One in four homeless young people have a diagnosed mental health problem and every year over 83,000 young people experience homelessness in the UK. I am volunteering to support Byte Night in raising awareness and funds to help young people who have found themselves in horrible situations through no fault of their own. If you want to support by joining Byte Night 2019 and sleep rough with your business, university, community, volunteer group, family, or friends then please let me know.

AutoProtect Group comprises of a number of market leading automotive businesses - AutoProtect, DealTrak, Shine! and i-Comply. We supply best-of-breed products and services and deliver one-click F&I (Finance & Insurance) with unrivalled data insights to our customers.My role is to oversee the strategy, design, build and operational running of the Group's Platform, Technology Solutions and underpinning IT infrastructure, ensuring that the Technology strategy is aligned and supports delivery of the Autoprotect Group's strategy and business plan.

Responsible for setting the strategic direction for the Technology platform at Dealtrak and for leading the teams that design, build, deliver and operate the platform.

I was brought into the role to transform the IT Operations team and restore confidence following a period of poor service and reputational decline. The remit was to ensure the team had a service first mentality, stabilise service availability, create a true 24*7 support capability and align ways of working to a DevOps method of operating at the same time as ensuring the department was well positioned to support a rapidly growing and successful business utilising a variety of technologies (SAN, Cloud, VMWare, SQL, Linux, .NET etc)Key to the role was the development of and leading the delivery of a three year strategy to stabilise service, simplify operational delivery and position the function to support the companies future growth plans including a plan for adopting and supporting cloud based services and technologies.Areas of responsibility: Leading the Group ITS Operations department which numbers 50 people in size operating both in the UK and internationally, defining the vision and strategic direction, support of all Callcredit live services and underlying technology platforms (physical, virtual and cloud based), owning relationships with third party partners and suppliers, owning an in-life operational budget of circa 3.5millAchievements:• Completed a department re-organisation to create a more service aligned support structure and transition to 24*7 capability• Created a new ITS Operations leadership team to lead on developing a new vision, strategy and cultural change within the department • Delivered several improvements leading to improved service availability

Recruited to implement a new Service Management framework and function in a rapidly growing organisation that required operational and service management leadership to ensure a high level of service quality and satisfaction was delivered and maintained for all ITS delivered servicesAreas of Responsibility: Leading the Group Service Management function, ensuring the appropriate processes/controls are in place and operating effectively, creating effective Vision and Strategies for ITSM and ITS ensuring alignment with wider business strategies, ensuring that wider business goals and priorities are serviced by Group IT, owning the IT relationship with clients, supporting client facing teams/SLA negotiation, owning, managing and improving IT customer satisfaction, ensuring ITIL training and awareness plans in place and strategies exist for developing and embedding the Service Management framework, ensuring appropriate toolsets are in place to support the service management function, designing, agreeing and measuring KPIs to ensure IT Service provision is fit for purpose; Introducing a performance culture across the IT team, ensuring IT services operate within contractual SLAs, identifying and sponsoring SIP activities as well as sponsoring improvement and strategic projects, own and chair Group Service Boards with the senior executive committee, own ITS governance: delivery of IT audit and risk framework and accreditation ( ISO 20000), own the Group DR frameworkAchievements:• Built a Service Management function and capability where none previously existed• Achieved ISO20000 Accreditation• Led on several Service Improvement and strategic initiatives that have resulted in services regularly achieving 99.9% availability and delivering a high quality service• Led on producing a customer focussed ITS team that is now recognised throughout the business as delivering a high quality service and achieving excellent customer satisfaction results

Lead and managed a team with responsibility for managing the introduction of new services into live service supportAreas of Responsibility: ensuring that Service Introduction processes are in place and adhered to, supporting the development and advising on the strategy for all new major service releases, including design and implementation of an appropriate service model, assuring supplier releases have been tested against agreed Service Delivery criteria to meet Service Management requirements (e.g. Service Levels, Capacity, Availability), ensuring that CfH accredited supplier releases are managed through business change control in terms of business risk, authorisation and being fit for production service, providing a senior interface to review and provide advice across the Service Management disciplines on Release plans and Changes on behalf of the service management team, representing Service Management on Programme Boards or gateway reviews ensuring that all Service risks, issues and actions have been resolved to give approval for releases into production, ensuring that all Strategic Health Authorities are following ITIL compliant release management processes.Achievements:• Developed and delivered Service Introduction processes for all LPfIT and SHA releases or new deliveries• Led on and successfully delivered a service improvement initiative to improve the levels of service and performance being experienced by GP’s in the North West. This included managing and co-ordinating resources from the local SHA and GP software suppliers to improve the service quality for approx. 30 GP surgeries

Responsible for the company change control processes, CMDB and Disaster Recovery provision for core servicesAchievements:• Change Management – re-designed and implemented robust change management processes and controls• Configuration Management – responsible for implementing a CMDB from inception, through delivery to ongoing Business as Usual• Release Management – implemented release management processes and governance where none previously existed, ensuring projects and software releases were delivered into live effectively• Disaster Recovery – developed processes and documentation and project managed full end to end testing to ensure DR provision was fit for purpose and that full invocation plans worked effectivelyOther Responsibilities: member of the on-call duty rota for Incident Managers, involved in establishing an Incident Management process, chair weekly meetings to review incidents and problems ensuring any actions are completed to agreed timescales, line management responsibilities for change and configuration co-ordinators, deputise for the Head of Service Management as required, participate in service reviews with third party suppliers and customers taking a lead role in improving processes and quality where needed, responsible for the production and maintenance of the service catalogue, responsible for project managing BAU projects (e.g. upgrade of Oracle databases)