Ahmed Darwish

Heading the delivery of the digital transformation and OmniChannel projects. In addition to this role, I am managing the Digital Payments and Self Services department.
I have developed and adopted our Disciplined Agile Delivery process (RASHEEQ) which resulted in a jump in the percentage of the project completion from 30% to 76%.

Since I was nominated by executives to start managing the Cash Management Products for Corporate Customers (CDM/BDM/Lock Box, Cash Collection, Payroll, and the Wages Protection System (WPS)) and we are overachieving the net income targets.
For CDM/Lock Box, have succeeded to change the cash operation model of our clients from one side while achieving the target of 300 up and running units by end of Oct 2018 (two months ahead the end of Y2017) from the other side. By mid of 2018, we have over 350 units running on customers locations making their life much easier and reducing their operational risk and cost.
Have also succeeded to complete the re-engineering and re-approval of the Cash Deposit 24 Card product by SAMA and currently working in a process re-engineering exercise for the Payroll/WPS product.

In continuation to the track record of sucessfull project and program management, have nominated by executives to manage the following Cash Management projects to sucess:
1. eCorporate (Internet Banking for Corporate) project. The project has a very specific nature in terms of the special business requirements, number of customer segments, and volume of customers to be migrated to the new platform.

2. Payroll Cards Migration (670, 000 cards from MAGStripe to EMV) project. Despite the challenges we have faced with the project scale and nature of card holdes (labour), we have successfully achieved the SAMA deadline without impacting the labours from getting their monthly salaries on time.

3. Lock Box (Cash Deposit Machine) project. Being the first bank to deploy the product in the middle east. We have deployed 100 units per year overachieving the target net profit.

4. CR Automation project (B2B integration with MCI for Corporate and Retail branches). We have been one of the first banks to achieve the integration with MCI and meeting the SAMA deadline. This B2B integration was actually a core change to the accounts opening and update process for corporate customers.

Joined this technology leader to manage the project managers and as a program manager for Mega projects/programs for our strategic accounts. Have successfully managed the design and build phases of a Data Center and Infrastructure program for MOI. Then, was promoted to manage Cloud & Managed Security projects for Mobily and MOE.

• Succeeded with proven KPIs to start up and manage the technical support department responsible for providing L2 support for the following:
- 80+ banking applications,
- Oracle 11g RAC (clustered) & MS SQL databases,
- IBM p-series, HP Superdome and HP Blade servers,
- EMC storage,
- Symantec Netbackup and archiving, and
- HP Enterprise Service Management suite (Service Manager, OM, NNM, and BAC)

• Managing four direct reports and 30+ employees.
• The Problem Manager who analyze major incidents and work with all related teams to figure out the root cause and set and implement the fix plan to resolve it permanentently.
• Respond to critical customer situations decisively, coordinate with department managers to redirect resources as necessary.
• Maintain ownership of customer escalations until final resolution.
• A key player and initiative of infrastructure resources optimization and planning.
• Plan and manage the support budget including maintenance, upgrades, training and AdHok support services.
• Committed to the delivery of high available and outstanding service to different business units.
• Meet with the business to better understand service issues and proactively develop better service delivery plans and drives outreach programs.
• Focus on succession planning and the development of support group managers’ leadership capabilities.
• Encourage employees to self-develop core competencies and technical skills through career planning, coaching, training and creation of applicable development plans.
• Obtain team feedback to develop process improvement plans to improve productivity
• Prepare and deliver employee workplans and development plans.
• Plan and communicate performance appraisals, compensation increases, awards and recognition programs.
• Maintain high departmental morale and is focused on retaining talent.

Have the honour to be part of the team who shared the successful startup and establishment of Alinma Bank. I was the ATM programme manager who has successfully managed the deployment of the first 20 ATMS of the bank along with the NCR managed services of incidents and software distribution.

I was the only IT project manager in the bank at that time, who was able to pull the following troubled projects into success:

1. EMV/SPAN2 Migration Program for Bank AlBilad.
2. Islamic Musharakah and Murabaha, LD, and Past Due on T24/GLOBUS core banking system for Bank AlBilad.
3. Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) - Phase 1 for Bank AlBilad.

Had a great opportunity to be part of the SAMA PMO team who managed the successful transformation of Saudi Arabia from Magstripe to EMV/Mada technology.

Throughout this role, I have managed more than (15) projects and (9) accounts. I have also built a high level of top management trust and confidence in my personal projects & services management skills and capabilities. The following are the remarkable successes I have achieved throughout this role:
• Nominated as the owner/designer of the Project Management process.
• Developing the following standard (Customizable, Simple, Scalable and Modular) customer interface documents for Fujitsu Services Egypt:
 Services Catalogue.
 Service Level Agreement (SLA).
 Acceptance Criteria.
Responsibilities:
• Provides the primary customer interface for projects & services delivery.
• Planning and managing the project execution till closure to ensure working within the budget, meeting the project schedule, and the agreed scope.
• Produce project performance reports on monthly basis.
• Support Pre-Sales & BID Team in developing proposals and presenting the technical solution to the customer. That was ended up with me functioning as a Bid Manager.
• Negotiating and managing service contracts with both customers and suppliers.
• Regularly reviewing (using score cards) & improving the level of customer satisfaction.
• Plan & manage the delivery of account enhancements and configuration management.

• Managing services support team to assure meeting Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of service delivery.
• Supporting SABRE Travel Information System in AMERICAN EXPRESS Travel Co., Gulf Air and Egypt Air (18 sites covering Cairo, Al-Arish, Luxor and Aswan)
• Delivery of Installation, Configuration, Break-fix and Warranty Services for different O/S, Servers, SAN storage, Tape Libraries and Basic S/W.

Have quickly learned the Fox pro and used it to develop a Purchase Order module as part of the Egytech Integrated Manufacture Control System (IMCS).  I have also developed several enhancements to the Payroll system for HR.

Capitalized on my telecommunications and computer engineering experience, being the only one in MIS department who was capable to perform the following activities :
• Novell 3.12 network installation, configuration and administration 
• System administration, planning and troubleshooting 
• Troubleshooting and first line support for LAN, H/W and O/S.

Performing the design & implementation of the following systems:
• Electronic Mail (Novell networks)
• Terminate & Stay Resident (TSR) utilities
• Signature Verification System (with IBM 3119 page Scanner)
• Image Data Compression
• Data Communications
• Graphics & Image Formatting
• Geographic Information System (G.I.S)