Ashley Welch Email and Phone Number

• Project lead for the group’s critical objectives relating to its business management solution, resulting in improvements to manufacturing operations, data collection, accounting, quotations, sales management and more.• Provided leadership on the senior team for the entire group.• Project and technical lead to a software project that was delivered to 2662 Tesco stores. The solution is critical to Tesco’s in store marketing requirements. • Instrumental in the creation of a new software business within the group.• Led sales pitches for software tenders, often presenting to senior staff from global businesses.• Implemented Agile development techniques to old and new teams.• Widespread infrastructure changes to the entire group.• Built a new software development team that has a proven track record.• Project lead on InfoSec leading to UKAS accredited ISO 27001 certification.• Budget management, resulting in 60% savings in 2019.• Defined the group’s IT strategy and roadmap.• Migration to Azure services.

Overall lead for the software arm of Augustus Martin, focused on delivering our marketing relationship management system, Fuze.

I joined Beta Distribution Plc and quickly oversaw widespread changes to all IT systems that led to complete stabilization and resilience. These changes related to infrastructure, software, telephones, staffing in the growing IT department and processes in the IT team. I currently manage all aspects of IT in the group.• Management of all IT systems including the IT budget• Defined the group’s IT strategy and roadmap.• Management of the IT team and processes within the department.• Security focused in all aspects of IT.• Redesigned and implemented widespread changes to all IT systems that now produce zero in hours downtime.• Project management for major IT projects• Successful completion of audits in relation to software licenses.• Implemented a DR strategy that can only result in 15 seconds of lost data across all IT systems.• Implemented robust backup solutions.• Dealt with major IT issues during high pressured situations.• Quickly learnt a number of new technologies as well as expanding my infrastructure knowledge in all areas.• Management of third party IT service providers.• Promotion of open communication and developed this throughout the team and the group.

• Day to day management of both departments. Ensuring we are properly staffed and have clear objectives to complete tasks, projects and achieve KPIs. • Project management, costing bespoke software and implementations. Ensuring profitable delivery of tasks and projects.• Act as technical lead & escalation point for the other technical staff.• Support the sales team with pre-sales technical advice, including attending sales meetings to provide technical information or demonstrate solutions.• Present and organise yearly seminars to customers across the south east.• Organise yearly software upgrades for over 400 customers.• Working in a customer facing capacity, particularly to resolve escalated tickets.• Keep team members motivated and build good relationships with all staff.• Recruitment of new staff and helping develop new team members in their new role.• Champion open communication & develop this throughout the team.• Test new products and services whilst producing internal documentation & deployment guides.• Create and implement new changes to improve existing processes.

• Systems analysis, design and programming, covering maintenance, enhancements and new development.• Providing customers with specifications and quotes for bespoke work.• Mainly using Visual FoxPro as my main programming language as well as other technologies such as SQL, Visual Basic and Java. I am also in the process of learning C#.• Managing projects.• Providing telephone and on-site support for customers on a range of software packages and performing upgrades to software.• Generating documentation for users regarding their bespoke software.• Setting up suitable test data and testing bespoke.• Producing routines for data conversion, exports and imports.• Installing bespoke software and training users in its use.

• Provided 1st and 2nd level support for all IT based systems in HMV.• Project Leader for HMV Radio. The system became a core aspect of the business in over 200 stores.• Supported managers in the awkward redundancy situation that arose for the whole IT department. This included training new staff.• Provided emergency support out of working hours for all HMV’s IT systems.• Worked within a large team often under extreme pressure.