Director/IT Commercial Consultant

Leveraged extensive consultancy; change/programme/project management; plus industry knowledge in providing leadership to various clients on an interim/contract basis. Expert skills in IT Systems, Telecoms, BPR, Accounting, Business Coaching, and Troubleshooting. As a programme/project manager, directed all phases of the project life cycle; meeting with clients to conduct extensive needs assessments, propose and design a business solution, manage the solution through implementation, and provide training. Established key stakeholders relationships to offer appropriate services.

Key Achievements:

UK Sailing Academy (Apr – Feb 2012)

·      Managed business changes and new processes whilst implementing procurement system for this charity. This included UAT on all access group products and liaising with service provider to resolve issues; plus trained all staff in the use of the new system.

·      Designed and built bespoke BI system for critical KPI reporting

·      Completed software, data and infrastructure audit, and risk assessments to ensure the FocalPoint upgrade could be handled, compliance with the regulations under DPA 1988 and as part of the businesses 5 year strategic review.

The Hyde Group (Jan – Apr 2010)

·      Managed workshops to collate and map business requirements for property services Shared Services Centre from users and stakeholders; plus completed weekly status reports for stakeholder review.

·      Architect of KPI, MI, business intelligence and regulatory reporting utilising SAP Business Objects covering property management, income, collections and arrears.

Isle of Wight Council (Nov – Dec 2009)

·      Completed review of reconciliation processes between Axis Income Management System, Bank and SAP. Plus Architect of a tool to continue process on a daily basis.

·      Reported on areas of concern; what changes would be required in other departments; the job specification for the person in the Finance Directorate to support the process; and a review of the three internal candidates.

Vestas Wind Systems A/S (Århus Denmark) (Aug 2008 – Aug 2009)

·      Managed the rollout of SAP FI/CO and reporting processes in the PMO. This included assessing and documenting requirements, embedding SAP ECC6 FI/CO, PS, cProjects and BI, and training the PMO staff as super users to enable there support of the other departments, plus ensuring compliance with Stage-Gate project management process.

·      Arranged and ran stakeholder and user workshops to review and map existing process, plus collate all requirements for the Time and Resource planning tool (T&RPT).

·      Setup process for the weekly RAG status reporting to the Sponsor (VP Finance & Business Support Vestas Technology R&D) and stakeholders of the T&RPT project, as Prince 2 methodology was not in use.

·      Architect of a Global SAP T&RPT to replace the legacy system, utilising the BI reporting tool plus integration with the HR and CATS SAP modules; budget of £150K and a team of five SAP programmers, with an initial implementation covering 1500 employees in five countries. Including testing all the elements of the new tool and training staff on the use of the tool.

·      Produced documentation on the use of the T&RPT; what to do if items are missing; and how to interface with the actual data in other SAP modules. 

·      Completed workshops to collate and map the requirements of Vestas Blades for rollout of phase 2 of the T&RPT, plus put in place the process to collate and map the requirements of the other business units to expand the usage to all business units over time.

·      Consulted on the implementation of the SRM module, including the training of a four strong procurement team providing a single point of contact for purchase order and workflow processing, plus supplier interface including EDI, initially in Denmark, to be expanded globally.

·      Reviewed other SAP modules, MRS and xRPM, for use within Technology, Research & Development. The MRS module is being used in the CIM Operations department to manage global Wind Turbine service and repair projects. The xRPM module will be used within the PMO to facilitate the future management of major resource and portfolio projects.

Santander Insurance Services (Sep 2007 – Jul 2008)

·      Managed, designed and built a bespoke Insurance Business reporting system. Reviewed and mapped all interfaces with existing systems; collated the requirements of users and stakeholders; completed due diligence and risk assessments; ensuring data reconciliation and providing KPI’s for the UK and Spain, plus interfaced with SAP systems in Spain. Ensuring FSA and SOX compliance.

J. Sainsbury plc. (Apr 2006 – Mar 2007)

·      Re-engineered the debit note processing system; the product was able to process 4000 suppliers, 13000 debit notes, with a value of £3.5M per month.

·      Designed and built bespoke MI System to handle £13bn turnover and 750 stores using VBA  and SQL, which collated data from Sainsbury’s main Oracle Systems; then interface the outputs with the company’s intranet.

Admiral Taverns Ltd. (Aug 2005 – Mar 2006)

·      Collaborated with the directors to create an interim property management system to manage the expansion from 80 pubs to 1250 pubs. The interim system served as the blueprint for the final property management system Navision, plus interfaced with the SAP BW and WM system of Scottish Courage the main supplier to the pubs.

·      Project Managed setup of a CRM centre to take the tenants orders and enter them in the Scottish Courage’s SAP ordering system, in addition to improving the dealings between tenant and landlord.

Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. (Mar 2002 – Jul 2005)

·      At Property Company liaised with Site Project Managers, plus UK and HK Financial Controllers to collate requirements; then designed an MI System to manage construction project operating costs of a £100M+. The new system reduced time required to retrieve information, and is still in use today.

·      At 3G initially cleared a £1M suspense account; this led to a three-year interim systems development and consultancy contract, which included the internal audit of the US $1.5bn launch projects and saving the UK US $150.

Commercial Analyst / Accountant / Project Manager

Rose through the ranks to lead the resolution of numerous medium-term troubleshooting and coaching projects involving Cable & Wireless and its subsidiaries. Reporting directly to the Finance Manager of Revenue Reporting; led up to thirty staff in a virtual team structure on the development of the Revenue and Margin (AML) reporting system. Directed within the finance department; the SAP system upgrade to release 4.6. Implemented various SAP modules; including FI/CO, MM, PS, SD, TR, IM and HR.

Key Achievements:

· Completed the integration of finance systems and processes for five M&A’s across Europe; this included the implementation of the AML
revenue and margin reporting system.

· One of the project managers on the Finance Department’s Business Process Re-engineering project that reduced departmental costs by 40%.

· Senior member of the project team in 1994/95 implementing SAP r/3 primary modules FI/CO, MM, PS and HR. Implementation of core modules. Completed regression testing of the system, plus set-up the UAT testing of modules, by super-users.

· Architect of the Hyperion Essbase reporting interfaces, initially with the SAP FI/CO module then with other modules as Essbase usage was expanded.

· Championed the development of new interfaces from data warehouses to SAP, Hyperion Essbase, Business Objects, and Siebel systems for reporting, forecasting, and customer management.

· Managed the project implementing the Messaging CRM department and call centre to manage the outsourcing of the Telex and Messaging services from P&O Nedlloyd, Omnes, Bimcom, Shell, and BP.