Blair Macdonald Email & Phone Number

Dunfermline, Gb

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

 Promoted internally to become the Process Owner for Service Request Management after a year and half of working in a permanent capacity with Cadent. Took the lead in driving improvements within Service Request Management, resulting in reduced fulfilment times, improved SLA performance, and more business processes supported with workflows from new Catalogue Items. Lead a substantial piece of work to improve the Starter, Mover and Leaver processes through overhauling the associated Service Catalogue Requests. This meant creating a Mover request from scratch and overhauling the Starter and Leaver requests. These changes delivered customer and business value through the streamlining and simplification of fundamental processes which were previously scattered, unclear for the user, and inefficient.  Worked with the Field Support Operations team to implement new operational processes which resulted in the halving of their ticket backlog over the course of a year, whilst also increasing transparency of performance and stock management.  Ran weekly focus calls with the largest fulfilment teams, where various operational indicators are discussed, including ticket closure rates, aged tickets, SLA performance, and any other issues being faced each week. Supported the delivery of numerous projects with their Service Request requirements as part of Service Transition. Responsible for the co-ordination, validation, and delivery of non-standard Service Requests. Reviewed and acted upon any Dissatisfaction Surveys received through the user feedback process. Produced Service Request reporting content for monthly departmental reporting activities and attended review sessions with senior leadership, directly answering to any queries. Successfully lead Service Request Management process through a large-scale departmental re-organisation which saw the external Service Management Integration (SMI) team being brought in-house.

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

 After 2 years working as a contractor through FDM, I was the only one of my cohort to be brought on as a permanent employee, reflecting the positive impact I made on the company with my work in that time. The role was split between responsibility for reporting activities and business analysis work for the department. Achieved the ITIL v4 Foundation qualification after completing a self-taught course and passing the certification exam with a score of 88%. I then brought this into my day-to-day role by working closely with the SMI and Service Delivery teams to ensure the management & operation of Service Management processes align to ITIL best practice. This motivation to learn and improve in my role was continued through the completion of a 4-day Power BI training course which has helped improve my data analysis and reporting skills. Created the monthly Service Delivery IT Leadership Team report from the ground-up and altered it each month based on feedback from senior management. Covers Incident, Service Request, Change, Problem, Service Transition, and Availability Management, as well as Service Desk performance and other process-related performance indicators. Created & scheduled reports in ServiceNow to track performance over several service areas. Supported Hypercare activities by designing and facilitating daily reports for a variety of stakeholders. Identified and delivered continual service improvements for the Service Management processes and supporting tools.

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

 Member of the PMO team on SAP implementation programme (BOTP) responsible for modernising the SAP systems for Finance, Supply Chain, and HR, as well as upgrading the ERP system to SAP S4/HANA. Responsible for the creation and maintenance of the Programme Resource Tracker, used to forecast resource cost for the programme and track the actuals coming through SAP. Created the BOTP Programme Pack which documented all the core PMO processes. Facilitated the weekly Design Integrity Review session by setting the agenda, arranging the creation and presentation of design papers, minute-taking and write-up, and maintaining of the decision and action trackers. Organisation of Programme Assurance activities, including facilitating external audits and arranging Stage Gates.

Coventry, England, United Kingdom

 Member of PMO team on large-scale IS transformation programme (Kinetic) responsible for completely detaching all IS systems following separation from National Grid, whilst simultaneously migrating them to the AWS Cloud service. Facilitation of Programme Manager Board meetings, the outcomes of which went to the executive level. Responsible for the maintenance of two workstream-level RAID logs and escalating the key items into the programme-level RAID log for review by programme leadership. Arranged ‘Lessons Learned’ documentation activities after the various project go-lives. Assisted with remediation activities on Programme Documentation.

Inverkeithing, Scotland, United Kingdom

 Completed 2 months professional training on both Business Analysis and Project Support functions.  Training also included advanced modules on the complete Microsoft Office suite of applications, with particular focus on Excel, Word, Project & Visio. Earned the PRINCE2 Foundation qualification. Contracted out to Cadent for an initial 12 months, before this was extended by the client for an additional year. After these 2 years, Cadent decided to take me on as a permanent resource due to the standard of work displayed. Earned an ‘FDM Star’ staff award for exemplary work at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic for helping drive the team efforts to make the sudden transition of working from home as smooth as possible through providing 1-2-1 support for business-critical field and office colleagues to get them set up remotely as quickly as possible.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

 Juggling full-time honors-year university study with organising engaging promotional events on campus to inform people about the opportunities available with Teach First. Focus on innovation and creativity when planning and running events in order to maximise interest and engagement. This approach resulted in our team surpassing the previous record for referrals earned during the year.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

 Serving customers at a specialist whisky bar over the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Building a deeper knowledge of whisky to provide the best possible customer experience. Drive sales and meet targets through excellent customer service and working effectively with other members of the bar team.

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

 Carrying out official Naval Reserve duties as an Officer Cadet of the Edinburgh Universities Royal Naval Unit. Solid timekeeping and punctuality to duties. Maintaining high standards of uniform, conduct, and discipline. Actively participating in building a strong community of people. Quickly learning and utilising technical skills whilst on deployment. For example, maritime navigation and piloting.

Master’S Degree, Geography, 2:1

Activities and Societies: - Edinburgh Universities Royal Naval Reserve Unit (URNU) - Edinburgh University Teach First Brand Manager Team.

High School, All A'S

Key achievements include: - Straight A's in all exams over Standard Grades, Highers, and Advanced Highers. - Awarded Dux for best overall.