Our Team
Milind Shah
Milind Shah, president and founder of Rational Solutions Corp, is known for the high degree of professionalism which he brings to every project. Driven by a desire to help clients via problem solving and education, Milind created Rational Solutions. “It is very easy to sell someone something. The challenge is to recognize what the customer needs through listening, understanding, and questioning then work to fulfill that need. In addition, it is very easy to implement a solution. It is another thing to be able to explain and educate the customer on the value of the solution and show the customer how it gives them a competitive edge.”
Milind brings from his 12 years of consulting experience a range of knowledge in the areas of strategic sourcing, business strategy, process management, adaptive solutions, re-usable components, risk management, and most importantly innovative thinking. Working at a smaller company is great for Milind because he enjoys the freedom and flexibility that comes with it. Though he founded the company, he still enjoys getting his feet wet with the rest of his consultants. Milind has always had the belief that with every customer there is a new solution and a new mid-set and loves that challenge.
With regard to his employee relations Milind had this to say, “We wanted to make a company in which every employee enjoys what they do on a daily basis and where being innovative, going above and beyond your roles and responsibilities, and giving each person the opportunity to do something extra was made possible.”
2006-Present Delivery Manager, Sterling Testing Systems
* Sterling Testing Systems is one of the top 3 background screening/candidate screening service providers in the United States. The solutions that Sterling provides are end-to-end with various different package and technology alternatives. Promoted 2 times starting at Enterprise Integration Lead and moving up to Delivery Manager. Managing an on-site, off-shore, and in house team, totaling 8 members, to design, development, test, and deliver solutions based on various different client needs. Creation of standards and processes for engagement with offshore partners. Work with Account Management, Executive Management, and other business parties to prioritize and plan projects. Handled complete delivery of a project for each client and was the single point of contact during an entire implementation for each client. Creation of client contracts and sign off documentation such as Statements of Work (SOW), User Acceptance Test (UAT) Plans, Customer Acceptance Test Plans (CATP), and other related documentation. Rolled out an average of 5-6 clients per month generating an average of $30-$40K per month, per client, after each implementation. Creation of client/business facing documentation such as sales collateral and presentations to be used by marketing and sales. Creation of a revenue model along with pricing cards for integration projects. Educated internal client facing members on capabilities and procedures for an integration solution. Working with Sales to answer RFQs and present on integrations/technologies in finalist presentations. Involved in leading the effort to develop certified standards along with more robust and scalable solution frameworks such as Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
2005-2006 Delivery Manager, EDS
* The eTravel (ie. Fedtraveler.com, eTs) project was initiated by President George W. Bush, to standardize traveling activities through out all government agencies. The project was to propose/design/and manage the development of a solution that could be used at all government agencies. Worked on user requirements, articulating technical specifications, identifying milestones, risk assessment matrices, project management plan, allocation of tasks, full project life cycle management, feasibility analysis, documentation, SOX compliances, process efficiency, development regulations, escalations policies, version controlling compliances, and release compliances with various government agencies(users) and internal resources. Work with Account Management and Sales partners to plan and execute projects. Handled complete delivery of a project for each client and was the single point of contact during an entire implementation for each client. Creation of client contracts and sign ! off documentation such as Statements of Work (SOW), Interface Agreement (IA), Service Agreement (SLA), and other related documentation. Lead meetings with clients as well as presented demos to clients and executive management. Handled financial related issues such as selection of vendors, resource management, purchasing of hardware and software, and consultant billing. Working with Sales to answer RFQs and present on integration solution in finalist presentations. Proposal and Analysis of accounting compliances for all financial transactions to meet government standards and SOX regulations. Management of resources (6 senior developers) and participating in all parts of the SDLC. Standardization and lead for production support procedures. Lead the creation of security standards and compliances based off of government compliance (FIPS) to be used for all implementations.
2004- 2005 Sr. Strategy Consultant, Liz Claiborne
* Proposed, analyzed, documented, and lead implementation of a forecasting system using Microstategy , Narrowcast, and other BI tools that could be used to generate forecasting reports for the executive management team to use during their weekly President’s meeting with the CEO for forecasting sales, promotion strategies, as well as analysis of products and what phase of the lifecycle they are in. Creation of training material as well as user group training for application. Organization of follow-up meeting and presenting demos to executive management. Result of project was a 60% ROI in the first year due to saving time, format of data, “on the fly” analysis, segregation of reports and data for appropriate parties, and ability to drill down and analyze data with different dimensions and levels.
* Proposed, architected, and lead the creation of a new business intelligence hierarchy so that reports could have extra dimensions such as geographic locations for forecasting and sales. Result of project yielded a 110% ROI due to new data dimensions and analysis to consider in forecasting sales and deciding promotion strategies.
* Proposed and lead development of Supply Chain Management Applications and Reporting System, Purchase Ordering and Sales Applications (Seibel 5.5 and home grown applications), Content Management Portals, customized Single Sign On (SSO) Implementation using Oracle PDK and ADS, and Tier 3 support of all supply chain management and reporting applications. Lead the reverse engineering and migration of VB6 Business Objects from a Siebel 5.5 Application into an ASP.NET Application and Sybase to Oracle Personal Server.
2003- 2004 Project Leader, CIT
* Consultant working on a real estate database application for the corporate services department at CIT. Database was created as a tool to organize and account for all real estate entities owned or managed by CIT. The application called for storing real estate entities; all information related to those entities including lease terms, payments, landlord, etc; as well as intelligent reporting and alert modules to show accounting data with relation to those entities and alerts for when leases are close to termination, etc. Managed at team of 6 developers while also working hands-on with the project. Main tasks included planning the implementation phases, test phases, requirement gathering phases, interviewing business users, allocation of tasks to team members (6 developers, 1 BA, and 2 GUI Designers), technical and analytical assistance of team member, status meetings, coordination between the user group and internal team, requirements gathering from the user group, brains!
torming, assuring application is PMD6 (Software development life cycle compliance standard) compliant. The project entailed the migration of modules from an Access application into an ASP.NET with SQL Server backend and creation of all other modules in an ASP.NET environment. Creation of training material as well as user group training for application. Organization of follow-up meeting and presenting demos to executive management. Project yielded an ROI of 150% due to factors such as being a web application, new features, easily maintained technologies, N-Tier architecture.
2001- 2003 Strategic Analyst, Pfizer Inc.
* Worked on projects for forecasting, sales, marketing, product life cycle management, and data warehousing reports using Microstrategy in the Consumer Healthcare sector. Preparing presentations and training material as well as user training and acceptance testing of new business reporting applications used by forecasting, sales, and accounting departments of the various consumer healthcare goods within Pfizer. Created a proposal, management plan, milestones, feasibility study, risk assessment, and architecture based on interviewing users and gathering user requirements for migration of current middleware application (Viewlocity) to the new application (E*Gate 4.5.3) which would integrate with POS, SCM, Forecasting, Data warehousing, reporting, and other various in house enterprise and department level applications. Supply-chain integration scripts using Seebeyond’s E*Gate, scheduling scripts (crons), NT scripts, PL/SQL scripts, and Consumer Health Care Portal documentati!
on and architecture, creation of portals using ASP.net.
2001- 2002 Sr. Consultant, NJIT
* Proposed, analyzed, architected and lead the development of a software distribution program for students, professors, and other affiliates of NJIT; and centralized repositories of applications such as drivers and other tools needed for on-field technical support. Proposed, analyzed, architected, and managed the development of an automated online helpdesk system to augment the existing phone line system using Web Technologies, Reporting Tools, and database in a 3 tier architecture. Project yielded an ROI of 200% due to factors such as faster response time, isolation of recurring issues, filtration of issues, achieved knowledge base for automated responses, and generation of dynamic FAQs and alerts based on recurring issues. Dealt with troubleshooting and prioritizing of issues from all user groups at NJIT.
1999- 2001 Project Leader, InfoPro Corp.
* Planning the architecture, implementation, and deployment of 3 B2C applications, www.itcrunch.com, www.teachmeit.com, and www.newwebimage.com for the CEO. Creation of marketing, sales, and promotion strategies for all 3 B2C applications including the use of “beans”, “my points”, and other promotional strategies. Managed a team of 12 developers while also working hands-on on the project. Recruiting of consultants to work on site. Manage all 3 projects with 12 overseas consultants. Organize and presenting demos to clients and executive management. All sites were implemented with an Oracle backend and ASP front end.
1996- 1999 Freelance Consultant
Worked on multiple enterprise, mid-size, and small web applications, marketing material, and graphic design for various different clientele. Average engagement was about 2 months long. Work on requirements analysis, design, development, testing, and complete documentation of each phase. Managed a team of 2 members that assisted in each project in various different roles. Technologies varied based on client and need and included Flash, Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, ASP (Visual Studio), Oracle Personal and Professional, mySQL, IIS, Apache, along with various other technologies
EXPERTISE:
Reporting Languages/Tools: SQR, Crystal Reports, Microstrategy, NarrowCast
Operations Systems: Windows (NT, 2000, ME, XP), DOS, HP Unix, Sun Solaris 8
Design Tools: Microsoft Visio 2003
Planning Tools: Microsoft Project 2003
Internet Tools: Java Script, VBScript, HTML, DHTML, XML, PL/SQL, ASP.net, PHP
WebServer: Apache Tomcat 4.1 and IIS
Computer Languages: SQL, PL/SQL, Java, HTML, Javascript, JSP, JDBC, ASP, ASP.net, VB, VB.net, C#, C++, and Pro*C, XML, XSLT, XSD,WSDL, SOAP, Java Beans, J2EE, Monk, Cobol Workbooks, Perl-CGI, CSS, Servlets, EJB, UDDI, SOA, Web Services, ESB, JBI
Applications: eGate 4.5.3, ICAN 5.0, eXchange, eInsight, TIBCO, BizTalk, SQL Navigator, Toad 8.x, SQL*Plus, SQL*Loader, TCP/IP, Unix Shell Scripting, Sun Solaris 8, Dreamweaver MX 2004, Fireworks MX 2004, Flash MX 2004, MS Visual Studio .NET, TextPad, MS Visual Source Safe 6.0, MS-Access 7.0, Microsoft Front Page 2003, Internet Information Server (IIS), ODBC, MS-Office, Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0, Visual Basic 6.0, Builder, Brio Report Builder, PVCS 6.0, Siebel 5.5, SQL Anywhere 8, XML Spy, Borland StarSuite (Change Management Tool), SNMP Services, Paging Software, Production Support Monitoring tools, JDeveloper, Visual Café, JBuilder, NetBeans, Clarify, eSupport10, CVS, Oracle PDK, Java Portlets, ServiceMix, JUnit, SVN, Eclipse