Chris F. Email & Phone Number

London, England, Gb

London, England, United Kingdom

Responsibilities• Partner with the business to develop strategic technology plans aligned with the vision, mission, and purpose of WPP & GroupM.• Ensure appropriate governance is applied to programs and projects in the technology area to assure success.• Technology leader for the region accountable for success of technology, delivering effectively and efficiently, and responding to change with agility.• Lead engagement with C-level stakeholders and focus groups to drive strategic improvements through technology and business change.• Assess short term business needs/risks and implement tactical solutions to improve situations quickly.• Establish effective partnerships with the business to become a trusted partner in technology.Achievements• Transitioned UK technology department to a global technology operating model, enabling WPP to scale technology investments across multiple markets and regions.• Developed strong relationships with business stakeholders to ensure global technology plans address business needs and drive success in business and technology terms.• Transformed UK&I technology investment portfolio to ensure strategic investments are leveraged and reduced TCO of IT.• Improved process efficiency and effectiveness via data and RPA initiatives, reducing overall cost of client services.• M&A - Completed technology due diligence and successfully integrated M&A targets into the standard technology operating model

• Partner with the business to develop a business driven technology strategy.• Work with stakeholders to understand challenges, analyse risks & opportunities, articulate business cases, establish ROI, prioritise demand and define measurable outcomes.• Scope plan and execute programs according to best practice governance and within parameters of Group IT strategy.• Worked with C-Level stakeholders to run discovery process to create a value focused and strategically aligned technology project portfolio for 2021/22.• Improved team culture, introduced professional IT certification, design thinking, agile methods and better governance to re-vitalise delivery and analysis functions following Covid related cutbacks.• Maintained continuity and improved IT services throughout COVID period, delivering locally and via offshore centres of excellence.

• Directed Application Operations, ERP development, CRM, IT Operations and Transformation• Defined IT architecture for UK with infrastructure architects according to WPP architecture patterns.• Created business network to ensure relationships were effective and programs were aligned to business need.• Created a stable technology environment following a serious cyber incident.• Change management program to ensure innovative technology landed effectively in the business.• Managed business continuity planning testing and disaster recovery exercises with the business.• Improved IT service provision standards in partnership with key suppliers.• Ran technology steering board, engaging with C-Level stakeholders to agree technology strategy• Introduced ITIL best practice processes for managing IT Procurement, IT Investment, IT accounting and budgeting; increasing visibility of the total cost of ownership of IT to inform strategy.• Accountable for technology budget and financial management processes for UK and Ireland.Achievements• Transformed legacy cost base, moved to cloud first approach, achieved multi-million in savings p.a. and invested savings in modern strategic technologies & initiatives.• Delivered a standardised, stable, and secure IT operating model and disaster recovery plan, reducing risk of exposure to cyber threats ensuring continuity of service to clients.• Enabled business to scale effectively and efficiently to meet increased demand via offshore shared services centers, new technology and process automation.

• Built relationships with local markets across the EMEA region to understand their business issues and market challenges, created a regional ERP improvement strategy that enabled local execution of global strategy. • Built and managed a team of 20-30 people across EMEA, responsible for performance and alignment to the organisation objectives, providing coaching, training, and motivating the team to work together successfully. • Managed partners, suppliers, and software development vendors to deliver improved & standardised media platforms to the EMEA region.• • Products aligned to strategic aims and developed according to an agile delivery method by a global development team of internal and partner resources e.g., IBM, EPAM, Fusion-ex.• Ran RFP processes, negotiated contracts and commercials with vendors.• Oversaw the technical and business operations, dev-ops, and development of the in-house digital advertising campaign stewardship system.• Responsible for working with auditors to establish compliance of technology systems to SOX and IT security controls.

• Managed the application development and operations teams for GroupM UK.• Managed multiple software development projects delivered by the software development teams and offshore providers, managing time and costs of the project to ensure they delivered on time and to budget. Solutions included investment management, econometrics, data, and analytics that enabled the business to work effectively and competitively in the media sector.• Managed the global rollout of a suite of media econometric and planning tools to various locations including Africa, APAC, US, and Europe. These tools enabled media planners to allocate their budgets in a cost effective and best practice method.• Implemented an agile resource management process to ensure development resource was used as effectively as possible across projects. Developer productivity could be measured easily across the team and offshore providers, highlighting areas for improvement or positive trends that could be improved.• Delivered a program to move from legacy applications to global standard platforms and reduce application costs at GroupM, I leveraged agile and scrum development process to ensure all requirements were business driven and the cost of development was accurately estimated. • Through the introduction of best practice MSP and ITIL methods I reduced total cost of ownership of applications by £500k a year, reduced incident numbers and resolution times and provided software products valued and taken advantage of by the business

Project managed through the full lifecycle the development of media systems and implementation of package applications, using Waterfall, Scrum and Agile methods managed using Microsoft TFS.Interfaced with senior stakeholders across GroupM to understand their requirements and deliver status updates on key projects.Performed business analysis and developed business cases and investment appraisals for new project requirements across the business, this would involve an initial brief with directors followed up with requirements analysis with senior management and presentation to the investment board.Introduced an agile project management process to the team at GroupM, trained up other project managers on how to use agile methods for software development projects, this resulted in more consistent delivery of projects.Project managed and designed a new method for data warehousing across the UK, this enabled the re-use of SSIS packages across projects, provided a consistent error handling and auditing framework to notify support team of any data processing errors, provided a standard approach to creating SSAS cubes for the various data models across the group, the project also reduced the cost of developing data warehousing solutions for clients and reduced time to market.

Project managed the introduction of a new website to attract students and increase investment in research to the university. The project was successful, and I was requested to migrate further departments to the new website.

Managed IT infrastructure, end user services, software development and application implementation initiatives for the HQ department in BT. Developed business cases to secure funding for a major improvement program with a budget totaling £5 million.

Developed software systems for BT Wholesale, the systems were web-based and focused on CRM, network ordering and provision and IT service desk management.

I began my career working in desktop support for BT resolving computing issues and managing software deployments for the 3,000 users within the division. Following the creation of a successful web solution for an office move, I moved into software development.

Msc, It And Telecoms, Distinction

Education record