completed ahead of schedule. Cost savings attributed to the revised deployment plan and reduced resources were worth more than $3 million.

Customer intermittently expressed concern about quality and reliability of Engineering staff. Customer's preconceived notions affected objectivity about the quality of the work.
Recruited to lead the next major deployment in that market and immediately met network manager and expressed that communication would be open and honest. Discussed customer expectations; tailored behaviors and managed team to meet high expectations.
The customer was impressed with the exceptional level of service that was demonstrated. Personal services were subsequently in high demand as person to address concerns and produce excellent results. Future business in market exceeded $5 million.

The entire cellular system needed to be upgraded for 40+ cell sites that were being moved from an obsolete switching platform to a new technology. Support for the old system had been eliminated years prior.
Leveraged experience with the old switching platform and documentation from ten years prior to port the database into the new switching platform. Developed a software tool that converted old cell site database to the new switching system.
New technology went online ahead of schedule. The tools that were created were adopted by other account teams. The company saved $1 million from the elimination of labor.

Engineers arriving onsite to perform deployment work discovered existing equipment was in disrepair and required additional work to stabilize the system. Resources were limited and projects often ran one after the other leaving no time for unexpected work. Evaluation of the next system required additional scheduling and customer interaction.
Reorganized pre-deployment activities to perform system health check in advance of deployment activities. Engineering team could then identify potential problems prior to site visits. The new policy required that pre-checks be performed at least two weeks in advance of the proposed deployment activity.
Results of the pre-checks were forwarded to the customer with the provision that unaddressed anomalies might impact deployment schedules. The customer could request a quote from Engineering to resolve problems.
Projects were no longer impacted by unexpected faults in the systems and deployment no longer disrupted. Additionally, new business was generated resulting in $120,000 annually from customers requesting repair of faults found through advanced pre-checks.