Thanks for taking a look at my 'pseudo-portfolio'. The reason I call it that is because it is very difficult to show off the type of things I have done. Although I have created many improvements to processes and workflows, below is what I consider to be my highlight reel of work that I am most proud of and those that have saved the most time to the end users. I apologize for the length, but feel it is necessary to provide specific details to fully describe the change in the amount of time the process takes. Only read if you want a glimpse at what I could possible do for you….but if you don’t see anything related to the type of work you do, don’t let that dissuade you from contacting me, as I will be upfront on whether I can help or not.

My First – Simple but Powerful
My first foray into improving a process was while working as a customer service representative for FirstEnergy. Part of the workflow was to document everything we talked to the customer about, at the end of the call. Since this was often repetitive information, it got old....fast!

At home, I started working on a tool (using VB 6) that would allow the agent to click buttons that indicated specific topics discussed with the customer. Then at the end of the call, a final button was clicked that placed all the appropriate text onto the clipboard, so that it could be pasted into the customer contact field.

As you can imagine, this saved a lot of time and decreased AHT (Average Handle Time) by an average of 50%. As a side benefit, it was found that the tool was perfect in ensuring new agents were providing the necessary information to customers, since the tool basically walked them through what needed to be relayed, and discussed, based on why the customer was calling.

This tool caught the eyes of the management team and within a year I was promoted to Business Analyst. My first indication that working smart beat working hard in a digital environment ; )

My Second - Challenging
I started working for my current employer about 10 years ago as a Local Call Coordinator (LCC). We use Avaya CMS (Call Management System) Supervisor to monitor our call centers. One of the tasks I was given was to send out a report every 2 hours that gave the current statistics. I had to pull a report from Avaya CMS and enter the data into Excel and then place it in an email and send it out to a distribution list. It could take up to a half hour to get the data together to send out, which means the data would always be a half hour off.

Again, this got old fast. I started looking into the script functionality of CMS and once I realized we could have the data exported to a file, I created a tool (using VB 6) to auto populate the data from the exported files into Excel and send the email automatically. The new automated process freed up 2 hours out of my day to work on other things as well as getting the report to be as current as possible.

To this day, that tool is still being used (a new iteration, of course) by all the different business areas to report their call center statistics, at any interval they want to see them. I also made several other automated tools using VB6 (and then later, VB .NET) that used the script feature of CMS.

My Most Used
A couple years later our workforce management system was upgraded to Aspect’s eWFM. This software tracks agents’ schedules and time off the phones to account for adherence. A big piece to the reliability of the software was to enter segments (i.e. an agent’s time off the phone equals a segment of time) in a timely manner into the system. Each LCC was in charge of multiple teams, with dozens of agents. The old workflow looked like this:

• Agent would either send an email to the team lead, or fill out a paper form (ugh!), when they were off the phone
• The team lead would then put together an email with all of the segments from their agents and send to the LCC
• The LCCs would then need to enter the segments into the eWFM system.

This took a lot of time throughout the day to enter the segments. As much as 2 hours a day, depending on the size of the teams that an LCC was in charge of monitoring. Using VB 6, I created a set of tools that automated the process:

• Consists of 3 tools (Agent, Supervisor, and LCC)
• Agent logs into their tool (form with a series of fields) and submits segments to a log which notifies their supervisor via email that segments were submitted
• Supervisor imports agent’s segments into their tool and reviews segments and approves or denies them
• Approved segments are then flagged as approved and the LCC is then notified via email
• The LCC then imports the approved segments into their tool to review and then approves or denies them
• The approved segments are written to a file that is importable by eWFM

These set of tools reduced the time it took to process requests for time off the phone at each of the 3 stages. LCCs saw the time they spent entering segments reduced from 2 hours a day to 15 minutes. A few months after the tools were rolled out to each of the business areas, I was presented with an Aetna Way Excellence Award for innovation.

My First Web Development
In 2006 I moved to a new team that supported many of the applications used for workforce management. Our customers were internal users of the applications we supported. The process for receiving support requests consisted of our customers sending an email to a shared mailbox. Then those requests were placed into different folders to categorize them and flagging them different colors to track the teams SLAs (Service Level Agreements). Urgent requests triggered a page be sent. To improve the process I did the following:

• Created an Access database to log all requests and information around the processing of the request
• Created a front end form using HTML and JavaScript for customers to submit requests that would automatically be placed into the Access database
• Created another frontend for just the team where we could track our SLAs (Service Level Agreements)

This new process improved the accuracy of the SLAs as well as the tracking of opened and closed requests

My Most Complex and Feature Rich
I started my current role about 5 years ago. One of the tasks of the team that I am on is to manage the routing of callers who opt out of the IVR system for each of 900+ Toll Free Numbers (TFNs). The routing of the calls is based on 5 main database tables. The prior workflow looked like this:

• An IT team would export all records for each of the 5 tables into text files every morning
• Our team would be required to take those files and put them into Excel
• A set of Excel workbooks would need to be opened to view the setups for each of the TFNs that needed work done
• Changes or additions to a TFN would need to be set to blue and bold, deletions would need to be marked bold and red
• Each of the TFNs worksheets would need to be emailed manually to the IT group that would then make those changes (overnight) to the database tables
• Each of the worksheets would need to be saved in a folder for auditing purposes
• Each morning the changes that were requested to be done would need to be verified manually that they were done correctly

I decided to create a couple tools using VB .NET that made the process much simpler and easier.

• Built a QuickBase backend that houses all the table information that is exported each morning
• Built an automated tool that ‘watches’ the folder where the exported files are dropped…it then processes the files and loads them into QuickBase
• Built a tool that links to QuickBase to pull up the information on a TFN to make adjustments to its setup
• When entering new items or updated values into the tool, the tool automatically marks values as blue and bold
• You can now open the setups of multiple TFNs at a time to process similar changes at the same time
• Automatic error checking is included in the logic of the tool to prevent incorrect values
• Click of a submit button sends the request to the IT team to process that night, as well as logging the changes for auditing purposes
• Built a tool that automatically checks each morning to ensure only the changes that were requested were done

This set of tools has reduced the amount of time the process takes from upwards of 3-4 hours a day (a busy day), to just an hour or so. It has had a tremendous impact on the reliability of the requests submitted as well as troubleshooting issues with call routing. Later versions have garnered even better features with the help of team members and their suggestions.

Web Design/Development
Most of my web design/developing work has been done on my full time employer’s intranet using straight HTML, JavaScript, and the QuickBase API.

I have dabbled with private projects to teach myself different aspects of web design, but since my current employer’s need of web work is minimal, I have decided to freelance my web skills to make sure they not only stay sharp, but improve as well.

As I stated above, I will always tell you whether I can do something or not. Every project I look at as a challenge of not only delivering what the customer wants, but in finding the best way to do it. Once I have a decent size portfolio to showcase, I will add it to this page.

Don't hesistate to contact me to to see if I can help make your job easier. And thanks for taking the time to read all of this ; )