Meet the SAPinsider Experts

Aaron Hillard is the Senior SAP Security Manager at Microsoft and is responsible for the company’s SAP Application Security and GRC. He has 25+ years of SAP Security and Compliance experience, including over 20 years at Microsoft. Aaron has spent much of his career at Microsoft focused on Security & Compliance leading several SAP security initiatives including acquisition integration and digital transformation.

Aaron Smith is a Partner in EY’s Government and Public Sector Consulting practice. Aaron is a leader with broad experience in digitally-enabled transformation programs and has worked coast to coast with many clients in the Canadian public sector to drive transformative change.

Abhishek Dutta is a Digital Transformation Consultant at HighRadius. He has been with HighRadius for over 3 years in cross-functional roles where he has designed and led multiple global implementations, specializing in Credit and Collections. In his current capacity, Abhishek advises on industry-best practices in Order to Cash and charts the transformation journey for Enterprise customers.

Abhishek has worked for Lilly over the last 14 years in SAP Security and Controls area. He is a Certified Information Systems Auditor. He implemented SAP Process Control in 2014. Initially he went live with master data and CCM. Since then he has increased the adoption of PC across different functional towers. In addition to master data and CCM with adobe, he is now using PC for Manual Control Performance, Disclosure Survey, and Control Design Assessment. He is looking forward to sharing learnings with PC focused more on the technical tools that help run the daily operations effectively.

Ada has traceable experience in IT and digital transformation in different industries and countries, with global exposure in digital strategy and business value; she is naturally challenging status quo that enable organizations to re-think about technology, management practice and business value which has positioned her as a transformation catalyst. She is a dynamic and inspiring leader that is not afraid to play her part in mostly male dominated sectors.

As a diversity enthusiastic and women’s advocate she leads the women@IT network in Merck KGaA; a network that has grown from 100 to 400 members in the last 6 months, women@IT provides relevant development, exposure and network opportunities to women in IT to advance in leadership positions.

Adam Fattorini is a Senior Manager in PwC’s SAP Security and GRC Access Control practice. Fattorini has more than 15 years of experience working with SAP GRC implementations, upgrades, IdM integration, SOD ruleset designs, SAP security and controls implementation, and review services. His breadth of experience ranges across multiple industry sectors and Fortune 100-, 500- and 1000-level companies. His experience also includes managing both internal and external audit projects from an IT perspective.

Adam leverages his tax and technical expertise to architect tax intelligent solutions that meet a customers specific business needs. Activities include; solution design, complex integrations, architecture & sizing, and targeted product demonstrations. He has worked in the IT & Indirect Tax space for over 15 years.

Adil Bahir is a Senior Manager in the Advisory practice of Deloitte and Lead for Automation and Finance Digital Transformation for Central and East Canada. Adil is a seasoned Finance practitioner with more than 15 years of experience implementing Finance transformation programs, with a focus on Technology, People/Change Management, and Business Process Reengineering. He has advised clients located in North America, Europe, and the Middle East thorough their Finance and Digital Transformation journey across a wide variety of industries.

Adil is an Associate Partner at IBM with over 21 years’ experience in winning and delivering SAP consulting services. Currently he is the Global Leader for RISE with SAP at IBM helping clients on the journey to S/4HANA and beyond. He has delivered numerous SAP S/4HANA Programs as a Technical Design Authority and continues to provide Thought Leadership on SAP S/4HANA on Hybrid Cloud.

Agnes Simonits is a certified SAP Finance consultant who works for Delaware United Kingdom. Prior to consulting, she was a FICO subject matter expert in the finance department for a large firm in the City of London. She has experience on several SAP S/4HANA projects, including two greenfield S/4HANA implementations, where she was responsible for delivering training and post Go-live hyper care support. She has specialised knowledge in the payment area of SAP, and excellent client facing skills.

Ajit Attavar has more than 31 years of executive leadership experience in the Information Technology Industry. Mr. Attavar was responsible for managing several Software projects for Lear Corp in Texas and Mexico manufacturing/distribution Plants, coordinated programming work outsourced to Bangalore, India. Implemented Centralized Payment System (CPS) which resulted in savings of over $400,000 per year. Managed a very diverse global Team consisting of 12 professionals from different Units of the Company. Successfully minimized the impact of cross-cultural differences in terms of different business approaches, values and expectations of this International Project. Before joining Lear Corp in 2004, Ajit worked for MASTECH Corporation as Business Consultant. Responsible for successfully completing several IT projects for clients including: Pepsi Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and General Motors.

AJ Whalen is Vice President and Publisher at SAPinsider. He has spent the last 28 years working in HR and Payroll technology, including the last 23 years as consultant, marketer, and researcher in the SAP HCM and SAP SuccessFactors space. SAPinsider publishes multiple research reports per year for HCM and Payroll, along with frequent interviews and articles for the SAP SuccessFactors community.

Dr. Ajay Dholakia is a Principal Engineer, Chief Technologist for Software and Solutions Development and CTO, SAP Alliance in Lenovo Data Center Group. In this role, he is leading the development of customer solutions in the areas of AI, big data & analytics,  cloud computing as well as emerging technologies including Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain. In his career spanning over 25 years, he has led diverse projects in research, technology, product and solution development and business/technical strategy. Ajay holds more than 50 patents and has authored over 50 technical publications including a book.

Akash Kumar is an author, speaker, and techie for emerging and disruptive technology topics with a focus on Intelligent Enterprise. He is currently working as Solution Architect with HCL and supporting new products, services, and offerings on the Industry Cloud. He has supported multiple customers in digital transformation by creating business use cases and technology roadmaps, migrating from old to new technology such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Technology Platform, and SAP Analytics, implementing new business model on artificial intelligence/machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain, and enabling business process simplification with Celonis and task automation with robotic process automation. He is the author of PlanViz: Improving SAP HANA Performance (SAP Press) and Building and Extending SAP HANA Live Views (SAP Press). He has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and holds numerous certifications, including Scrum Master, Agile, IoT, Devops, SAP HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Activate, and SAP S/4HANA.

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Akhilesh leads the development of new client-focused software innovations, guided by the regular trend analyses he conducts to ensure that FirstStrike delivers real-world efficiency and productivity benefits. He also oversees test planning and reviews, risk mitigation and the delivery of seamless technical support to large global clients across country borders.

Akhilesh has almost 20 years of experience with product design and execution in accounts payable, accounts receivable and related areas. In addition to driving research and development, he also brings his technology expertise to improve and enhance the operational effectiveness and efficiency of apexanalytix audit solutions.

Before joining the APEX Analytix team, Akhilesh was vice president of technology for iQor, a provider of intelligent customer interaction solutions. He earned a reputation there for consistently delivering on high-visibility, high-performance projects. He also is a former associate director of software development for Receivable Management Services and a former project manager for Aditya International.

Alaina is a senior manager and CPA in Ernst & Young LLP’s Tax Technology and Transformation (TTT) practice with over 20 years of tax experience including international tax compliance and reporting and 17 years in industry tax leadership roles. She focuses on tax function performance improvement, operating model effectiveness, provision/compliance process and design, and tax technology integration. Alaina has operated as an in-house global tax process lead for several major finance transformations, and supports EY’s clients in their SAP S/4HANA transformation journey – ensuring that tax requirements are optimized to take advantage of next generation SAP enterprise tools.

Alan Grogan has been a pioneer in the Data and Analytics market for almost 20 years. In 2020, he was ranked by DataIQ as the #1 Data and Analytics Leader in the UK in the client enabling (services) sector. His work and thought leadership have been covered in The Financial Times, ZDNet.com, CIO.com, CRN.com, The Banker, The Sunday Telegraph and other leading digital and print publications.

Alan has led Data, Analytics and AI service lines in Atos and IBM before joining Avanade (a joint-venture between Microsoft and Accenture) and Accenture where he holds multiple European and Global Leadership roles. He is a member of Avanade’s Global Executive Leadership team and a member of the Accenture-Microsoft Business Group European Leadership team.

Alan is the Qualibrate Director.

He comes from a technical IT background but has a sharp understanding of how technology disruption can help organizations achieve excellence and create a sustainable future.

With more than 12 years of IT consulting experience, Alan has managed to build trust relationships with prestigious worldwide customers, partners, and colleagues with a very diverse cultural background.

On a day-to-day basis, Alan gets busy bringing Qualibrate to the market and leading the Qualibrate organization.

Alan Manuel is Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Protera. His mission is to help organizations achieve the results they are seeking by transforming their operations using SAP on the cloud.