Vassiliki Balta
Athens
Summary
Currently I'm a Consulting Manager, responsible for the Professional Services Department of SAS Institute S.A. for the region of South East Europe (SEE). Have 23 direct reports, based in 5 countries and more than 60 end Customers.
Used to be a Principal Project Manager for more than 8 years within SAS Professional Services organization (based in Athens office in Greece) managing cross-discipline project teams. I'm a Certified Project Manager (by Project Management Institute - PMI) since December 2017.
Strong leader and problem-solver dedicated to streamlining operations to decrease costs and promote organizational efficiency.
Apply independent decision-making skills and sound judgment to positively impact company success, while maintaining a wide customer portfolio across the SEE region.
Encouraging Manager and analytical problem-solver with talents for team building, leading, and motivating, as well as excellent customer relations aptitude and relationship-building skills.
Dedicated to applying training, monitoring, and morale-building abilities to enhance employee engagement and boost performance.
Can support the full sales/pre-sales cycle and all project implementation phases across industries and business needs.
Have accumulated experience from multiple project implementations during the 16 years in SAS Professional Services organization, while the overall working experience spans over 21 years in total, all in international consulting firms.
Overview
21
21
years of professional experience
2
2
Certification
6
6
years of post-secondary education
Work History
Regional Consulting Manager, SEE
SAS Institute S.A
Athens
02.2008 - Current
- Skilled at working independently and collaboratively in mixed team environments with different backgrounds and people bases in remote locations.
- Results oriented and focused to profitability.
- Self-motivated, with strong sense of personal responsibility.
- Increased margin by 4% through effective cost control practices and simultaneous further business development.
- Proven ability to learn quickly and adapt to new situations.
- Worked well in mixed team setting, providing leadership, support, and guidance.
- Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written.
- Passionate about learning and committed to continual improvement.
- Proved successful working within tight deadlines in a fast-paced and demanding environment.
- Organized, flexible and detail-oriented with strong work ethic.
- Adaptable and proficient in learning new concepts quickly and efficiently.
- Cultivated interpersonal skills by building positive relationships with others.
- Demonstrated respect, friendliness, and willingness to help wherever needed.
Senior Analyst
Accenture
Athens
11.2005 - 01.2008
- Proven ability to learn quickly and adapt to new situations.
- Worked well in mixed team setting, providing leadership, expertise and guidance.
- Adaptable and proficient in learning new concepts, new methodologies, best practices, quickly and efficiently.
- Validated results and performed quality assurance to assess accuracy of data.
- Assessed data modeling and statistics to integrate high-level business processes with data rules.
- Econometrical modelling.
- ROI and MROI analyses.
- Marketing Mix analyses.
- Customer presentations.
- SAS programming Language.
- Identified and resolved problems through root cause analysis and research.
Statistician, Business Analytics Consultant
Information Resources Inc.
Athens
09.2002 - 11.2005
- Worked effectively in fast-paced multi-disciplined environments.
- Participated in team projects, demonstrating ability to work collaboratively and effectively.
- Consulting services in most of the major Greek Retailers (FMCG).
- Quality Control and scientific supervising of statistical inferences and internal corporate procedures.
- Applied statistical methods to solve specific problems and managed assigned deliverables related to study.
- Created business and technical requirements documentation and developed solution designs for analytics implementation.
- Identified, analyzed and interpreted trends or patterns in complex data sets.
- Tested data prediction algorithms based on historical data.
- Marketing budget optimization.
- Media spend effectiveness evaluation.
- Effective use of SAS programming language (MACRO, SQL).
Education
Diploma - Marketing Principles
Hellenic American Union
Athens, Greece05.2006
Master of Science - Statistics
Athens University of Economics And Business
Athens, Greece 10.2002 - 01.2005
Bachelor of Science - Mathematics, Statistics And Operational Research
University of Ioannina
Greece, Ioannina 10.1998 - 06.2002
Skills
- Client Meetings
- Maintenance Requirements
- Management Consulting
- Community Relationships
- RFP Responses
- Administrative Operations
- Mentorship and Training
- Budgetary Controls
- Brand Awareness
- Operational Efficiency
- Team Management
- Quality Standards
- Project Requirements
- Thought Leadership
- Business Opportunity Development
- Project Management
- Strategic Partnership
- Performance Tracking and Evaluations
Certification
- Certified PMP, PMI - December 2017 and active
- Proficiency in English Language, Cambridge C2 1994
- Many Certifications in the effective use of SAS SW.
For a full list of certifications, please refer to my LinkedIn profile.
Hobbies
Advanced Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning algorithms, Gen AI applications, AI Operationalization, Programming languages, Open-source languages, Cloud computing, Travelling, Music
Languages
Greek
Native language
English
Proficient
C2
Italian
Elementary
A2
French
Elementary
A2
SELECTED WORKING EXPERIENCE
Extensive consulting experience in 3 Global consulting firms (assuming Lead Analyst, Quality Assurance or PM roles) in Banking, Telecommunications, Insurance domains and FMCG industry.
Have worked also with data in various other industries including, automotive, manufacturing, electricity, Gas and fuels, Utilities, etc.
- Program and Project Management skills.
- Waterfall and Agile methodologies.
- Predictive Analytics, Quantitative Modelling, Data Mining, Machine Learning.
- Data Analytics and Insights (SAS VDMML, SAS Programming, Machine Learning, Python)
- Customer Intelligence and Real Time Decisioning (SAS 9 and SAS Viya platforms).
- Customer Intelligence Analytics (Customer Retention\attrition, Cross Sell\Up Sell, Segmentation and Profiling, Pre- Collections\ Collections Optimization, Customer Value Management, etc …),
- SAS Visual Analytics, Visual Statistics and VDMML on Viya.
- Coordination of activities for installing SAS Viya SW on premises or on preferred Cloud providers.
- SAS Viya Platform and integration with Open Source (Python, R).
- Text Analytics implementations (Lead Consultant & PM)
- Cloud computing
Timeline
Regional Consulting Manager, SEE
SAS Institute S.A
02.2008 - Current
Senior Analyst
Accenture
11.2005 - 01.2008
Master of Science - Statistics
Athens University of Economics And Business
10.2002 - 01.2005
Statistician, Business Analytics Consultant
Information Resources Inc.
09.2002 - 11.2005
Bachelor of Science - Mathematics, Statistics And Operational Research
University of Ioannina
10.1998 - 06.2002
Diploma - Marketing Principles
Hellenic American Union
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