Managing Supplier Managers, change and service integration

Short term role to transition Solution Architects and Senior Solution Designers to roles in new target operating model.

Managing Solution Architects and Designers for ACCA as part of the strategic IT transformation programme.

John was asked to take leadership of the Project delivery team consisting of on and off shore Project Managers and the PMO for Project delivery. In this global role, John is responsible for all projects coming from requests for service where ever IBM provides service to the Wood Group account.John is responsible for project delivery on schedule, within budget and to the standard expected by the customer.

John joined the Wood Group account with a view to picking up a number of high profile tasks to help bring key projects to conclusion, to introduce a dashboard mentality to project reporting and to provide a focal point to report to Wood Groups key technical delivery stakeholder. The outcome of this was significant improvement in customer confidence and concluded with the troubled projects being brought back to an agreed Green status.John established a New Site on-boarding process as a service delivery wrapper to bring existing procedures for Service Request, Data gathering, Solution Development, Solution approval and Service Readiness. John was asked to programme lead the cross competency IBM team building the Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC) as a proof of concept. Much of the technical design had been done when John took this on, however there was a need for governance and control around making the SDDC a reality. John drove the Project Manager to establish a mature plan, ran the governance with the local stakeholder and ensured the technical teams met their commitments. This programme had been slipping, as had confidence in the delivery teams capability. John ran the programme to the point that the SDDC was ready for new workload over VPN and a plan was in place take SDDC forward over WAN connections. At this point John handed the programme over to an experienced Transformation Project Manager to progress.

John was asked to take leadership of the PMO again through the planning of the decommissioning programme and to establish a PMO which could support this account through the period of exiting from the 2 data centres.John’s specific objectives were to govern cross tower planning to ensure a deliverable plan was in place in order that commercial coverage could be agreed for the decommissioning programme. Whilst doing this, John built a PMO using resource from the UK, Poland and Romania which in turn could run on its own as decommissioning was in execution.Having established the controls and procedures for delivering the disengagement programme and reached a point where stable execution was progressing ahead of schedule, John had fulfilled his commitments to the programme and ready to move to a new assignment

As Programme Lead, John was brought in to stabilise an area where progress and customer relationship had deteriorated. John brought focus back to the team, restoring scope control and a collaborative relationship with the customer thus reducing the number of escalations and building an environment from which progress could be made.The team went on to define the operational model for the tactical access management solution and the architectural model for the strategic solution

As PMO Lead John was charged with co-leadership of the PMO, John was the Edinburgh lead and his counterpart, the London lead. This short term assignment brought control and structure to the PMO at a time when IBM was merging business lines. Key deliverable was a unified PMO with established governance in place.

Interim role to support the UKI team as operational manager responsible for the team tasked with resourcing of UK & Ireland Transition & Transformation solutions Responsibilities included people management of the team and interlock with Executive team on approvals for external hiring of contract staff

In this role John was accountable for the T&T results of the Strategic Outsourcing programs across all Nordic Countries, The UK and Ireland. Specifically to lead drive and support the T&T in achieving green results.As a Portfolio Manager, John’s responsibilities start from Solution Evaluation, Contract validation, through handover to delivery and until completion of sign off to Business As Usual delivery execution.The role required a deep understanding of T&T execution and contractual obligations. As such John worked closely with local teams and Country Operational Leaders to ensure programmes run to budget and time. Where issues occur, the Portfolio Manager runs Executive reviews and get to green programmes.In addition to driving programme execution against budget and deliverables, John chairs the Country Finance and Compliance reviews for T&T, producing and reporting to the European team on Nordic and UK&I performance against targets and outlook on the same.As the Portfolio manager for Nordics and UK&I, John was responsible for account and IMT performance against key performance indicators. Relevant KPIs: overall RAG and all related KPIs as defined in the Global KPI sheet. Measurements on an account level as well as a portfolio level.John is also responsible for preparing and coaching account T&T leaders when they are required to present troubled projects to the global management team.

John was appointed as European Distributed Client Support Service Line Owner with effect 1st January 2009.This is a key role for delivery, reporting to the European End User Executive, and performed as part of the Global EUS ITD SO team.During his time in this role John delivered improvements in cost and quality of service. In doing so John demonstrated greater coverage and accuracy in metric reporting in addition to meeting aggressive cost improvements year on year.John led a focus on quality and since taking on this role seen the average SLA misses drop from 3.8 per month across Europe to 0.3. Bringing benefits in service quality and reduced service penalties. This is in an environment that seen a 70% increase in the number of measured SLAs in 2010.John led the work to build a network of strategic partners for new business, reducing the number of partners from over 60 to 6 for the core delivery countries.As a Senior Manager, John is an active mentor and has provided support and guidance to several individuals identified as potential future leaders.

John was appointed as Competitiveness Leader for End User Competencies with effect 1st January 2008. This is a key role for delivery focused on improving the competitiveness of EUS offerings and driving changes to the delivery model. In context of these challenges John : -• Built a community of practice linking delivery capability to market offerings• Drove the strategic direction of the service in context of the market• Promoted a common approach to Cost Modelling• Advanced the interlock for end to end EUS solutions in support of right to left strategyThe objectives of the Competitiveness role are directly aligned to the delivery priorities of improving revenue and reducing costs through driving standardisation and automation whilst building and integrating with our global capability.

John’s primary focus in this role was Pan-IOT CSC new business . As the European focal point John worked with delivery teams and EBIS to ensure deals were solutioned according to strategy and satisfied the requirement specified by the client. In addition to this, John was accountable for CSC solution commitment sign off at the Pan-IOT Service Delivery Review Board.During this period John : - Managed the Introduction of the GR solution calculator across EMEA for Helpdesk Services in IDC locations Introduced the EUS New Business Community and forum with participation of IMT New Business Representatives.  Produced the Gartner Magic Quadrant Helpdesk submissions for 2 years – Co-presenting this to Gartner.  Developed a number of solutions to cover escalated x-lob requirements dealing with Global VP to ensure requirements were met.  Presenting the IBM value proposition to executives within the client environment. Articulating how IBM can bring value to the clients business. Identified and has driven proposed changes to improve our competitive standing, our operational effectiveness and our billing structures. Building on the experience of the UK DCS New Business Integration Management role, taking this to a European level and moving primary focus to Customer Service Centres, Reporting directly to the Pan-IOT CSC Operations Executive, John was the focal point for new business requiring a CSC desk in an outsourced environment across EMEA, John chaired the interlock meetings with the delivery country representatives and provided support to the Global team as the European focal point for new business involving the CSC competency. John was the Competency representative on the Global Security standards review project for End User Services and Deputy Chair for the Pan-IOT New Bid Validation team. John was the author of IBM’s Helpdesk Outsourcing Magic Quadrant reports 2007 - 2008 from which Gartner recognized IBM as the leader for services in Europe.

In this role John was responsible for signing off all deskside solutions in the UK, confirming commercial acceptance to deliver to the SLAs and budgetary targets defined in the solution. Additionally, John had responsibility for driving the strategic development of the Distributed Client Support Solutioning templates ensuring the metrics used were current, competitive and structured to fit the delivery organisation.

In this role John managed the on-site support teams delivering a break fix service for desktop and server hardware on 5 manufacturing sites across Scotland, Wales and Ireland. This function included procurement and asset management in a European team delivering to a global contract. John’s duties covered both line and task management roles, including appraisals and goal setting. Due to market pressures and manufacturing moving off shore, this contract was re-negotiated to take the NWSM function back in house, John worked with the management team to ensure successful delivery of service, re-deployment of staff and transfer of responsibilities to the receiving groups in the months leading up to contract cessation.

As Service Manager for this account reporting directly to the Service Delivery Project Executive, John was responsible for the teams controlling Service Level, Problem and Change management. In addition to these functional areas, John managed the teams with responsibility for desktop fulfillment (the management of the relationship with the IBM internal engineering group), Disaster Recovery, Logical Security, Access Control and what remained of the IBM Perth Service Centre. During this period John successfully upheld the line and task management roles for staff in all of the above areas. The IBM outsourcing contract at Norwich Union (Perth) ended in August 2001. During the period running up to account closure John was personally responsible for ensuring Service was managed in accord with the contractual obligations

 Responsible for the management of the IBM Network Services Group providing support on an out-sourced basis for Wide Area Data and Voice networks to CGU throughout the UK. The objective of this role was to transition the management of WAN and Voice networks back to CGU. During this period John was the Transition Project Manager with the additional responsibility for the group’s task and line management including the redeployment of all staff and securing adequate cover to meet contractual obligations for the period of transition. This project was completed to target and within budget including the novation of all related contracts. The deliverables from this high profile project were key to the customers business. John successfully attained accreditation as an Advisory Project Manager during this assignment

During this assignment John led the IBM Perth team responsible for establishing the site guidelines for the introduction and application of SCM. This was a global aim by IBM to consolidate its practices in software development and administration whilst complying with the requirements of the Capability, Maturity Model (Level 3). The standard document set produced during this project was accepted for publication to the IBM Intellectual Capital Asset register.

During the period of extensive change in Scottish Local government as a result of Council re-organisation. John established and structured the Software Development group, establishing strategic tools and skills to take forward the new Councils Information Technology Section. John managed a unit of 11 programmers delivering bespoke client server solutions to address business needs, providing an internal consultancy service in the selection/implementation of third party software and supporting legacy UNIX packages. In this role John set the criteria for the strategic workgroup and enterprise Client Server Development tools and ultimately shared the Head of IT Service role, reporting directly to the Chief Executive for the year prior to his joining IBM.John’s major achievements during his period as Development Manager included: -* The migration of 3 Revenue systems (Council Tax / Benefits / Business Rates) from an IBM Mainframe to a UNIX based system supplied by an external provider. This suite was successfully delivered to a very aggressive timescale and was the Council’s primary tools for managing their primary source of revenue.* Bespoke development of a Social Work Information System using client server technology spanning the management of clients including sensitive information in areas such as Community Care. This was a ground-breaking system in Local Government terms supporting in excess of 100 users over 11 sites using WAN technologies and UNIX Servers.* Bespoke development of a Superannuation System to provide scheme membership management facilities. This system is used to administer the pensions of multiple Councils as well as independent bodies such as Police and Fire Brigade.