Robert D. Watkins

MPower Brands™ creates innovative technologies, accessories and products that simplify the transport and efficient utilization of technology for mobile consumers and professionals.

My current focus and responsibilities as the Senior Project Manager are to design and implement a cost-effective online asset infrastructure. This infrastructure design requires incorporation of long-term plans for marketing, manufacturing and sales. In line with the collaborative nature of the MPower Brands™ Partnership, these assets leverage the communities where our mobile customers and supporters frequent and participate.

As principal and managing partner I also participate in crafting strategy, objectives and establishing relationships necessary to build and grow.

• Conceptualized and designed innovative / automated alternatives to current social media distribution processes and procedures. Reduced human resource headcount requirements by 50%+.
• Managed and mentored 100% virtual staff on internal and external web design and development projects.
• Developed, presented client project plans and managed technical implementation.

• Consulted on strategic objectives, project portfolio and execution for start-up management training consulting.
• Selected website platform and developed design to meet long term objectives. Deployed approved design.

• Consulted business in design and alignment of information technology infrastructure strategy to objectives.
• Conceptualized, designed and deployed new web presence for client engagement and social media integration.
• Managed all planning sessions and provided executive level conflict resolution and communication consultation.

• Consulted and recommended platform and SEO configurations and strategy for firm web presence re-launch platform.

• Developed compliant Project Management/Agile SDCL Approach in Response to the U.S. House of Representatives HouseNet Self-Service RFP Project Request for Proposal [RFP]
• Consulted in preparation for and participated in RFP Oral Q&A Interviews hosted by US House of Reps.

• Gathered global requirements from 90+ stakeholders/contacts/resources involved. Facilitated to consensus the negotiations to support this project. Condensed and rationalized thousands of non – ITIL compliant processes in 90 different countries into a single common multi-regional set of workflows.
• Coordinated North American, Asian, African/Arabian, European and Latin American design, development and implementation of the Sun Identity Manager tool and process re-engineering.
• Drafted RFP for new virtual tape backup solution to replace inefficient legacy systems. Executed vendor RFP/RFQ process with IBM, HP, Sun and EMC as respondents. Decommissioned legacy tape backup silos and deployed consolidated virtual tape disk array in their place.
• Managed deployment of clustered Oracle HACMP environment, configuration, load testing and product turnover on new generation hardware. Gathered 140 individual dB profile requirements and negotiated schedule for transfer to new system with each application owner and business unit. Project involved change control, UNIX, TWS (Maestro), Legato, SAN storage, Oracle dB, IT & business application owners totaling a roster of 100+ participants, resources and SMEs.

IT Project Manager | Consultant [Home and Personal Care]
• Scoped project to migrate 15,000+ North American email users to a global messaging cluster.
• Designed, tested and implemented daily email migration processes. Shared these designs with the IT global community as the standard process. Final processes delivered 1200+ user migrations per four day cycle for the NA end user base.
• Prototyped innovative data warehouse for the support of end user services, customer management, service development and service delivery IT departments. Integrated dynamic extracts from SMS 2.0, User Support dB, Active Directory and LDAP server domain user listings, application deployment data and HR data from PeopleSoft. Utilized ACTA ETL procedures and Oracle based dB structure made available for Business Objects, Crystal Reports and ODBC reporting based on key stakeholders needs.
• Negotiated and managed the design approval, hardware budget drafts, acquisition, installation and integration of PlumTree Portal, LiveLink (OpenText) and the My Unilever Web/Extranet as interim Customer Relationship Manager.

IT Project Manager | Consultant [Best Foods]
• Managed detailed design, testing and transitioning of the current NT platform EDI solution to a single clustered technology on a UNIX platform. System transfers the daily cash and order transactions and is a business critical “lock box” system.
• Managed deployment of Manufacturing for the Millennium and Order to Cash Projects integrated the Logistics from the order intake into a central SAP module to manufacturing facilities. These mission critical projects utilized a resources matrix composed of the IT Group, IS Group and GIO resources to complete the final deliverable.
• Managed business requirements gathering project for applications, Designed and developed the custom packaging processes.
• Managed and mentored 8 off-shore (Digital India) developers to be trained in package development. Designed, authored and delivered training materials to new developers thus creating new packaging capacity and skilled resources.
• Mentored resources in User Acceptance Testing and QA processes, planning the infrastructure and implementation.
• Consulted to desktop deployment team ensuring a complete un-attended installation of OS and applications.

• Scripted and scheduled User Acceptance Testing with application owners for 1700 custom application packages.
• Managed tracking and final approval of output from Quality Assurance project team (4 direct reports)
• Analyzed, researched and communicated with software vendors and original programmers

• Instituted Y2K hardware and software remediation and deployed planned strategic infrastructure to 56 offices.
• Deployed consistent backups of $25Mil + in accounts receivable; deployed telecomm links to sync the database info with home office in Philadelphia, PA and consolidated the primary databases from the Baltimore and Chicago regions.
• Diagnosed and resolved network and server performance issues, implementing a backup, off-site tape rotation/disaster plan and stabilization of the office environment.
• Managed all local help desk and vendor coordination. Integrated newly acquired sub-offices in the Chicago area and lead the project to link (Dialup and Cisco WAN) their systems into the Pittsburgh Office infrastructure.

• Remediated Kraft Foods subsidiaries, PLC firmware, packaging plant servers and workstations to Y2K compliance.
• Upgraded and replaced Oscar Myer plant serial network; upgraded or replacing all of the PCs, Allen Bradley PLC Chips and network infrastructure to reach compliance.
• Managed Capri Sun and Kool-Aid plant upgrade to fiber optic network communications equipment vendor installations.

• Researched, analyzed and recommended transfer from costly current backbone provider (UUNet) to ATT services as selected vendor. Implemented transition including setting up parallel WAN networks during the transition period, duplicating mail and hosting accounts and preparing the help desk staff to supply info to users.
• Coordinated the technical migration and marketing of transition to our current 4,300 dial-up customers to Mindspring.com. Completion of project delivered approximately $400,000.00 cash infusion.
• Managed ISP dial-up support desk, web masters and vendor coordination of troubleshooting WAN connections.