Elbert Ayres

Experience

• 

  Heartland

  Jan 2008 - Mar 2022

  Reports to Director of Boarding and Maintenance. Manages Back-Office Maintenance team. • Drives organizational growth leading and managing 34+ team members responsible for account boarding and maintenance plus lifecycle of the merchant; ensures data-driven management via monitoring, tracking, and reporting along with business continuity plans, documentation, and data implemented strategically and efficiently.• Sets policies and procedures for operational and technical support for clients consistent with contractual obligations; met with urgency and detail.• Manages tasks completed by team and within SLAs; executed with proactive urgency to adapt, modify, and establish procedures to resolve complex scenarios.• Establishes, maintains, and continually builds a collaborative team environment, unifies work culture via people development and leadership assessments for increased employee engagement plus retention. • Collaborates with internal functional areas to appropriately identify, interpret, analyze, and verify client impact regarding assessing system, product, project, and processes changes; ensures team is educated for efficient processes plus reduces errors from Process Lead via online media engagement initiatives.• Establishes and maintains scorecard processes and procedures, achieves consistently 97.9% + plus possesses in-depth expertise in the reporting of issues, projects, and client impacts.• Leads and participates in weekly team meetings for 34+ and attends company sponsored forums for various topics., i.e., growing leaders, key speakers, and developing leadership.• Adjusts hourly staffing, pay, and budget based on staffing and company need; addresses training/coaching and job-leveling clarification for each succeeding level for tracking employees’ proficiency for Job Progression Plan.• Ensures accurate Technology systems assessment against the severity and impact for issues in Back-Office Maintenance; seeks root cause analysis. Show less Reported to Director of Sales Support. Strategically led a team of 25+ sales support advocates and 2 supervisors.• Managed supervisors via one-one-one monthly meetings for team management protocols; achieved a 90% goal range met for employee consistency.• Set policies, procedures, and team expectations with aim for 100% QA; maintained a minimum of 97.5% accuracy on quality for in-bound monthly call metrics, i.e., call time less than 5 minutes averaged, answered within 5 seconds, hold time to a minimal, and questions answered within 5 minutes.• Managed team resources for remediation management via root cause analysis.• Managed supervisors and their advocates to either resolve client issues or define the problem for subsequent action(s); answered questions promptly via various forms of media towards addressing escalations, resolving incorrect procedures, time-off requests, and schedule readjustments.• Managed inquiries via inboxes towards fulfilling requests plus adapted, modified, or established processes to resolve situations; delegated client-initiated tasks assigned to team members and ensured issues, requests, and projects, were completed on-schedule and within SLAs.• Collaborated with multiple internal functional areas to identify, interpret, analyze and verify client impact/benefit related to system, module, product or project changes; ensured team members and client understood changes and impact of associated requirements (e.g. monetary impacts, compromised data, regulatory breeches, impact of system changes and/or issues to Global Payments, client, and/or vendor); mitigated fraudulent attempts.• Established processes and procedures for standard and ad-hoc reporting to the client on issues, projects, client maintenance, business performance and process improvements; kept reports based on call performance metrics plus facilitated meetings with supervisors, peers, and outside teams for reporting strategy goals with VP on risk mitigation and QA. Show less Lead a team of 25+ advocates in underwriting for assessing the severity-level of accounts via in-depth knowledge of financials for company risk mitigation. Led 2+ supervisors in Underwriting & Maintenance.• Approved 1000+ accounts per month at the team level via underwriting guidelines in $5M+ bracket and 2nd level accounts; understood risks associated with the payment processing industry, i.e., Fraud, Credit, Leans, Maintained and applied knowledge of fair lending issues, rules and various internal and external policies and regulations in Underwriting processes of new merchant applications.• Verified all information provided on the merchant application and supporting documentation was correct and consistent with required standards via interpreted and analyzed credit reports, financial statements, bank files, tax returns, other similar documentation and public records plus called merchants regarding their applications when needed to verify information utilizing clear, empathetic and direct communication.• Analyzed pertinent credit and financial information to assess degree of risk and creditworthiness of prospective merchants.• Ensured compliance with laws, bank regulations, corporate and divisional underwriting policies plus procedures and standards. • Provided recommendations (approval, credit holds, declines, etc.) on merchant applications and identified, documented, and escalated to management, as defined by policy. Show less Promoted. Built and led a team of 25+ with 2 Managers (Underwriting Manager & Customer Support Manager) with full scope support for areas of expertise.• Developed strategic relationships with sales and found areas for improvement, i.e., created collaboration with Sales and internal company teams for developing cross-functional relationships; bridged gaps for delegated and led educational process improvements. • Led weekly meetings and discussions for 25+ consisting of resolutions and leading improvements involving, i.e., underwriting, pricing, disputes, and customer advocates while maintaining SLAs. Show less

  • Manager | Account Maintenance

    May 2019 - Mar 2022

  • Manager | Sales Support

    Oct 2013 - May 2019

  • Manager | Boarding and Maintenance

    Jul 2011 - Oct 2013

  • Director | Regional Servicing

    Jan 2011 - Jul 2011

  • Manager | Weekend Service

    Jan 2010 - Jan 2011

  • Customer Advocate

    Jan 2008 - Jan 2010
• 

  Stax Payments

  Mar 2022 - Apr 2024

  Reports to SVP of Partner Solutions. Responsible for the strategic direction of partnerships, with a focus on driving revenue growth executing the strategic direction of partnerships, with a focus on driving revenue growth and nurturing collaborative relationships with key partners. In addition to leading and managing a team, steering negotiations, structuring partnerships, and utilizing market insights to enhance product offerings. • Leads and guides a top-performing team of partnership managers, facilitating negotiations and structuring strategic alliances that optimized product offerings, resulting in significant market expansion.• Nominated by peers, company employees, and leadership to receive the company core value award, “One Team”• Responsible for the partnership of AMEX and Discover card brand partnership with the initiative in getting a 3rd party processing agreement in efforts of becoming a full end to end credit card processor. • Utilized comprehensive market analysis and trend identification to onboarded diverse partners, expanding the partner network considerably while fostering innovative solutions that aligned with business objectives. Show less Reported to Chief Operating Officer• Analyzed complex payment systems and processes, identified inefficiencies, and implemented strategic solutions to streamline operations through cross-functional collaboration. Assessed business requirements, developed actionable insights, and drove improvements in all payment-related functionalities.• Selected to lead the revision of processes and procedures for the partner and customer success teams, and merchants, which led to an overall improvement of workflow and service provision.• Collaborated with internal teams to contribute to the development of a robust Business Continuity Plan (BCP), ensuring resilience against potential disruptions.• Executed all product enhancement releases, contributing to the continued improvement of the organization’s success.• Responsible for managing the partnership with AMEX and Discover card brands, leading efforts to establish a third-party processing agreement, and working toward becoming a full end-to-end credit card processor. Show less

  • AVP of Partner Solutions

    May 2023 - Apr 2024

  • Sr Payment Business Analyst

    Mar 2022 - May 2023
• 

  Centra Credit Union

  Jun 2024 - now

  Relationship Consultant