SUMMARY:

• 7  Years of Professional Experience as Business Analyst with strong knowledge of Insurance & Property and Casualty industry.
• Extensive experience in analyzing and requirements gathering and writing system functional specifications including use cases.
• Excellent in Developing and evaluating business process Models.
• Expert in commercial Property and Casualty and Personal Lines Insurance experience with national carriers
• Proven success as a business analyst through the years, providing a well-balanced understanding of business relationships, business requirements, and technical solutions.
• Strong experience in RUP Business Modeling process.
• Strong understanding of project life cycle and SDLC methodologies including RUP, RAD, Waterfall and Agile.
• Experienced with variety of BI tools including - SAP Netweaver BI / BW, MicroStrategy, ProClarity, Cognos
• Strong experience working on Guidewire Claim Center (7.0.2), Billing Center (2.0.10) and Policy Center (4.0.4) and Contact Manager.
• Proficient in designing Data Models(logical and physical) for Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server databases
• Expertise in UML (class diagrams, object diagrams, GAP Analysis, use case diagrams, state diagrams, sequence diagrams, activity diagrams, and collaboration diagrams) as a business analysis methodology for application functionality designs using IBM’s Rational Rose.
• Solid understanding of Business Process definition, Risk Analysis and SDLC methodologies.
• Excellent in Developing and evaluating business process Models.
• Design and review of various documents including the Software Requirement Specifications (SRS), Business requirements document (BRD), Use Case Specifications, Functional Specifications (FSD), Systems Design Specification (SDS), Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) and testing documents
• Worked on various Guidewire Policy and Billing Integrations (Melissa Integration – City/State Zip code integration, Automatic Issuance, e-submit, e-signature, Bank EFT, Document Production and Document Integration)
• Involved in extensive customizations on Guidewire Claim Center – Financials (Reserves, Payments, Recovery, Recovery Reserves, Cash Flow Management)
• Experience working on the Guidewire Conversion projects – Converting Legacy data into Guidewire Claim Center, Policy Center and Billing Center.
• Big “4” experience – ACCENTURE
• Involved in Sprint Planning and Scrum meetings on Guidewire projects
• Knowledge in the ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) of data into a data ware house/date mart and Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Business Objects Modules (Reporter, Supervisor, Designer, and Web Intelligence).
• Proven success as a business analyst through the years, providing a well-balanced understanding of business relationships, business requirements, and technical solutions.
• Professional experience in business analysis, operations management and development, design, documentation and testing.
• Provided technical and functional consulting to corporate and divisional users for Cognos.
• Excellent Analytical, methodical, and resourceful approach to problem solving, identifying and documenting root causes and corrective actions to meet short and long term business and system requirements.
• Effective in executing multiple tasks and assignments ahead of schedule. Created and maintained effective budgets.
• Advised management on improvement strategies, Competitive & Profitability Analysis.
• Excellent in Business proposal Risk Assessment. Highly effective management and organizational skills with ability to prioritize.
• Exposure to Client/Server, Web Application developmental tools and Software development and design.
• Demonstrated ability to identify root causes of problems, consider both the long and short-term impact of proposed solutions and develop workable solutions. Ability to manage (Multiple) project tasks with changing priorities and tight deadlines. Ability to work well in a team. Open to Team related tasks, team meetings, team interaction and conference calls

TECHNICAL SKILLS:
Software/Hardware:  OOAD (OOA/OOD), RUP, UML, SDLC, Agile, Waterfall, QA, WAP, CVS, TEAMMATE, MS Access, SQL Server, MySQL, PL/SQL, DB2, Guidewire, Oracle DBA, Java , Windows 98/2000/XP, basic UNIX, HTML, basic DHTML, basic XML, MS Office Suite-Excel Macros, MS Project, MS Visio, Adobe Photoshop, Cognos, Flash, Rational- Rational Rose, Clear Quest ,Rational XDE,Cobol,Requisite Pro, CaliberRM, Omniture, Crystal Reports, various NIKU products, C, C++, Sharepoint, Docushare, BASIC, Intermediate level-Visual Basic

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

Nationwide Insurance, Columbus, OH                                                             Jan 2012 - Present
Sr. Business  Analyst
Nationwide is one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the world, focusing on domestic property and casualty insurance, life insurance and retirement savings, asset management, and strategic investments. The company also provides third party administration services and disability management. GuideWire Claim Center is the project which was undertaken to upgrade the current Claim System to track its claim for both their owned Policy holders and third party applications.

Responsibilities:

• Reviewed and analyzed the business environment and identified process improvements.
• Interacted with Business Users to conduct thorough Requirements Analysis.
• Lead multiple project teams of technical professionals through all phases of the SDLC using technologies including Oracle, Erwin, Data Stage, Data Warehousing, Web sphere and Cognos
• Used DataStage Manager for importing metadata from repository, new job categories and creating new data elements.
• Wrote detailed specifications and led the development for various reports generated using Cognos.
• Conducted Gap Analysis to define the impact of the new requirements on the existing GUI and further prepared Business Impact Analysis Reports.
• Work closely with production underwriters to review commercial property insurance renewal and new business opportunities to ensure proper risk identification, analysis and assessment and the development and growth of a profitable portfolio of business.
• Worked on Guidewire Claim Center (7.0.2) customizations.
• Worked on Claim Center integrations – Acuity (Litigation Management), Contact Manager, External Accounting Systems, ISO, OFAC.
• Strong knowledge of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and Business Architecture.
• Developed Requirement Template to document User Stories.
• Worked on customizations on Guidewire OOTB First Notice of Loss (FNOL) process.
• Worked on various User Stories related to GUIDEWIRE Claim Center (Financial Summary,
• Responsible for creating test scenarios, scripting test cases using testing tool and defect management for Policy Management Systems, Payables/Receivables and Claims processing.
• Used Test Case distribution and development reports to track the progress of test case planning, implementation and execution results.
• Facilitated mapping sessions and identified/documented data ‘Source-Target’ mapping and for populating and maintaining reports on Cognos environment.
• Facilitated training programs to familiarize users on the Cognos ad-hoc reporting environment.
• Design, development, implementation and roll-out of Microstrategy  Business Intelligence applications
• Performed backend testing using SQL queries and analyzed the server performance on UNIX.
• Coordinated activities with project manager and various other teams using MS Project.
• Assisted in on-going process improvement efforts to ensure Test Planning, Execution, and Reporting is effective, efficient, standardized, coordinated, and integrated.
• Assist other project teams with data analysis, data mining and data profiling as needed.
• Assisted the Senior Business Analyst in writing Functional Requirement Specifications (FRS) and User Requirement Specification (URS).
• Generated reports using Crystal Reports.
• Performed custom data conversions and developed custom software for risk management applications including general claims, vehicle accident and administrative tracking. Performed all data field mappings.
• Developed the ETL Informatica Mappings for importing data from ODS into subsequent data marts.
• Involved in Managing Data modelling project from Logical design and implementation of Sybase Database
• Acted as User Acceptance Testing coordinator and monitored business testing and interfaced with the development team regarding defect status and fixes on a daily basis.
• Involved in generation and execution of SQL queries.

Environment: Microsoft Office Suite, MS Visio, Java, C, Cognos,BI, Windows NT, JavaScript, UNIX, HTML, Oracle, SQL, Mercury TestDirector, Mercury LoadRunner

Westfield Insurance, Westfield Center, OH                                                             Jun 2010 – Dec 2011
Business  Analyst
Westfield companies serve commercial, institutional and individual customers through the most extensive worldwide property-casualty and life insurance networks of any insurer.  I was responsible for providing Quality Assurance for software products and also involved in requirement analysis, test case design, test script design, performing Functional Testing and extensive Data Testing. The detailed Data Testing involved calculating and splitting the losses of each claim, in each policy, through a process called Split Loss Calculation. I was also involved in downloading and testing the Billing and Booking Reports, cross verifying them with the Split Loss results.

Responsibilities:

• Gathered high-level requirement for all the external projects in a release.
• Processing of New Business, Renewal, Cancellation, Reinstatement, Billing for various lines of business (Fire, Auto, Commercial)
• Prepared requirements document for Commercial Auto, Crime, Worker’s Compensation, Umbrella, Business Owners Policy, Commercial Output Policy, and Commercial Property Package.
• Responsible for cost estimation and timelines for various Business Intelligence reports
• Design, development, implementation and roll-out of Microstrategy  Business Intelligence applications
• Led the development of a training program to train users on a custom web application and a Cognos ad-hoc reporting environment.
• Manage software system development and integration projects through all phases of Project Life Cycle - analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, and post-production support.
• Interacted with Guidewire Development team on synchronizing the screens based on customizations.
• Performed all necessary programming, testing and documentation for COBOL, DB2 batch programs and sub-routines.
• processed in the Mainframe from the front end system called Claim Centre (CC) using GUIDEWIRE working with SQL SERVER Data
• Responsible for the management of two Application portfolios, both central to client business, involving the maintenance and production support within a mainframe environment.
• Developed a file of ACORD Forms used as the standards in all Property and Casualty markets, for both Personal and Commercial Lines of Business.
• Also responsible for managing communication and expectations of system vendor, the former parent company IT and business departments, and Allied Worlds various business units (underwriting, claims, reinsurance, actuary, accounting, and IT)
• Involved with the technical team in understanding the XML file format required for Split loss process and Billing process.
• processed in the Mainframe from the front end system called Claim Centre (CC) using GUIDEWIRE working with SQL SERVER Data
• Negotiated with teams from projects to decide if modules should be implemented independently, or Parallely
• Extracted data from Oracle database with MS Access, and performed SQL query, data analysis and verification.
• Performed Integration testing, System testing, Regression testing and Performance testing of Billing Center, Policycenter and Paymentmanager in Guidewire application based on the business requirements using LISA.
• Created functional requirement documents for the impacting projects
• Performed criteria table updates  for each project.
• Updated the impacted MS Access tables.
• Worked extensively with MS Excel and MS access
• Confer with department heads, and production support personnel to assist with, coordinate acquisitions and promotions
• Designed and developed Use Cases, Activity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, OOD using UML
• Responsible for gathering requirements from users in operations group and performing data mapping for the application, confirm and vacillating the requirement at time of BA testing.
• Facilitated and led JAD sessions aimed at functional requirement walkthroughs for all the impacting projects and updated the documents based on recommendations (if any).
• Created UAT plans with several test cases for each project to ensure that the system runs smoothly after the proposed enhancements or changes have been made.
• Provided data modelling support for numerous strategic application development projects.
• Reviewed and Analyzed Vision and Scope documents; Identified Key issues and Risks involved in developing the new BPM system.
• Participated in meetings to establish and enforce SharePoint best practices and standards manage proper security group naming conventions & security assignment processes
• Participated in requirements meetings, writing requirements in CaliberRM, converting requirements from Caliber RM to HP Quality Center
• Responsible for creating Bordereau report on a monthly basis for reinsurance broker.
• Documented and delivered Functional Specification Document to the project team.
• Used MS Project to manage schedules, deadlines and resources and collaborate on the project.
• Interacting with the developers on resolving the reported bugs and various technical issues.
• Assisted the QA team in designing the Test Plan and Test Cases for User Acceptance testing.

Environment: Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Visio, Unix, Documentum, Windows NT/XP, Oracle, SQL, SQL Server, Sybase, VBScript,BI,Cognos, Guidewire,C#. DOORS, DB2, C++, NET, ASP.NET, Quality Center, Business Objects, TestDirector, LoadRunner

Arch Insurance Group, New York                                                                              Apr 2008 - May 2010
Business Analyst
The project involved creating a web based policy issuing application for Personal Line of business (Auto, Home, and Travel) and the migration from the existing documents into the Web environment. I was involved in testing the claims on Personal Lines of Home as well.

Responsibilities:

• Established a RUP (Rational Unified Process) centric business analysis methodology.
• Collaborated in building a business analysis process model using Rational Rose, RequisitePro, and Visio.
• Provided key initiatives in working with users in defining project and system requirements.
• Provided inputs in the strategic development of detailed project plans, work assignments, target dates etc.
• GuideWire Claim Center is the project which was undertaken to upgrade the current Claim System to track its claim for both their owned Policy holders and third party applications.
• Developed Data Flow Diagrams and Data mapping agreement, illustrating the flow of data from the front end GuideWire Claim Center into the Application database Tables.
• Responsible for the development of a Data Warehouse for personal lines property and casualty insurance.
• Converted various SQL statements into stored procedures thereby reducing the Number of database accesses.
• Worked in mainframe environment and used SQL to query various reporting databases.
• Conducted interviews, meetings and JAD sessions during the process of Requirement Gathering.
• Worked on Commercial lines Property and Casualty Insurance including both policy and claim processing and reinsurance.
• Successfully conducted JAD sessions, which helped synchronize the different stakeholders on their objectives and helped the developers to have a clear-cut picture of the project.
• Created business requirement documents and integrated the requirements and underlying platform functionality
• Facilitated the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with Pega System Administrators and Business Users, documented any issues or defects and eventually got sign off from the right parties.
• Exposed to Agile methodology.
• Processed annuitant transaction to move their payout investment from one separate account to another
• Experience in managing the changes in requirements by Unified Change Management Tools (UCM) like Rational Clear Quest.
• Design and develop the data load process using XML Style sheets and ACORD.
• Designed and developed Use Cases, Activity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, OOD using UML
• Performed requirement analysis, went through all the use cases and issue logs.
• Developed strategic partnerships with the business unit to prepare a solid knowledge base of the business line, including the business plan, products, and process’ and revenue streams aimed towards problem solving.
• Used Test Director and Mercury Quality Center for updating the status of all the Test Cases & Test Scripts that are executed during testing process.
• Involved in setting up different configuration environment for compatibility testing and manual testing.
• Upgraded the existing Test Scripts and created new scripts for client application to be able to work for new versions and patches, which improved product quality.
• Worked extensively with MS Excel
• Partnered with the technical areas in the research and resolution of system and process problems especially related to Power Builder platform.
• Provide customer service and support for Property & Casualty risk management needs
• Played a key role in the planning, testing, and implementation of system enhancements and conversions.

Environment: Windows, MS Office(MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint, MS Visio), .NET, Oracle, UNIX, SAS, Crystal reports, RUP, UML, SQL, SWOT analysis, GAP Analysis, Win Runner

Nationwide Insurance, Columbus, OH                                                                      Aug 2006 - Mar 2008
Business Analyst
Nationwide is one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the world, focusing on domestic property and casualty insurance, life insurance and retirement savings, asset management, and strategic investments. Nationwide currently has about 35,000 employees, and is ranked #98 in the most recent Fortune 100. The Data Warehouse was developed to integrate Nationwide in designing the end user web-based interface, which involved OLAP reporting system implemented in Business Objects to provide business intelligence capability to Asset Managers. This project also implemented ETL process using Informatica.

Responsibities:

• Worked on a Chordiant framework, a Java based web application used by the call center associates.
• Actively interacted with business groups to perform Gap analysis to identify and update deficiencies in commercial requirements by comparing it to desired objectives and checking for its compatibility with existing system infrastructure.
• Gathered business and technical requirements for customizations impacted by service changes and set rules for proper data transfer from Data Source to Data Target in Data Mapping.
• Provided support to the technical staff from unit test through to post production support.
• Interacted with users to create and verify change requests, managed Change Control Process and updating existing Documentation.
• Managed and facilitated Mapping/Gapping exercise meetings to resolve Requirements queries with backend service teams, Technical teams and Business groups for effective results.
• Facilitated executive presentations to determine potential work and issues or risks inherited in ‘as-is’ process for review by senior management.
• Managed schedules and coordinated status review meetings with project managers, business managers and team members.
• Worked on Documentum for Version Controlling, to maintain up to date changes in the Documents.
• Assigned tasks among development team monitored and tracked progress of project following agile methodology.
• Assigned tasks monitored and tracked progress of process to provide status update reports to the project management on a weekly basis.
• Worked extensively on creating and updating Use Case Diagrams, State Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and technical designs (UI screen) using Microsoft Visio as part of reconciliation process.
• Planned and defined system requirements to Wire Frames, Storyboards and Screen Mock-up using Microsoft Visio for better visualization and understanding of the software solution and presented the technical designs to clients for final approval.
• Worked and assisted in understanding industry standard analysis and documentation tools such as data flow modeling, case analysis, RUM, workflow analysis, functional decomposition, and object modeling.
• Used MS Visio to create and implement Business Process flow diagrams and monitored the flow to successful completion.
• Provide test and integration support for centre telephony and related systems like CTI, Avaya, Voice Recording System, and IVR.
• Performed and handled planning, testing, and training strategies for an industry standard QA process for greater system efficiency.
• Analyzed the QA test results from various scenarios on a daily basis and managed the defect logging process using Rational Clear Quest.
• Worked with technical groups on defect cause and identifying issue resolutions.

Environment: Chordiant, Java, J2EE technology, Windows XP Pro, UNIX / Oracle Platform, SQL, SQL Server, Business Objects, Rational Rose and Requisite Pro, MS Visio, MS Project, UML, Rational Clear Quest, Rational Clear Case, Agile, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Power Point.

EDUCATION:
Bachelor in Computer Science