Consulting

I believe that consulting has been a requirement at the core of almost all of my sales engineering roles. When you work in an emerging technology sector, be it wireless, application development or streaming media, one of your responsibilities will be to educate your potential customers as to the benefits of that technology. Add to that, the fact that you are trying to sell a concept and not a product, as we did at Vast, and consulting becomes critical. I have also had to do some straight consulting work for customers when they were willing to pay for it. Here are a few of the consulting projects which I have either managed or worked as a team member.

I spent the beginning of 2005 working as a consultant for AT&T on a new wireless product they created for their business customers. AT&T sold their wireless division and network to Cingular and decided to create a new product from scratch. I worked as a process engineer documenting the service assurance processes required to support this new product. This was complicated by the fact that AT&T outsourced all aspects of this product including the wireless network, customer service, provisioning, billing and the data providers. There were eight different vendors providing this product. This was a short term engagement that was scheduled to take three to six months to complete.

I worked on and off for a few years with a small company in Texas specializing in application development of wireless solutions. I filled the role of project manager on one of the projects working with the customer to define requirements. I then tracked the development process with the engineers and worked with both the customer and the engineers to set expectations and provide status updates. On another project I filled the role of program manager. I worked to define a new telemetry product designed to track and report asset locations. This was a specialized vertical tracking system and I had to define the system requirements for the engineers as well as design the GUI required for the reporting system. This product is currently not released and since I am under a non-disclosure, that is all I can say about it.

A utility company wanted to increase the efficiency of their field service force by adding a wireless solution to the customer service proprietary software. There were many issues involved with trying to create this type of solution. Some of which were; their territory included an entire state which gave them a limited wireless coverage area, there were multiple internal systems in use and all were very rigid, and they had a very non technical work force. I spent three months understanding their operations, interviewing field personnel and documenting their system. I then came up with an evolution path so that they could eventually get their system where they wanted it to be. I managed this project and wrote most of the deliverable document as well as delivered the final presentation to the company. I have attached the document (.pdf format) if you would like to review it. I removed all references to the company.

A school bus company wanted to add an application to their system that would track when children entered and exited the bus. This was very complicated as they wanted to use some sort of biometrics solution (finger prints, face scans etc.) to track the children. They also had operations all over the country and handled children of all ages. They wanted real time updates so that parents could use a web site to check on their kids and receive an ETA on their arrival home. This application required the interaction of multiple technologies. I worked on the overall project solution with the manager assigned to this project. In addition, I was assigned to evaluate the biometrics solutions available for this type of application and their permissibility. Although I had no biometrics experience, I was able to pin point the appropriate applications and their benefits and constraints. I have attached a portion of an internal presentation (.pdf format) I created to educate my peers and the customer on biometrics and the industry. As the biometrics expert within our company, I delivered this presentation to the customer.

A company that owned and operated a wireless network for Public Safety organizations (Police, Fire, Medical), throughout the state, wanted to create a more comprehensive solution taking advantage of the emergence of wireless two way technology. I managed this project and it required me to learn the operational requirements of all of the public safety organizations within the state. If that sounds easy, it wasn't. I conducted interviews with police departments (local, statewide and federal), fire departments and emergency medical personnel and documented their requirements. I eventually created a road map suggesting the most cost effective and the most productive methods of increasing the efficiency of these public safety organizations. I wrote most of the deliverable document and delivered the final presentation to the company. This company decided not to proceed with the project at that time. In keeping up with the industry, I have noticed that some of my suggestions are now in use with some law enforcement agencies around the country.

Feel free to email me for additional information.