Gabriela Ojeda Mendez

Project: Led the rollout of a new global architecture and front-end design across distributed international teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Stakeholder Collaboration: Analyzed business needs and gathered requirements from stakeholders across multiple regions to ensure alignment with global objectives.
• Agile Project Management: Created and managed Initiatives, Epics, User Stories, and Acceptance Criteria, driving project execution in an Agile environment.
• Documentation & Analysis: Tailored Confluence pages to document project scope, UML diagrams, and system specifications, ensuring clear communication of technical requirements.
• Backlog & Dependency Management: Prioritized team backlogs in collaboration with architects, assessing and managing dependencies to ensure timely delivery.
• MVP Definition: Worked closely with Project Managers and SMEs to prioritize product backlogs and define MVPs for each country, ensuring local requirements were met.
• Regulatory & Compliance Projects: Successfully led projects to ensure legal, regulatory, and compliance requirements were implemented across multiple regions.
• Payment System Integration: Led the end-to-end implementation of various payment systems including PayPal, Bancontact, P24, Klarna, iDEAL, Stripe, and credit cards.
• Fraud System Integration: Directed the integration of fraud prevention systems and managed use cases to capture relevant outcomes.
• Tax & Search Engine and Marketplace integrations: Managed the migration and enhancement of the tax engine, Hawk Search (search engine), and marketplace integrations with eBay and bol.com.
• API Integrations: Oversaw the implementation of multiple API integrations across systems, enabling seamless multi-platform functionality.
• Product Ownership: Performed Product Owner activities, collaborating with SMEs, key stakeholders, architects, testers, and DevOps teams to ensure alignment and successful delivery.

Project: To develop a new IT Platform to support financial products and customer data.

Key responsibilities:

• Agile Requirements Management: Led the full lifecycle of user story creation, ensuring alignment with Agile methodology to facilitate efficient project execution.
• API Development & Technical Specifications: Defined and documented technical specifications for new API services, enhancing system integration and functionality.
• Business Process Analysis: Elicited and documented business requirements to produce a comprehensive technical roadmap for Salesforce BULK APIs.
• Identity Management Implementation: Managed the implementation of IdentityNow and Access Management Software, coordinating sprint planning, delivery timelines, and overseeing business area integration.
• Backlog Management: Collaborated with Architects and Delivery Managers to define, prioritize, and manage the project backlog, ensuring alignment with stakeholder goals.
• User Story Creation & Release Management: Created detailed user stories, acceptance criteria, and tracked progress across multiple releases, ensuring timely delivery and quality standards.

Project: Led the implementation of Open Banking APIs and PSD2, driving improvements in onboarding processes and identifying technical challenges.

Key Responsibilities:

• Requirements Gathering & Risk Assessment: Gathered and analyzed requirements for the implementation of Open Banking APIs and PSD2, assessing risks and formulating strategies for process improvements.
• User Stories & Acceptance Criteria: Created detailed user stories and acceptance criteria, ensuring clear and actionable requirements for development teams.
• Onboarding Process Design: Designed the onboarding process for members in Open Banking NZ, ensuring compliance with regulations and optimizing user experience.
• Feature Prioritization & Risk Management: Focused on building critical features early in the project to identify constraints and technical challenges, ensuring a smooth development process.

Project: Implementation of a new web platform for online policy quoting (Home, Motors, Landlords, and Contents).

Key Responsibilities:

• Requirements & Design: Managed the full requirements lifecycle, from gathering to designing user journeys and experiences, creating user stories, and defining acceptance criteria.
• API Integration: Led API integrations between core systems and front-end platforms, ensuring seamless data flow across the system.
• Business Process Documentation: Documented business processes using Confluence, incorporating UML diagrams and flowcharts for clarity and precision.
• Workshops & Stakeholder Collaboration: Conducted workshops with stakeholders to gather and confirm business requirements, ensuring alignment with project goals.
• UI & Front-End Development: Designed UI elements and defined data structures for the Quick Quote estimation tool used by brokers, enhancing user experience and efficiency.
• System Integration: Managed API-based system integration between the front-end quoting tool and back-end systems to ensure data consistency and process automation.
• Industry Knowledge: Gained deep understanding of underwriting policies, claims processes, and insurance business rules, contributing to more informed decision-making during the platform design.
• Process Automation: Automated the pre-renewal process for Home, Motors, and Contents policies, both as a batch process and on-demand.

Project: Led e-commerce projects for over 200 clients, improving existing processes by addressing issues, elaborating designs, and strategizing the release of new deliverables.

Key Responsibilities:

• Business & Technical Liaison: Acted as the main bridge between overseas business stakeholders and the technical team, defining requirements, addressing technical limitations, and supporting decision-making and priorities during backlog refinement.
• Requirements Management: Identified functional and non-functional requirements, creating use cases, user stories, and acceptance criteria to ensure alignment with business goals.
• Web Services Integration: Implemented web service integrations to enhance system capabilities, improving overall platform performance and user experience.
• Test Planning & Execution: Planned, designed, and monitored test cases for web services, ensuring comprehensive validation and successful delivery of new features.
• E-commerce Functionality: Successfully implemented key features including cost and pricing libraries, elastic search, payment gateways, cart functionality, promotions, and password policies for both B2B and B2C platforms.

Project: Led the integration of core systems to enhance collections processes for American Express credit and debit cards, superannuation, and banking interfaces.

Key Responsibilities:

• Business & Technical Collaboration: Worked closely with commercial product owners to define business requirements, tailoring benefit-cost reports and presenting advantages to management.
• Architecture & Risk Management: Collaborated with the technical development team to assess architectural risks and define strategies to optimize system performance and scalability.
• Requirements & Documentation: Managed the full requirements lifecycle across multiple business areas, analyzing core systems and business interfaces, and documenting technical specifications.
• Testing & Quality Assurance: Designed test cases and acceptance criteria, ensuring thorough validation of new integrations and system enhancements.
• Incident & Deviation Reporting: Proactively reported incidents and deviations, ensuring prompt resolution and continuous process improvement.
• Web Service Implementations: Successfully implemented web services for brokers and banks, enhancing communication and data exchange between systems.
• Business Intelligence & Reporting: Led the implementation of money laundering and superannuation reports using Business Intelligence tools to ensure regulatory compliance.
• Process Automation: Automated the upload of endorsement interfaces, improving operational efficiency and reducing manual workloads.
• Process Improvement & Software Solution Implementation: Gathered issues related to the collections process and credit card interfaces, leading to the development and implementation of a new software solution to replace outdated collection processes.

Project: Home Banking Self-Service Products, Visa, American Express, and Core System Integration (End-to-End)

Key Responsibilities:

• Customer Journey & UX/UI Design: Designed customer journeys based on scorecard outcomes, determining product eligibility and improving the user experience. Created prototypes to define mandatory fields and ensure completion of core information systems.
• Stakeholder Coordination: Acted as a liaison between developers, stakeholders, team leaders, and line managers, ensuring alignment on project goals, timelines, and requirements.
• UAT & End User Support: Led User Acceptance Testing (UAT), providing end-user support and ensuring successful system rollouts. Developed user manuals for business teams to facilitate smooth adoption of new processes.
• Credit Card Application Process: Designed the end-to-end process for online credit card applications, streamlining the user experience and ensuring integration with core banking systems.

Project: Credit Card Interfaces & Portfolio Migration.

Key Responsibilities:

• System Integration & Automation: Integrated batch processes and transactional operations to automate credit card operations and the collections process, improving efficiency and reducing manual intervention.
• Data Migration & Validation: Led data migration efforts, performing data validations, mapping, and enrichment for Enterprise Products, ensuring accuracy and consistency during the migration process.
• Inter-Banking Portfolio Migration: Managed the migration of credit card accounts between banks as part of a new portfolio acquisition strategy, ensuring smooth transitions and minimal disruptions.
• Stakeholder Coordination: Coordinated tasks and requirements with software developers, stakeholders, and project managers to ensure timely delivery and alignment with business objectives.
• Business Intelligence & Reporting: Developed a customer service dashboard using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), providing real-time insights to improve customer support and service delivery

Project: Home Banking Online Platform Integration (End-to-End)

Key Responsibilities:

• End-to-End System Integration: Led the integration of core banking systems (accounts, loans, mortgages, credit cards) through middleware, ensuring seamless communication between back-end services and front-end interfaces.
• UI/UX Design & Prototyping: Created prototypes for the banking dashboard and user journey, enhancing the overall user experience and usability of the online platform.
• Security & Compliance: Designed the user login authentication process, ensuring compliance with legal security standards and safeguarding sensitive customer data.
• Requirements Lifecycle Management: Conducted workshops to gather and define requirements, managing the entire lifecycle from analysis to implementation.
• Project Management & Estimation: Led design reviews, supervised progress, and estimated effort for each phase of the project. Created schedules, risk mitigation plans, and contingency strategies to ensure timely delivery.
• Online Banking Implementation: Successfully designed and implemented the online banking platform, improving accessibility and functionality for customers.