Sudha Sundaresan

• Business professional with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry.
• Qualified as an MBA with major in Finance and Marketing and Bachelors in Computer Engineering.  
• Worked as a Senior program manager in various areas such as finance, IT, sales, marketing, partner programs, PMO, customer success. 
• Avid learner.  Doing certifications in Artificial Intelligence on generative AI, AI tools.
• Skilled in business process transformation, running operations in cloud / SaaS and customer success. 
• Proficient in using business tools like Smartsheet, JIRA, Asana, Confluence, SharePoint. 

CERTIFICATIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE                                                                                    2023 – 2024

• Completed certifications on various AI topics in LinkedIn Learning platform (details in my LinkedIn profile)
• Learned about the core concepts of artificial intelligence, generative AI models and how to apply it in business 
• Learned with practical examples how to use Microsoft 365 Copilot, prompt engineering, ChatGPT and learned more about other tools like Google Gemini, DALL-E, Pictory, Sounddraw, Murf, etc.
• Understood about various aspects of using AI such as being ethical / moral respecting privacy, bias free and transparent, accountable, creative, Fair attribution (identify if is done by human, AI) and regulatory framework

SYNOPSYS, INC., San Francisco, CA / Remote

Senior Program Manager, Customer Success Operations, North America                                               2017 - 2019

• Managed Customer Success operational activities across North America. Worked with sales account managers to keep up with their renewals, deals closure, and manage their sales metrics dashboard in SalesForce.  Onboarded customers on time and kept the customer onboarding rate at ~95%.
• Responsible for resource planning and allocation to ensure that the capacity utilization was between 85% - 95%.
• Managed few platinum customers’ accounts, ensuring smooth onboarding, removed roadblocks, escalated issues to the right cross-functional teams (Product Management, R&D Engineering, Sales, Technical Support, Legal, Finance). Won team award for providing best customer service for a platinum customer.
• Generated key management metrics for backlog, bookings, pipeline, forecast, customer satisfaction, and capacity.  Presented metrics to Senior leadership across various geographical territories like NA, APAC and EMEA.
• Worked in the capacity of a change management lead to draw out operational processes and roll it out to internal cross-functional teams including Sales, Product, IT, Legal, Revenue Finance.
• Planned and executed migration of projects from Salesforce (TaskRay, SFDC) to JIRA to manage capacity planning, scheduling and tracking delivery of Customer service and reporting. The migration improved operational process efficiency by 25% by bringing all the reporting information and tracking under a single tool.

MAGENTO COMMERCE (an Adobe Company), Campbell, CA 

Senior Program Manager, Business Strategy                                                                                                 2016

• Managed Magento’s key strategic programs for partnership / acquisition / strategic initiatives including cloud operations, vendor payments and developer experience. Used Smartsheet to manage projects.
• Coordinated with cross-functional teams such as product marketing, marketing, legal, security, engineering, and sales, ensuring partners’ products were integrated with Magento’s platform and were ready for joint selling.

CISCO SYSTEMS, INC., San Jose, CA

Senior Program Manager, Cloud / SaaS Operation                                                                               2010 - 2015

• Operationalized Cloud / SaaS services for software (subscription model) and product offers for various routes to market and GEOS.  Developed metrics / dashboard to measure sale, revenue, customer adoption, ROI, etc.
• Functioned as a change management lead to develop playbooks containing end-to-end processes and support model, detailed process documents and provided customer training.
• Collaborated with cross-functional groups such as sales, product, marketing and helped prioritize their requirements and improved the alignment and transparency between the teams.
• Worked on Cisco Services Channel Partner Program to develop new partner program.  Assisted in partner go-to-market operations, streamlined processes and developed performance metric to measure success across various workstreams.
• Led the Global Governance of performance metrics. Won a Cap award for automating the rebate process within a short term of 3 months.

JUNIPER NETWORKS, INC., Sunnyvale, CA

Program / Project Manager                                                                                                                2008 - 2010

• Managed finance project implementation of Oracle 11i to R12 for Accounts Payable / Expenses / Invoicing / Cash Application / Payments and created dashboard for AP metrics and presented key recommendations on a regular basis.
• Conducted workshops amongst cross-functional groups to gather high-level business requirements. Supported project sponsors and drove alignment between large groups of key stakeholders.

CISCO SYSTEMS, INC., San Jose, CA

Program Manager                                                                                                                             2006 - 2008

• Managed programs and projects under Software Business Model Initiative for budgeting, reporting status to governing bodies and Technical Services PMO. 
• Developed Technical Support Services Bus Ops PMO portfolio roadmap, budgets, status. Rolled out HP / Mercury tool for Program / Project Management and improved project tracking efficiency by 25%.
• Developed global business process maps and key metrics using DMAIC methodology for finance processes (Oracle ERP applications) such as Order-to-cash, Record-to-Report, Hire-to-Retire. Won appreciation from VP, Operations for identifying and defining metrics for some of processes in a short time.

Master of Business Administration (MBA) (dual degree) in Marketing and Finance

California State University, East Bay, California, USA

Bachelor of Engineering (BEng), Computer Science, University of Madras, India