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I'm Bala Guntipalli

Digital Transformation Management Consultant

When I hear the phrase “two sides of a coin,” it suggests the holistic perspective I’ve gained from 25 years as both a business-minded IT professional and a technology-minded business strategist. On the blue-chip client side — Big 5 to Fortune 500 such as IBM, CUNA, Cox Enterprises, and more — I’ve done highly-sophisticated planning and product development... …and on the other side, as an SMB consultant and GM, I get my teams into action and adjust along the way. While some IT departments seek resources to support the objectives of a "cost center"… In contrast, I focus on cost-effective, business-appropriate technology resources that help acquire, engage and keep customers. I’ve gone beyond “order-taking”… …moving to “order-shaping” to produce better results faster — generating new revenue lines, engineering efficiency, motivating mentoring, and leading tech initiatives to achieve results. On the tail-end results side, while I’m focused on quality and end-user experience…on the heads-up, I’m business-focused, working towards lowering TCO and higher ROI. Each side is part of the same coin. Working alongside C-level leaders, I help define business and technology strategies, manage teams of technologists — globally, build onshore and offshore teams to accelerate productivity and speed to market. Peers say I have a natural ability to adapt emerging trends and technologies quickly, pivot, innovate and disrupt — with proven skills in Agile and go-to-market strategies. I find solutions that not only work short-term…but long-term, too. Rotary principles guide me — truth, fairness, goodwill, beneficial to all. Experienced in: Strategy Agile Product Engineering Cybersecurity Business Development Business Process Automation CRM Prosumption QA Verticals: Healthcare, Banking, Financial, Pharma, Real Estate, Automotive, Media, Manufacturing. My ultimate goal? Internal and “customer's customers” who are delighted with the results. Let's talk…BalaGP3@Gmail.com

Professional Skills

Business Intelligence
Management
Consulting
CRM

My Experience

  • 2015 - Present

  • VICE PRESIDENT - TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS TECHVELOCITY PARTNERS

    An innovator nurturing self-managing teams, enable solutions to customer’s problems. Connector spanning and uniting programs across divisions, engage multiple stakeholders —able to see through the eyes of customer’s customer. Managing Agile Product Engineering, Strategy, Cybersecurity, and revenue achiever. Negotiated complex onshore and offshore strategic partnerships, hiring and development. Extensive experience with a vast range of IT tools, adapting new technologies and processes. Developed Lead Generation and Prospecting Software and Business units, built empowered and disruptive teams to support the business vision. Programs and Achievements… o Developed business and technical strategies to produce 3 disruptive flagship software products as part of TechVelocity’s Intellectual Property — Healthcare Practice Management System; Demand Generation System via Social Media; Online Email Marketing and Follow-up System, integrating Open Source and commercial vTiger CRM systems; protecting the IP o Saved approx. $1.75MM for the company by directing specialized vendors to use open source technologies, instead of building the 3 products from scratch o Nearly tripled the 4% open rate when using Salesforce, Infusion Soft etc. by developing an Automated Follow-up System in Microsoft Exchange that emails individually, producing 13% open rate; efficiently getting through ISPs o Working on the business side of cybersecurity, Vendor selection, improving the IT Security posture, Penetration Testing, Governance, Assets Classification, System Hardening, Business Continuity Planning, Incident Response, HIPPA Regulatory Compliance, identifying least privileges, Implementing Change Management Process o Open offshore offices, produce MVPs, analyze commercial viability, Go/No-Go decisions o Strategic consulting operations with the leadership team and P and L o Reduced critical issues from 60+ to less than 5, identifying gaps and ensure mitigation.

  • 2006 - Present

    ADVISOR TO THE BOARD LEADERSHIP AND MEMBER BOARD OF DIRECTORS

    Rising Star Outreach

  • 2008 - 2015

    SENIOR DIRECTOR - CLIENT PARTNER COMPANY NAMESINGULAR TECHNOLOGY GROUP LLC

    Clients include: Cox Media Group, Prommis Solutions, Blue Cross Blue Shield of TN, Cal Western, DataPath Systems, Global Healthcare Rehabilitation, The Corcoran Real Estate Group, etc. Engineered strong solutions for clients in Social Media Marketing Automation, Agile product engineering recommending robust, scalable solutions. Led high-powered teams of professionals in integrating services among multiple organizations, maintaining good relations with a range of Cox Media Group of companies- AJC.com, WSBRadio.com, Palm Beach Post, WFTV, Statesman, WSB-TV in 20+ media markets, 100+ news outlets, delivering news and advertising to over 52MM Americans weekly. Consulting with Cybersecurity vendors strategy and implementation: Articulating cyber risks at the board-level, helping them improve the way they oversee, manage, communicate cyber risks across the intricate landscape of tech, business, and people. Leadership expertise that improved overall productivity, reducing TCO, time to market, and enhancing user experience. Set performance targets and incentive plans for team members per corporate guidelines, Legal, Profit and Loss. Achievements include… o Engineered an Integrated QA and Cybersecurity Process for Global Healthcare and Prommis, saving $.5MM by identifying cybersecurity issues, performing risk assessment earlier, articulating the governance of cyber risks at C-Level, Boards, and implementing changes before completion. o Provided individualized, hands-on Agile Development, Business Process Automation services to clients in Media, Healthcare and Real Estate industries. o Developed breakthrough processes in Quality Assurance, Mobile Automation Testing services -- dramatically reducing the average regression run-time from 12+ hours to under 60 minutes, saving over 4 MM. o Implemented frameworks in open source technologies such as Behave, Selenium, Appium, Cucumber, FitNesse for clients in Automotive, Media, Defense, and Finance sectors.

  • 2012 - 2015

  • QA DIRECTOR - HEALTHCARE I.T. TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING FOR SQAS(SINGULAR TECHNNOLOGY GROUP SUBSIDIARY)

    Engineered strong solutions for a wide variety of clients, including Hospital Systems(ACO's) and Healthcare Organizations in the technology area of Quality Assurance, Agile Testing, Agile Product Engineering, Enterprise Software Services, Business Process Automation, Social Media Marketing, Mobile Applications Testing and Mobile Automation Testing. o Provided Technical and Business Advisory Board member services for a Global Healthcare Rehabilitation company for three years. o Develop strategic partnership with a EMR / EHR company for a Healthcare client, saving over 350K in development, customizing costs and license fees o Worked with vendors to use OWASP tools for Cybersecurity - related activities such as Cross-Site Scripting, Risk Management, and Risk Governance, simulating Social Engineering activities, Vulnerability assessments, and various other security testing activities. Partial list of Open Source, Commercial Automation and QA tools used with clients: HP Quality Center, QTP (Versions: 6-10 x), LoadRunner, Selenium RC and Webdriver 2.0 with Java, C# , .Net, Python, Ruby, FitNesse, JMeter, TestNG, ReportNG, Capybara, Tosca, SmartBear TestComplete, ALM, Grid Architecture, CUCUMBER, Junit and Nunit frameworks. Mobile Automation and Security testing tools: Selendroid, iOS Driver, Appium, Perfecto Mobile, MonkeyTalk, eggPlant Mobile, SoapUI NG Pro, Google CodeSearchDiggity, Static Application Security Analysis (SAST) Dynamic Application Security Analysis (DAST) and various OWASP tools.

  • 2007 - 2008

    SR ENTERPRISE QA LEAD COMPANY NAMECOX ENTERPRISES

    Led high-powered team of professionals in testing and maintaining Quality Assurance (QA). The team was responsible for testing different types of integration. Worked on Project Initiation through the Testing, Go Live and Post production phase. Responsible for key components of post-production support phase for the dealer management category of Cox-Auto Trader and related Enterprise companies. Advertising Partnerships: Online automotive classified ads for AutoTrader.com is one of the most significant subsidiaries of Cox Corporation. Developed web-based integrated advertising application for AutoTrader.com, MSN.com, MSNLatino.com, KellyBlueBook.com, Yahoo Autos, Univision.com, NADAguides.com, and others. Technology Partnerships: Trouble-shooting and implementation of patches and code fixes with production support, among a range of partnering websites; change management and IT operations in a fast-paced, rapid-deployment environments for the customers to view, research and compare cars. Achievements include… o Developed 255 scenarios to test and document the entire QA plan during web redesign, feeding in dozens of partner sites, discovering 150 critical and high priority issues during 3 test cycles…enabling flawless site launch, with no downtime o Architect of QA processes (e.g., defect tracking, test case management, regression and automated testing strategies, etc.) for multiple R and D teams; defect triage; assigning, mentoring and working with teams in Quality Assurance Analysis, Leading and managing the Testing Team efforts of web GUI for seamless integration of affiliated websites. o Developed software and QA integration process, enabling easier search, search and save Autos based on the user custom search criteria.

  • 2005 - 2007

    FOUNDER / DIRECTOR COMPANY NAMEBALVISION ANTIQUES AND BALVISION DIRECT IMPORTS LTD

    Sourced, procured, and distributed “One of a kind furniture art, handcrafted from antique architectural details.” Established and maintaining relationships with vendors, retailers and wholesale distributors in Asia, USA, Canada, and Europe. As a GM, ran daily operations, managing leads, hiring and staffing, improving operations. Responsible for driving the efforts related to Information Technology needs, Social media, PR, Accounting and Financials, Merchandising, Marketing, Sales, Profit and loss. Built company from Zero to $3.2 MM+ value. Identifying… procuring…sales and marketing of one-of-a-kind Antiques, Artifacts, Handcrafted furniture from six different countries. Establishing relationships and buying directly from wholesale distributors, Antique Pickers, heritage home owners from past generations in the USA, Canada, Europe, Indonesia, China, India, Tibet, Afghanistan, and Nepal. Responsible for driving the efforts related to Information Technology needs, Social media, PR, Accounting, Financials, Merchandising, Marketing, Sales, Profit and Loss.

  • 1999 - 2005

  • ENTERPRISE WORKFLOW APPLICATIONS ARCHITECT / PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT IBM CORPORATION - EMPLOYED BY TRUSTEK INC - PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT

    Lead strategic development sessions with IBM Sales and Marketing business unit executives, and developed implementation processes to extract, update and manipulate data from IBM Mainframes and AS 400 legacy systems. Since millennial engineers were having difficulty working with the legacy systems, developed a select group of veteran IBM engineers to gain their knowledge and work with us to bridge this gap in technology/communication, using a variety of tools, including Notes / Domino, Java, Siebel CRM, Mainframes, AS/400 and other applications. o The result was to fully utilize the legacy systems, with a major updating process to Window-based systems with GUI interface, which enabled business continuity of these systems, and efficient collaboration and communication tools. o Designed, developed, 11 Applications, Databases, several Forms, APIs and Agents over a 6 year period. o Completely responsible for the entire SDLC and post-production support activities. o Worked with executives, technologists, architects, business owners and support staff in several countries, across cultures and timezones such as Italy, France, UK, Egypt, Turkey, Costa Rica, India, Japan, China, Canada, Philippines and etc.

  • 1977 - 1999

    SR IT CONSULTANT (TRUSTEK INC, CUNA MUTUAL GROUP AND ACCENTURE(ANDERSON CONSUTLING))

    The client let go three other resources and I was brought in to develop an application which extracts and inputs data to and from Notes, Domino and other communication, collaboration applications into ERP HR Applications for 360-degree feedback; Used for assessing employee performance by their peers and management. Built MVP for both SAP HR and Peoplesoft HR tools. Involved in the design and development along with the planning, scheduling, assigning, reviewing, communicating, and tracking the different tasks of the project and successful product launch.

My Interest

First of all I love music, country music is my favorite. Love watching football, movies and playing games with my buddies. I spend quite a lot of time in traveling and photography, these keeps me fresh for working environment. I also spend time volunteering at the Red Cross in London, UK each month.

  • Music
  • Gaming
  • Photo
  • Football
  • Traveling
  • Movies

From the Blog

Results Oriented Digital Transformation:  Overcoming 6 Pitfalls
5 Steps to Effectively Handle Digital Transformation and Business Disruption:  A Framework for Digitalization

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Feel free To Contact

  • 13570 Grove Dr #189, Maple Grove, MN 55311, USA
  • +1 612 322 2470
  • BalaG@TechVelocityPartners.com
  • www.balaguntipalli.com