Dennis Reader

Experience

• 

  Union Pacific Railroad

  Jan 1994 - Jan 1998

  Locomotive Systems Project Manager

  Led a team to develop the first real time locomotive tracking system in the U.S. rail industry. Partnered with ALK Associates in Princeton, NJ to develop a system that allowed operational resources to track and plan locomotive usage across the Southern Pacific rail network. System provided locomotive planners with live locomotive operational status information plus historical and planned maintenance data. Planners could track locomotives on trains as they progressed across the network. The system was one of the first client/server systems implemented in the SP IT environment. After the merger of the Southern Pacific with the Union Pacific RR, led the effort to implement the system for the combined organization and moved the system from UNIX to Windows based platform. Show less

• 

  Gates Corporation

  Jan 1998 - Jan 2011

  Coordinated the workload for the Oracle order management and finance development teams. The resources were struggling to balance maintenance and projects work due to limited resources and multiple competing priorities. Established a structured process to evaluate and prioritize development work to focus on the most impactful tasks and projects first. Inaugurated regular SCRUM meetings to communicate progress and proactively respond to incoming new demand. Setup a systematized communication process to keep business customers appraised of progress and status. Show less Gates IT experienced a significant downsizing and outsourcing of IT resources in 2006. Gates also instituted a corporate program to take the waste out of business processes. Accepted the position as account manager to manage the relationship between the IT department and internal business customers. Guided the development of the IT strategy for the Industrial and Aftermarket marketing groups. Prioritized development projects to maximize ROI within tight budget constraints. Facilitated the relationships between external developers and internal business resources to define business objectives for streamlining business processes. Managed multiple simultaneous projects to achieve stated objectives. Show less Promoted to Manager of eCommerce. Assumed responsibility for continuous improvement of the Gates PowerPro e-commerce system. Additionally took responsibility for the management of Gates external web site development team and the internal employee company portal. Instituted bi-annual customer conferences to work with internal business resources and external customers to map enhancement objectives and prioritize the development strategy. Managed multiple external vendors and contractors to augment internal resources. Implemented SEO strategies to prioritize Gates sites from search engine results. Show less Promoted to project lead role to implement Gates first e-commerce system. Evaluated potential vendors and led the selection effort to decide on the chosen partner. Documented and managed $1M+ budget. Managed a 15+ member project team including marketing, customer service, Oracle order management, catalog data, pricing, finance, end user (customer), web development, and external development resources. Delivered the project on time and within budget. System currently processes over $100M in sales annually. Show less Joined the Gates Rubber Company and took over a project to implement the Lawson HR system that was in extreme distress. The previous PM had quit mid project and there were critical timelines and dependencies already behind schedule. I reorganized the project team structure, consolidated the internal and external teams, streamlined communications, reset milestones and deliverables, set specific responsibilities and held resources accountable for assignments. The project had Y2K implications that could not be missed. End result, the project completed on time and within budget. Went on to lead other HR projects including development of a performance management system, redesign and rationalization of HR portal, and integration of health and benefits management systems. Show less

  • Oracle Order Management Program Manager

    Jan 2008 - Jan 2011

  • Customer Account Manager

    Jan 2006 - Jan 2008

  • Manager eCommerce

    Jan 2003 - Jan 2006

  • eCommerce Project Manager

    Jan 2001 - Jan 2003

  • HR Project Manager

    Jan 1998 - Jan 2001
• 

  Gates Corporation

  Mar 2011 - Dec 2015

  Program/Project Manager, Project Management Office, Gates Corporation

  Joined the Gates PMO group as Program/Project Manager responsible for Finance and Enterprise Content Management systems. Directed the implementation of an ECM system to automate the intake of AP invoices. Developed workflow processes to automatically route AP invoices to the appropriate approval process. Also defined archive and retrieval strategy for both AP and AR invoices and developed an interface between Gates Oracle ERP and the ECM system for easy access by the business users. Continue to evolve the system for use by additional business groups. Partnered with the Finance team to transition high cost, low impact processes to external vendors that could perform the work more efficiently and cost effectively. Examples include implementing a Travel expense Management system, Tax Provisioning software, and the upgrade of a Financial Management/Planning system. Due to prior experience in the e-commerce area, led the implementation of Oracle iStore for the Gates China business unit. Show less

• 

  KnowledgePath Consulting

  Jun 2016 - May 2017

  Sr.Project Director / Analyst

  Working with organizations to analyse and evaluate the costs and benefits of undertaking an ERP upgrade/replacement project. Leading the implementation and change management effort to achieve the objectives of the business initiative. Using a five phase process of Discover, Blueprint, Evaluate, Validate and Deploy to identify process and technology opportunities and the best solutions to address them.

• 

  Pareto Solutions Group

  May 2017 - now

  Program/Project Manager