Roger Buss

Partner in national professional services firm providing IT leadership services to clients, including IT governance and controls, business strategy-IT alignment, PMO and project management best practices, and interim IT leadership services.  Served as National Solution Team Leader for IT Governance practice during 2006-2007.

• Directed project to refresh IT strategic plan for $2.5B energy exploration and production company, including performing assessment of existing IT operations and benchmarking against COBIT and ISO industry standards.
• Directed ERP requirements definition and software selection effort for $40M apparel company, followed by project oversight during implementation phase.
• Conducted IT technical due diligence effort for potential acquisition of $120M electronic media distribution company.  Successful results with this effort led to follow-on project to perform internal assessment of acquiring company’s own IT operations.
• Directed IT assessment and IT strategy development effort for consortium of 10 software companies seeking to streamline and standardize back office operations and leverage shared services across all 10 organizations.
• Directed IT assessment for diversified healthcare company with operations in nursing homes, hospice care, physical therapy, and pharmacy, focusing on evaluation of existing hosted services provider, network architecture and VOIP implementation.
• Directed IT operations assessment and strategy development for rehab hospital organization, including review of IT infrastructure and applications for recently acquired hospital facility.
• Provided program management services for financial consolidation system implementation for $1.5B global energy industry manufacturer and distributor.
• Performed Sarbanes-Oxley IT readiness assessment for $360M legal insurance company client, and directed IT controls remediation and testing activities (development of policies, procedures, logs, and other IT controls).
• Provided interim IT leadership services to $35M high-tech manufacturer, including development of IT strategic blueprint, chartering of IT Steering Committee, development of IT organization structure and job descriptions, mentoring of new IT director, evaluation of infrastructure outsourcing options, and oversight of key projects (ERP system enhancements, H.R. package selection, and web site enhancements).
• Performed assessment of IT offshore outsourcing vendor, including onsite evaluation of technical staff, physical and logical infrastructure, and project management methodologies at offshore facilities in Moscow, Russia.
• Developed course materials and taught courses for Technology Leadership Essentials executive education program, a joint offering of Tatum LLC and the Carnegie-Mellon University for CIO’s and IT executives.

Senior I/T executive responsible for implementation and management of systems in support of business objectives for $600M property casualty insurance company.

• Championed and directed initiative to implement web-based policy rate/quote/issue front-end system for independent agency force, together with new credit-scored auto and homeowners rating plans in multiple states.  Personal lines combined ratio was improved 20 points, new business submissions were increased, and erosion of in-force business was stemmed.
• Planned, organized, and executed consolidation of $100M of acquired business onto corporate policy, billing, and claims systems, including implementation of additional states and lines of business, new billing plans and policy forms.  Transitioned staff of 30 developers from acquired AS/400 to corporate mainframe environment.
• Facilitated implementation of claims cost containment and litigation management systems, resulting in $10M savings in loss costs and loss adjustment expense in first year.
• Led initiative to implement data warehousing capability for policy and claims functions.
• Coordinated major upgrade of Direct Bill system, including implementation of new package functionality and migration forward of selected modifications, system testing and user training.
• Supported initiative to implement expert underwriting capabilities for personal lines products using rules engine tool.
• Managed project to migrate 3,000 policy forms from an obsolete forms scripting platform to a current technology solution, including extensive parallel testing.
• Developed commercial lines automation strategy and timeline, and coordinated preparation of system capital investment recommendations to corporate headquarters.
• Developed document imaging automation strategy and coordinated initial implementation activities.
• Coordinated efforts to select and implement software change management tools for distributed client/server and web environments to improve process control and manageability.
• Managed applications development staff of 130 in two locations (Texas and Oregon), with annual expense budget of approx. $20M.
• Performed vendor and contract negotiations on numerous software licenses and services engagements ranging up to $18M in contract value.
• Negotiated and monitored service level agreements for key applications with business unit and corporate data center unit.
• Conducted evaluation of application maintenance outsourcing opportunities to achieve staff cost savings and process maturity improvement.
• Coordinated Sarbanes-Oxley Act automated controls documentation effort for business unit.

Senior I/T executive responsible for implementation and management of systems in support of business objectives for $350M property casualty insurance company.

• Recruited, organized and motivated applications development staff of 30 to execute major migration of core systems from obsolete Honeywell mainframe platform to IBM AS/400 midrange platform within planned 36-month time frame.
• Managed annual budget of approx. $4M.
• Implemented WINS (Wheatley) policy processing system and UniSURE ceded reinsurance system for eight underwriting branch offices plus two home office-based profit centers.
• Organized and chaired MIS Steering Committee comprised of senior company executives.
• Migrated PC desktops from DOS to Windows in home office, and migrated branch PC file servers to IBM's OS/2 LAN Server 4.0.
• Established and organized a Help Desk function to provide centralized coordination of all PC, LAN, and AS/400 support activities.