Patralekh Satyam
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Case study · Data platforms and Agile at scale

Datafile latency from fifteen days to under forty-eight hours, per-card cost from $2.39 to $0.80, and SAFe across twenty-plus teams.

Three programs in four years for American Express via IBM: accounts receivable modernization, a Data as a Service platform, and Scaled Agile transformation across the risk and collections organizations.

Accounts receivable modernization

A multi-year program replacing legacy custom accounts receivable platforms with an industry-standard platform. I joined from India in May 2014 as chief scrum master and proxy product owner across six workstreams under three directors, coordinating with 40+ other project teams, and relocated to Phoenix that December to lead delivery on site. Team of 80 across the United States, India, Australia and Japan. Per-card maintenance cost fell from $2.39 to $0.80, averaging 9% savings across milestones, with uniformity across geographies.

Data as a Service

Migration of legacy accounts receivable data systems to a big data platform with a report and datafile generator and a self-serve interface, the first operational product on that platform for the client. Datafile latency fell from up to 15 days to under 48 hours, handling 12M+ datafiles and 15M+ reports a year; self-serve onboarding went from weeks or months to minutes, and major corporate clients were retained.

Scaled Agile across risk and collections

As a certified SAFe Program Consultant I drove Scaled Agile Framework transformation across the client's risk and collections organizations: 20+ scrum teams, coaching business VPs and directors on epics, leading three SAFe coaches and a PMO, and running PI planning across distributed teams. A long-troubled program delivered its program increments and the approach spread to further SAFe transformations.

Outcomes
$2.39 → $0.80Per-card maintenance cost, averaging 9% savings across milestones.
15 days → <48 hrsDatafile latency, 12M+ files and 15M+ reports a year.
20+ teamsScrum teams on SAFe across risk and collections.
What this proves

Program leadership at the scale of eighty people and four countries, in a regulated institution, is the foundation the AI programs stand on.