Jaikumar Kandan

• Developed sourcing strategies to improve procurement processes, supplier relationships, and capability development to optimize the supply chain.
• Supplier Screening (Due Diligence - Environmental Health & Safety, Financial Health Assessment)
• Stakeholder Management (Fulfill the need for goods or services and initiate the purchase requisition by understanding their needs, streamlining requisition processes, and providing visibility into order status.)
• Collaborating with requesters, finance, and legal, driving process adherence, and gaining buy-in for new strategies.
• Vendor Management (Receiving clear purchase orders, timely payments, efficient invoice submission processes, strong long-term relationships).
• Legal Department reviews the contracts, ensuring the correct payment terms and protecting the organization's interests.
• Project Management (Volume Distribution, SLA Calculation, Managing Utilization Reports, Monthly Management Reports—showcasing updates, opportunities, and challenges for the respective month to the leadership teams; building up process charts, RACI matrix, and process documents, aka SOP, etc.)
• People management (conducting weekly internal team meetings, monthly connections with the leadership team, delegation of authority, mentoring team members, etc.)
• ERP Expert: PeopleSoft, Ariba, and S/4HANA.

Key Career Achievements:

• Led the AYS HW Project (procuring PC accessories: docking station, monitor, keyboard, mouse, power adapter, storage devices for the US employees' WFH support). Successfully delivered fruitful results: 100% SLA, with 0 errors.
• Led the AYS SW Project, procuring system-related software such as Visio (Standard, Professional) and Microsoft (Standard, Professional). Successfully transitioned from the US to India and delivered fruitful results: 100% SLA, with 0 errors.
• Led the ERP migration from PeopleSoft to Ariba and S4HANA.
• Category Expansion (expanded the category support by including other non-IT categories, such as finance, contact center, etc.).
• Successfully implemented Smartsheet Intake form for the process and established dynamic dashboards with Datamesh to enhance cross-category collaboration and data visibility.

• I worked as a Quality Analyst (QA) for the Telecom process of NBN consumers and Telstra small businesses.
• Conduct process update sessions and team huddles with the respective teams to deliver their quality progress status.
• Conduct weekly dip checks with associates to fill their knowledge gaps, and conduct Knowlib assessments to gauge their process knowledge.
• Work on Chennai location Telstra Business Quality reports, which will be delivered to all stakeholders monthly. (Control Chart, Defect Log, Remediation Tracker, Root Cause Analysis Tracker, TN&I Analysis, and Causal Analysis, etc.)
• Using the 5 Whys analysis method with associates to get the root cause of the error that occurred.
• Managing the operations of a 30-member team that supports order fulfillment projects for our clients' businesses across the globe. (Telstra and National Broadband Network (NBN))
• Working closely with team members and ensuring that day-to-day support is provided to them for executing tasks and attaining the goals and benchmarks agreed upon with the client.
• Providing the right direction to team members to achieve their targets within the TAT mentioned in the process.
• My additional role is to analyze the withdrawn cases done by all agents in the whole process, to check for validation, as they have withdrawn for valid reasons, as per the update. And if it is not, then we need to take necessary special care in those cases to reopen and take action on it.
  

Key Contributions:

• Successfully delivered over 800 telecom orders within an agreed time frame, up to the business's satisfaction.
• Trained 20 resources to handle the end-to-end operations for our client (Telstra and NBN).
• Delivered standard operating procedures and guidelines for E2E activities for the client.
• Ensured 90% TAT and 85% RFT for all projects that have been assigned to me to date.
• Initiatives on ideas to reduce the AHT and errors in process.

• Managed the Actuarial Analyst role for the insurance domain, with direct reports of 10 members.
• Handled varied actuarial calculations on life and pension policies to find their policy value on the CRD (Customer Requested Date).
• Worked on closed book policies where customers may raise their concerns about their policy values on various terms, which were trained by the onshore client on surrender, maturity, unit linked, endowment, transfer, death benefits, and retirement value calculations.
• My additional roles in my team include allocating daily tasks to users, ensuring the service level is met, and communicating with onshore for escalations in the process, while maintaining quality, AHT, and meeting the SLA as per process rules.
• Prepared and provided daily status reporting of the team, such as volume planning reports, MI reports, etc., to the internal and external management teams.
• I worked as a Quality Controller (QC) for my team members for the past eight months.
• Updated the SOPs and Excel calculation sheets as per client updates every three months, based on the daily update tracker and checklists.

Key Contributions:

• Maintained the consistency of quality above the benchmark mentioned by the client as offshore QC for my team.
• Ensured team performance and quality improvement by taking sample cases, providing training, updates, and finding the root cause analysis (RCA) for the improvement of team quality.
• Participated in Peter Senge’s Coaching Excellence, Philip Crosby's Zero Defect, and Deming’s Reducing AHT Excellence Award as a representative of the offshore quality regarding my team.
• Achieved $1M savings in CBA (Cost-Benefit Analysis) after the implementation of the Kaizen and Green Belt Project.
• I posted the three Kaizen projects in which I was selected as the best performer for the month of June 2011 among our entire process for providing the best improvement in our process.
• Awarded the Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification by assisting my supervisor with his Green Belt project (Quality Improvement) to maintain 100% quality in our team.
  

• Managed the banking and credit card operations for Citibank with a team size of 20 members.
• Established a strong relationship with stakeholders and developed strategies that help support their business.
• Identified opportunities for increased competitive bidding, smarter customer relationships, and more efficient processes.
• Collaborated with teams across the globe to speed up innovation.
• Responsible for sorting the customer’s email to the correct business team.
• Handled the entire business operations, where we needed to read the customers' emails coming to us through various channels (web, portals, fax, paper mail).
• Need to understand the customer’s pulse by reading their emails and sorting them into the correct business categories (Banking, Suvidha, Loans, NR, and Cards).
• Trained by onshore business SMEs and successfully completed the competency matrix in all our businesses to handle customers' queries, instructions, problems and complaints, and risk factors like RBI, legal issues, Lok Adalat, grievance officers, and regulatory bodies, etc.
• Allocated daily tasks to the team, ensured that the service levels were met, and communicated with other business teams for escalations in the process.
• Performed as a Quality Analyzer (QA) for the entire operations, and ensured the projects were completed within the agreed time frame.

Key Contributions:

• Provided complete portfolio management for credit card and banking operations.
• Automation and implementation of the tool and applications across geographies.
• Regularization of customer activities and rationalization of the global customer base.
• Ensured zero tolerance in the work, and executed 95% TAT in the critical projects.

Managed vendor relations, procurement, and administrative operations, while also driving business development by marketing stationery products, visiting cards, brochures, and annual reports to diverse organizational clients.

Key Contributions:

• Handling calls to get the appointments for various administrative concerns to market our products.
• Negotiated favorable terms with vendors for product acquisition.