Marc Alexander Email & Phone Number

I.T. Consultancy, Data migration and integration, systems analysis and design.

The Tate had a made a decision to replace their Single Customer View and ticketing systems with a new ticketing system across their 4 galleries.I was asked to work on the project as a broader technical resource due to my knowledge of their SCV and experience in implementing ticketing systems previously.This involved working closely with the Solution Architect, Product Owner & Project Manger of the project in a small agile team, but with big objectives!Some of the responsibilities and achievements were:* Learning how the new ticketing system worked at a technical and functional level* Understanding their API and working with various other 3rd party suppliers to build integrations between other Tate systems* Data mapping, configuration and data migration of old and new systems* Full reimplementation of their marketing platform, Emarsys (now owned by SAP)* Collaborative and iterative Solution Design of various component of the new technical landscape* Successfully turning off their previous problematic SCV system"Wearing one hat" was not an option with such a small team and therefore transitioning between technical and non-technical challenges was a daily occurrence.Replacing the ticketing system required business-wide change and was a truly rewarding project to deliver.

I was brought in to stabilise their Single Customer View system, called "SVoC".The system contained many defects, some of which were burdening internal resources with extra work, some causing customer pain and other posing a compliance risk.Understanding the the custom build system was the first challenge as no-one understood the whole system which consisted of around 100 microservices running in their own docker containers communicating with each other.Some of the issues / defects were know by the business and other were silently happening in the background, yet to be discovered.The achievements of this projects included:* Documentation and providing greater understanding of the system* Managing expectations of unhappy stakeholders, mainly by coming up with suitable solutions or workaround for the issues, along with realistic timescales* Root cause analysis and resolution of some of the critical issues* Identifying and recommending that the system was not really fit-for-purpose or a suitable fit for Tate

I worked on the Accesso EPOS Programme as part of the team to replace the ticketing systems at different Merlin attractions located globally. Most attractions had the Galaxy software developed by Gateway and were moving to "Accesso Passport".I was brought in to ensure a smooth technical implementation of the POS software into the attractions. This involved working with central and local IT Teams across all time-zones.The hardware estate was very varied and the installation processes provided by the EPOS provider were cumbersome. I had to make this into a process which could be followed by IT people of varying skill levels and be implemented across hundreds of till systems.The different till hardware, PEDs, scanners and printers made this a very challenging project, but rewarding. It meant I was heavily involved in: New chip & pin integrations, scanner configurations, BOCAs, customer till displays with varying code page capabilities and more.For some of the big attractions a data migration was required where I used an externally developed Mulesoft application to ensure ticket data was successfully migrated. This involved co-ordinating the creation of mapping files for the different ticket types and prices between systems. Some of the challenges involved here were: volume of data, inaccurate mappings, API rate limiting and failure codes.

PayPoint built a new EPOS system from the ground up, aimed mainly at small FMCG convenience stores and shops offering PayPoint services such as energy top-up cards.The EPOS system was centralised whereby all stores communicated with this central system. One of their objectives was to have a "global" product file whereby if one retailer added a product to their system then it would also be available to other retailers too, saving them time in back office maintenance and data entry.One of my main objectives was to build a process which was able to identify duplicate products entered by different retailers and turn it into a "master" product with accurate information such as descriptions, sizes etc.They had an ambitious view that the product file process would be fully automated; with humans entering in the data in a rush in-store this was not realistic. However, I came up with a prototype system which used some matching algorithms to identify the pieces of information which would likely to be most accurate, making the the review process centrally much more straightforward.They were left with documentation of how the system worked, the matching algorithms used and a fully functional prototype system. Their next step was going to be integrating the logic from the prototype into the EPOS system infrastructure itself, making the product review / cleansing process even easier for someone at head office to manage.The system hooked into an MS SQL and MongoDB database.Other activities:* T-SQL query optimisation as the EPOS system was running slowly* Educated the testing team about barcode symbology and other product attributes* Aided the building of querying and alerting in Splunk* One-off analysis of sales and product data from MongoDB

Systems Integration & EPOS Project Work-Accesso Passport POS - Global EPOS ticketing system-Skidata Handshake - Access Control system for Parks and Attractions

 Design Documentation – Created High Level and Detailed Design documents for various project deliverables, such as a an upgrade of the BT Expedite Store6 EPOS system to improve POS workflow Technical Lead for Electronic Receipts – Delivered the capability to provide electronic receipts to customers in all Halfords and Cycle Republic stores. The eReceipts solution was integrated with the POS system and Experian Cross-Channel Marketing Platform (CCMP) to provide not only electronic receipts but also targeted marketing based on customer spending trends Systems Analyst for the Halfords Marketplace implementation – Became the Mirakl Marketplace (MCI & MMP) expert- REST APIs used to integrate between the central systems and Marketplace sellers- Configuration of the Mirakl portal used to manage the Marketplace sellers- Designed business processes with for Halfords and the Marketplace sellers- Worked with the Marketplace Business Owner to continually improve technical and business process challenges

 Gained responsibilities in addition to previous role Managed and accountable for EPOS systems installations into stores – New installs and store takeovers (1 direct report) Budget and price management of EPOS installs, including charging of retailer EPOS fees via accounts receivable. Simplification of the retailer charging process, saving 1 day of man effort per week Web Shop systems owner – approved requests for change to the b2b website Technical and Solutions Architect representative for the G.B. Division, sitting on the GDA (Group Design Authority) board

 Technical Analyst and developer of a reconciliation tool for the “goods out” warehouse billing application- I was tasked with understanding the new system and creating a tool to reconcile and validate the amounts being charged to retailers, under extreme pressure of go live and built in 2 days Data Business Analyst on DWH migration- Validated data mapping, data migration rules and business rules of data being migrated- Built analysis tools using SQL Server, T-SQL & Excel to validate migration, reconcile sales figures, identify issues and root causes Technical Business Analyst on Boots Alliance plc integration – Lead the data integration of the retail and ordering systems between Musgrave & Boots within a timescale of 6 weeks Technical Business Analyst on WH Smith integration Technical Architect for API Web Service solution- Created solution design for a REST API to be used to transfer data between systems- Provided retailers access to real-time information Managed Web Shop upgrades- Supplier management of all phases, including environment readiness, testing & deployment- Management of the £250k capex budgets, plan, risks, issues and defects- UAT – Ensured business users had sufficient UAT test coverage Managed EPOS Upgrades- Rolled out an update to the Londis EPOS system, including a new PoS design and a new Barclaycard PCi compliant chip & pin solution. Managed a team of 3 Test Analysts for the testing and pilot phases- Managed EPOS releases through the software development life cycle Business Analyst and Project Manager on a loyalty payments solution- Robust payments solution which calculated total payment of c£17m per annum- Re-architected the existing solution onto a modern platform – SQL Server back end, ASP.Net and Excel reports- Engaged with Sales and Finance teams to gather requirements and discuss impacts of the old versus new system CI (Continuous Improvement) champion for the I.T. department

 Lead the data integration for the “Retail Week” award winning B2B Londis Webshop Business process mapping of current and future states. Gathered business requirements of functionality through one-to-one meetings and workshops with stakeholders Identified required data cleansing activities by querying and analysing master data using SQL Architected the interface design between systems. Data mapping between central data sources and the website. Developed some of the interfaces using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and 3rd party applications such as WinSCP End-to-end testing of the website and assisted the business users with UAT Trained business users on how to use and administer the Web Shop Site visits to retailers to gain insight of good features, possible improvements for the roadmap and lessons learned

 Test case creation and execution Unit, Integration & Systems testing, Functional & Non-functional testing, white box and black box testing Defect tracking and reporting, prioritising fixes appropriately Testing IBM approved PCMS Beanstore back office and PoS Testing 3rd party EPOS systems; Torex Prism and Prism SQL by Oracle (Formally Micros), Indigo (Formally HTEC) Retail Controller, Londis Manager (SPEDI)

 EPOS software upgrades – Overnight upgrades to Micros’ Torex Prism Back Office & PoS systems Post-Implementation support Data Analysis & issue resolution Created Microsoft Access and Excel based tools used to automatically test, find and correct data issues / inconsistencies, reducing the duration of overnight implementations by hours and mitigating risks of backing out

Converted the corporate ownership of Budgens stores to Franchises.