Personal Details

Personal Detail
Name	Arka Bhattacharya
Date of  birth	May – 16 – 1985
Gender	Male
Nationality	Indian
Contact email	arkabh@gmail.com
Marital Status	Married
Current Role	Business Intelligence Analyst
Location	Auburn Hills, MI
Visa Status	L1B ( End date Sep 2015)
Blogs
Blog on Business Intelligence	http://arkaandbi.blogspot.com
Blog On oracle	http://arkaandoracle.blogspot.com
Blog On Business Objects	http://arkaandbiold.blogspot.com/
Profiles
Google +
LinkedIn
Skype

Projects details

BIGS (Business Intelligence and Global Standards)	DOLFIN (Directory of Lubes and Fuels Information)
NIKE (BIGS Development)	MAXIMO Reporting ( Security Implementation )
MAXIMO Reporting ( Universe Consolidation of Three site)	Learning Management System ( BI reporting)
Learning Management System ( Dashboard Reporting )

Out of College Job

After passing out on 2007 I was looking for permanent while I got a call from STG Corporation for a temporary post of trainer for an Oracle certification coaching center.

Oracle trainer:
I started training a class of students who are from different background and different knowledge level. STG follows a pre-defined structure of training and use Oracle original training material. The training material was good but after delivering few classes following the structure I came to understand that the students and the training structure were not compatible.

                I changed the way and started explaining with showing and proving what I was theoretically explaining to them, which generates some interest. But still there was a lag. I came to understand that the tables which the book was using are the new schema tables introduced in Oracle 10g and those are pretty big to memorize and lots of text to type.

                As a solution I started converting the queries mentioned in that book with the table from old SCOTT/TIGER schema. I created a blog and posted those query into a blog. http://arkaandoracle.blogspot.com/2007/08/some-good-problem.html

I put all the queries and problems but not solutions. So they start using those queries and develop their own query in few tweaks and they were looked enthusiastic in class and the sign of satisfaction was easily observed in their face when they get an output for a query.

                They all get certified and my job was done.  I learned that Scott/tiger is still powerful to generate query on most of the scenario. Now I am trying to convert all the queries in db2 and SQL Server which I will put in another blog I am creating. 

Website Developer:

I got another job for few weeks for development of a student portal of a training institution for training MBA students. It was a pure html and JavaScript web portal with lots of web content and link outs. Design was there, data was there I only had to develop the whole website and doing my own color combinations and deployment. I developed the website in Dreamweaver and doing the authentication using LAMP for the login page.   That was really a minor project but validation JavaScript which I implemented that time is still helping me to understand several JavaScript codes present in different projects. 

Academics Introduction and details

Degree and Date	Year	Institute	Major and Specialization	Percentage
B.Tech	2007	Saroj Mohan Institute of Technology	Computer Science	82.4
Higher Secondary(12th )	2003	Kanai Lal Vidyamandir	Physics Chemistry mathematics	67.6
Madhyamik(10th)	2001	Kanai Lal Vidyamandir	General	81.75

I have done my schooling from the city of Chandernagore, West Bengal India and completed graduation from the city of Guptipara, West Bengal. I passed through with decent marks in school and did well in College.

                

After I was introduced to computers in school and the dot com boom started I was almost sure to continue to study in the field of Computer science and Engineering. I was all along a good student in Mathematics which also gathers my interest in most modern form of applied mathematics. 

                I was the student from first batch of my college. My college was started with all good ambitions and awesome infrastructure in beginning. First year we read all the common engineering subjects which didn’t do well for me. I started developing my interest to computer science when Database Management system was introduced. I fell in love with SQL queries and later networking.

                I was and am a geek. I love everything which happened in internet. We had a team of students who used to discuss and experiment lots of technical stuff which were not common in our college. I used to experiment a lot with my computer. It may be software, it may be hardware. Experimenting a lot helped me to manufacture myself in such a way which enhances my problem solving attitude. Computer science and computer world with the help of internet grew so fast which no one can easily grab. So along with some of my friends we started understanding of basics of everything which now help me to find solution of many computer related problem which we used to go to helpdesk to resolve.

                I started blogging from my college life. Blogs from those days are not active but I continued my learning and sharing habit from those days of college.

                As a final year projects I chose Cisco router configuration using Linux and also get the IBM certification in Linux system engineers for e-business. That was the live environment where we configured CISCO router for an office. We tested all networking knowledge from Mr. Forouzan in that project.

                Later I completed IBM Certification for Oracle RDBMS concept which knowledge still I am using. 

Dashboards for Learning management system

In Resume
Project	Dashboards for Learning management system
Customer	Chrysler LLC & FIAT
Period	July 2013 - till date
Description	Chrysler’s learning management system which converged with FIAT’s learning management system felt a requirement for reducing number of Business Intelligence report and come up with a very less number of reports and two dashboards. Though dashboards are for summarized information, Chrysler wants a dashboard where they can select multiple filters and create their own version of detail record. This will reduce usage of complex reporting tool for Adhoc report creation and reduce number of Adhoc reports. Also they require a highly summarized executive dashboard which will connect several systems along with SABA learning management system and get the analytical values on different KPI.
Role	Business Intelligence Analyst and Designer.
Solution Environment	Windows 7
Tools	DB2, Qlikview, Microsoft Visio
Highlights	This project is a part of other LMS projects which is going on and I was assigned the analysis and design of these two dashboards. My primary responsibilities are: 1.       Understanding Business requirement 2.       Creating Mock-ups (wireframes) for visualization effects to customer.  3.       Feasibility analysis 4.       Creation of BRD and get a sign off. 5.       GAP analysis on what exist and what new data items required in data mart. 6.       Designing QVD file with data modeler for reporting. 7.       Coordinating with Qlikview developers. 8.       Testing of the data. 9.       As the project is still in requirement analysis phase my current work is maintaining coordination with Business and Modeler.

Chrysler existing system had more than 3500 reports to analysis. Primary requirement for this project was to deliver only the reports but while analysis I came to understand that there is a strong possibilities to create multiple dashboard from the reports.

                I first consolidated the list and categorize by geography. That reduces a big number. Previously there was several country specific reports which I clubbed into one and put country filter into it. Then I start looking on basis of time dimension. I came to understand that there are several reports which have no difference except the reports ran on particular time frame and saved frozen for future use. I clubbed those altogether and with modeller we design the mart which can help user to run in any time format and the history data will be visible. We had a tough time to choose between snapshotting and slow changing dimension. Later on we concluded on slow changing dimension.

                Once above two big problem was solved we remained with half of the report. Then I started analysing holistically that which reports looks similar. I started with similar in name and some functionality. I categorized a big set of report and with help from SMEs I get to know which are the important report (MoSCoW analysis) and can be used as base. So I took one report as base and try to add uncommon data item in different reports. Some merger was huge and one report consumes around 32 reports at whole.

                I end up with 170 unique functionality reports and 300+ reports which I thought as potential dashboard report. Dashboard in definition is highly summarized data modelled and developed with high visualization. But I came up with a dashboard which is detail in nature. If we club those all reports and create a multi tab huge report, it will not help them as they need an environment where they need to slice and dice data by selecting different filter, not using tools. And also the new designed dashboard is common for all departments and you cannot run a report for all departments in a single refresh.

                I created the mock up and confirmed from business and they are really happy to not use any BI tool report development functionality for their Adhoc reporting. All the filters will be present in left side of the window and in right side the report table will dynamically change with the selection. It is a cool concept of data discovery using analytics. We successfully implemented a proof of concept in Cognos and Qlikview and selected Qlikview as a tool for this dashboard. Mart level development is going on.

                From all of the reports and with the help of one enthusiastic KPI person I designed another dashboard which matches the definition of dashboard. This dashboard I am still about to analyse and complete further. As of now the dashboard mock up is completed and I am analysing the several source of data which will come in this dashboard from various application which are not part of learning managements system.  

Learning Management System BI reports to defend warranty claim

In Resume
Project	Learning Management System BI reports to defend warranty claim
Customer	Chrysler LLC & FIAT
Period	March 2012 - till date
Description	Chrysler Learning Management System (LMS) is getting aligned with FIAT LMS. Chrysler has their own LMS and a complex BI environment to support warranty claims. As other automotive industry their warranty policy is depending on the training status of dealerships. As SABA, a new LMS application joins this two major enterprise learning system, the BI environment also needs to be converted or simply restructured. Existing system has 600 Business Objects reports for Chrysler and 250 reports for FIAT. They need to combine and shorten the number. There is a big demand of historical data at least 25 years from present. SABA application is only holding transactional data but not the historical data. TCS needs to build a warehouse and keep all the historical data and also needs to keep history from time of new application launch. Old environment was comprised of Lattitude as learning application, SQL server 2008 as database, Microsoft BI as ETL, Business Objects as reporting tool. In new environment SABA is learning application, DB2 as Database, DataStage as ETL and Cognos as reporting tool.
Role	Business objects Analyst and Business Intelligence Analyst
Solution Environment	Windows Server 2003, XP, 7
Tools	Business Objects XI R3, SQL Server 2008, DB2, Cognos 10.2
Highlights	As a single onsite coordinator my primary task is 1.       Understanding process changes from old system to new system 2.       Analysis of existing BO reports. 3.       Requirement gathering for new reports and dashboard. 4.       Creation of BRD and get a sign off. 5.       Designing the data warehouse with help of Data Architect. 6.       Designing DataMart with data modeler for reporting. 7.       Coordinating with Cognos developer and helping them to convert the existing BO functionality in Cognos. 8.       Giving input to Cognos developer to create framework for the report. 9.       Testing of the data. 10.    As the project is still in development phase my current work is maintaining coordination between offshore developer and business.

                I moved to Auburn Hills, Michigan to join a project called Learning Management system as a Business Intelligence analyst. After merger of FIAT and Chrysler this project was the first try to merge the applications in FIAT and Chrysler. Chrysler and FIAT both had different learning management system and they want to merge both and implement a common functionality. SABA, the largest learning management system company is assigned for that, the same company created our Learning Management system in TCS and I was pretty aware of the functionality what they have.

                Chrysler had their own LMS and they had more than 3500 reports to track the learning system. That sounds weird! I also thought so and that’s why, they brought me in. Old reporting system was in BOXIR3 and new reporting system will be in DB2. My job was to analyze the Business Objects reports and gather the changed business requirement and explain to Cognos developers.

                I thought it was simple as no one can think of a complex learning management system before start working in automotive industry. LMS is directly tagged here with warranty and dealers don’t get their warranty money if they don’t complete their training. That defines the criticality and complexity in Chrysler LMS.

                I started gathering automotive industry knowledge. Majorly supply chain and dealer processing networks. The more I was diving deep, the more I found that many other systems are interlinked with training software. Reports which I started to analysis unfolded the mystery that the reporting system was not only providing learning details, but track sales volume and customer satisfaction index. Dealership employee’s evaluation has been done on basis of several parameters which are not directly coming from learning software.

                I started running through all automotive glossaries and following lots of automotive websites to get inner picture of automotive industry which was helpful to analyze the whole structure. While understanding 800 objects in present multiple universes, internet and the old documents helped me a lot. Below are the steps which I did apart of reading to analyze the system:

1.       Find out number of universe present.

2.       Sorted out reports by universe.

3.       Extracted all objects list in the universe.

4.       Remove duplicated objects and created a list of definition for all the objects.

5.       Enhanced the document with all the formula used in the universe.

6.       Understanding the universe and the joins using the existing data model.

7.       Create a list of critical reports.

8.       Create a document of report analysis where used objects are listed.

Once the above steps were done I started learning existing SABA data model and help data modeler to create the model using business rules extracted from reports and universe.

                While doing modeling I came to understand that the similar business knowledge I need to share again and again with different set of developer who doesn’t know about the functional side of the project. But I believe that doing development blindly will create lots of unnecessary error which can be avoided. So I created a 50+ page document which is a complete functional understanding document with addition of technical stuff which we already analyzed. This document is widely appreciated among clients and used by whole team. In this document I also captured how Chrysler dealership works.

                Once the model is somewhat finalized I started working with Cognos developer to build the framework. I understand that there are few differences between a Business Objects universe and Cognos framework. Functionality wise both are same. I didn’t put my hand in development as there are several analyses were still pending and I was not assigned to do this. I was closely monitoring the framework development and suggest changes in that.

                Next thing what I did is the consolidation of the report. After gathering lots of knowledge in training segments I came to understand that the numbers of reports they are using are not really needed by business and there are lots of repetition with simple filter added into it.  Also there are several reports with hard coded parameters which changes every quarter. I found several parameters where we can merge multiple reports. It requires lots of analysis and I end up with 170 reports and two dashboard design which started another project.
                As I mentioned earlier that there were several reports which were hardcoded, but there was no chance to create crosstab data driven dynamic reports due to their templates. So we came up with a design which creates the template dynamically and user can change the template dynamically while following a certain spreadsheet. That saved a lot of redundant effort for quarterly changing reports. Now all the reports reflect automatically the change in template when user uploads the spreadsheet.

                Spreadsheet loading through ETL is really back dated and not a best practice in data warehousing project. But we had 7 different spreadsheets which cannot be loaded in the database as they are user driven and there are no web portal created to feed data directly to database from GUI. I came up with a design where user can load the spreadsheet on their own and also they also can change the value with a menu driven system. I am ready with the design but still development is not done yet.

Report development and data model change is going on still now as there are 170+ report is identified.

Universe Consolidation of Three site

In Resume
Project	Universe Consolidation of Three site
Customer	BP International( Carson, CA, Toledo, OH, Cherry-point, WA)
Period	Sep-2010 to Feb 2012
Description	Carson, Cherry-point and Toledo have MAXIMO 4 setup. More than 400 BO reports are running on MAXIMO repository. BP needed to Upgrade the MAXIMO application from 4 to 7 versions. Along with that they want to combine the database too. As a ripple effect, they need to combine three Universes and move all the reports on that consolidated universe only. Toledo Universe is in BO 6.5 version but other Universes are in BOXIR3. They also need to consolidate and keep in BOXIR3 environment.
Role	Onsite coordinator
Solution Environment	Windows 2003 server, XP SP3, Oracle 10g Database
Tools	Business Objects XIR3 (SP3), Business Objects 6.5
Highlights	Involved in the below activities: Creating proposal with the help of senior management. Resource allocation and design the project plan. Creating a security model and proposing to the client. Toledo Universe built on separate tables which are getting updated by 9 stored procedures. Analyze those procedures and create a design specs for that. Analyze three Universe (1700 objects each) . Create a consolidation plan. Analyze reports and propose a template. User requirement gathering for extra reports and additional field Additional plan for NON-MAXIMO application data which comes from Kronos, Worktech and CCTS application. They all have their fields in Universe as class and object. Universe consolidation Implementing security model in consolidated universe. Creating more than 150 reports. Designing the UAT and Go-Live Plan Handled Go-Live activities\ Managed issues

BP international was planning to upgrade their existing asset management tool MAXIMO 4 to MAXIMO 7 and create a robust reporting environment on that. MAXIMO 4 to MAXIMO 7 upgrade is really not an upgrade but majorly it is a new development as MAXIMO grew a lot. BP International also wants to merge three refinery sites data into one centralize database. As a result they also want one universe in place of three different universes in two different Business objects version.

                As I worked on their BO reporting and implemented security I was assigned for the major development of consolidation of these three universe and create 400+ reports in that environment.

                While UAT was going on, I and one of my project managers started planning on this project. First time I was exposed to detail planning in Microsoft project. I started learning about project management and planning. I learned estimation techniques and resource utilization planning. Resource planning and effort distribution was really complicated for me at starting, but later on I grabbed that easily. Once the planning was approved I was set to go client site and start this project with an offshore team of 7 BO developers from Hyderabad.

                I came to Carson, California and started face to face communication with client. My role was requirement gathering and analysis and coordinating with offshore team. There was no onsite project manager so I used to do lots of managerial stuffs too. It was planned that there will not be any development from onsite but the story changes by time.

                Working with clients in their den is completely a different experience than sitting in your cozy cubicle and developing codes. Fortunately from the beginning of my career I was exposed to client (though in phone) but there was lot to learn when you are talking face to face and meeting them every day.

                I was working with 5 SMEs who were all from different country. Though they were US citizen but they are all different in terms of regular interaction. I started learning cultural difference to make liaison with them and soon I was accepted as their colleague. 

                I came to understand that the communication is the key in on-site. Though I was fluent in English but in beginning my SMEs had a tough time to understand my accent and the words I was using as Indians speaks British English but Americans speaks Americans which is really a different language than British English. Though my accent is still not American but my words are now easily understandable to them.

                I was the only one on-site coordinator for three different sites but I was told to operate from Carson in starting and Toledo at the end after Carson and Cherry-Point go live. This setup was there as Carson and Cherry-point was similar but Toledo was completely separate and they need a person’s presence over there while developing there report. Some are new.

                So I started analyzing their reports and created BRDs for all the reports. Me along with a senior developer started analyzing the universes and found out the commonalities on basis we can join multiple universes. We previously thought about linking multiple universes but by looking to the gigantic universe we thought to start development from scratch.

It was a round the clock development, so from onsite I and from offshore a guy started working on the universe simultaneously. It is really a bad practice but if you have to manage a large project in a little amount of time, you have no choice. Me and my partner shared equal knowledge level and have great understandings which lead us to successfully join the two universes. We did in the below way:

• Started with Cherry-point universe as base as it has the largest number of objects and most number of joins.
• Started adding the objects which are not present in Cherry-point but present in Carson and Toledo Universe.
• Started joining the tables and implementing business rules.
• Created hierarchies based on the models.
• Implementing universe level security and validate the joins.
• Created several Ad-hoc reports for functionality testing.

Once the development of consolidated universe is done we started report development. In my plate there were 150 reports and I created all of those.

Amazingly and surprisingly we delivered the reports with only 5 post-production errors, which I solved within a day.

That universe was ridiculously big and complicated. But it became more complicated when we started analyzing 7 huge stored procedures which was creating 50+ objects in Toledo universe.

                After successful deployment of Carson and Cherry-point universe and report I moved to east coast and started working on Toledo universe. I analyzed those stored procedures and added the tables and joins in the existing consolidated universe using the logic extracted from the stored procedure.

                Once the universe is ready we planned to do rest of the development completely from offshore and I moved to another location with another client in a different role.