Unite Students, a FTSE100 company, is the UKs leading provider of student accommodation.Reporting to the CIO, my work supported company operations and the long-term business strategy involving the wholesale transformation of technology and ways of working. When I joined, Unite had no cloud infrastructure. Security systems needed updating and were not managed effectively. There was no DevOps or Agile working and very little automation. Colleagues were reporting a vast number of IT issues, and major incidents were happening far too often. The IT team was struggling, with the resolution SLA at just 63%. On leaving, this SLA was at 97%. Key infrastructure now resides in Azure & AWS and new partnerships established with Microsoft and AWS. All systems are fully monitored with dashboards for key business systems. Security systems and processes were updated and managed by a newly created Security team and aligned to the NIST framework. IT teams now use CI release pipelines and 'Infrastructure as Code' utilising Azure DevOps. Agile training has enabled all teams to align using Scrum to improve work planning, accountability and collaboration.Digital Workplace technology and support processes were improved with increased self-service automation and ITIL processes reducing IT incidents by 63% and Major Incidents by 83%. 'Device as a Service’ reduced time for staff hardware provision from 15 to 3 days and Microsoft Teams meeting facilities supported hybrid working.Major projects included successfully integrating the £1.4B acquisition of Liberty Living into the Group, including 53 new properties The delivery of technology for new a Build-to-Rent business being developed by Unite GroupTransforming the Wi-Fi experience for 70000 customers increasing the Customer Wi-Fi NPS score from 65 to above 90Delivery of a new cloud hosted, Omnichannel contact Centre solution reduced the systems needed to service customer requests from 4 to 1 and provided invaluable reporting.

Responsible for the transformation from a traditional, highly manual, significant on-premise, self-managed IT estate to one that embraced well architected cloud, utilising the latest automation and platform solutions IaaS, PaaS, SaaS solutions. Motivating and developing a team of traditional engineers to become highly ambitious DevOps and Platform engineers able to deliver world-class solutions for the business. Developed a number of important 3rd party partners who could better maintain commodity IT services allowing time for the team to develop and deliver value add work.

Reporting to the Chief Exec, I was brought into WMC to report on the IT systems and strategy and to identify how the IT function could be improved and developed. The Centre regularly contracted my services for their IT technical projects include the website and associated in-house ticketing system, which generated £40M pa in revenue. I advised the business on all technical matters and developed their IT strategy and polices, developed the IT budget and managed IT contracts. I also worked with and advised the internal IT team and 3rd party IT suppliers to ensure exemplar service was provided to the Centre and its customers. I also represented the WMC at all technical internal and external audits with Deloitte and KPMG. Major projects I completed include PCI compliance, Cyber security involving internal and external penetration testing and security awareness training, business continuity and disaster recovery planning, Office365 migration, new telephone system and Contact Centre integrated into existing CRM system and Skype for Business, new EPOS system, new ERP system, a complete network overhaul, development of a private cloud architecture including virtual desktop, commissioning a new data centre and the procurement and project management of the redevelopment of the Centre’s website (www.wmc.org.uk) which resulted in a 70% rise in online ticket sales.Very significant operational cost savings were realised by utilising new technologies and by changing or renegotiating terms with a number of the Centre’s key suppliers.

LSI Business Solutions was a ‘Microsoft Gold Certified Partner’ and provided IT consultancy, implementation and support services to companies nationwide helping increase their business potential and revenue.Reporting at board level to the CEO of LSIs parent company (The Rowe Group of Companies), I managed a team of 12 staff including Solution Architects, System Engineers and Helpdesk Engineers. I oversaw all technical projects from sale to implementation and was also heavily involved in company sales and marketing efforts and its eventual sale to another consultancy in November 2006.

Convergys was global mobile billing software developer and Contact Centre provider with a $2B annual turnover. Initially employed to project manage the roll-out of an in-house time reporting system across EMEA, I later joined the IT support function. In 2002 I was promoted and relocated to Cambridge to set up a new data centre to centralise IT systems from 14 countries across EMEA. My role involved planning, designing and implementing the consolidation of these systems that supported services used by 67000 staff.