Reporting to the Head of Group IT in Zurich. In this position, my major achievements have been: • Building up the IT team in Malta in order to handle the management of web development, SharePoint and MS Dynamics CRM management, systems administration and service desk. • Operational management of Group IT staff in Malta and in South Africa offices. • Participated in strategic decisions as a member of the company’s IT Executive Committee, including shaping of the department to align it with business needs;• Took on management of the CRM Adoption Project from May 2015 – January 2016. • Currently project-managing the implementation of a corporate branded Intranet based on Microsoft SharePoint 2013, based on business needs.• Participation in merging 2 separate environments (in private cloud) to reduce complexity, achieve better economies of scale, and establish a high availability environment. • Planning and creation of best practice procedures for operations in Group IT.

In my latest role, I worked for Northway Group, a privately-held global e-commerce organisation offering unsecured, short-term consumer loans and generating $1 billion in annual turnover. During this period I built up the team of 6 IT professionals, recruiting, coaching and mentoring them in their roles. I re-structured the department to introduce a degree of separation of duties and specialisation. I Introduced various ITIL concepts, including Incident Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, and Problem Management, including the creation of various procedures to align process with best practices and business needs. I also introduced numerous KPIs to make sure the department was operating optimally. During this period I also improved the budgeting process to ensure greater accuracy and fiscal discipline was in place. I also managed the implementation of a unified communication system (Lync) - a move that was soon emulated by the Canadian companies in the group following the success of the project in Malta. More recently, I started a drive to introduce PRINCE 2 project management techniques and a standardised approach to project scoping.

This role presented a totally different challenge after 14 years in banking environments. During this period I participated in the company's drive to introduce a degree of IT governance in order to align IT efforts with business needs. I also re-structured the IT department to introduce separation of duties and a degree of specialisation, oversaw the planning and budgeting processes for the IT Department, introduced new processes and procedures to introduce IT best practices into the company, and managed to obtain substantial EU funding for a number of projects that included, amongst others, the consolidation of all hardware and WAN platforms, the acquiring and implementation of a core travel and tourism system, and the setting up of a Disaster Recovery Centre. I was recruited, trained and coached staff members, managing a team of 5 employees.

This role was created in 2005 following a re-structuring of the IT Dept. by the new Head of IT. It was a huge challenge, however this was a period of learning during which I started implementing incident management, change management, availability management, capacity management, and other ITIL-based procedures to bring the Bank's IT processes closer to best practices. I also set up a thorough procurement process for major purchases. I also managed numerous projects, including the centralisation of backups, the creation and testing of Disaster Recovery procedures, the implementation of a helpdesk system to streamline incident management, the implementation of a configuration management system (SMS, now called SCCM), the implementation of an event management system (MOM, now called SCOM), the centralisation of storage onto SAN, and the introduction of blade server technology.

This role was created specifically following the implementation of a new banking system to ensure that the system delivered the benefits for which it had been procured. During this period, I managed all the IT assets related to the core banking systems, including hardware, software, computer operations, databases, and any ancillary systems that fed or received data from the banking system. I managed a team of 5 staff members to deliver these services professionally and efficiently. During this period I also set up a disaster recovery centre to act as a hot site for the production environment and ensure business continuity.

During this period I was involved in the Bank's lengthy gap analysis after the procurement of a new banking system, PROFITS of Intracom S.A, Greece. I was also involved in the negotiations of the contract and of the customisations following the gap analysis. Subsequently I was posted to Intracom S.A.' offices in Greece as part of the customisation project team and the Bank's point of reference in Greece, doing software development work on the banking system. I returned to Malta to closely assist the Project Manager with the changeover to the new Banking System. During this time I also managed the entire data migration project to the new Oracle based banking system. Throughout the project I doubled also as a Database Administrator for the entire project team.

Some of my most instructive years were the first few years at APS, where I was entrusted early on with a number of projects, including roll-out of debit card technologies and an ATM network, the technology installation at a number of new branches, etc. During this period I helped the Bank with the installation of numerous new systems, including SWIFT, cheque imaging, implementation of Direct Credits, amongst others. These were large projects which I had to step up to as the only IT person with the Bank at the time, and hence these were the first years that taught me the necessary leadership qualities necessary to see such projects through.

My IT career started off in Lombard Bank's Computer Room at its then Valletta Branch and Head Office, running daily batch runs on a NCR Unix multi-user system, loading and exporting data for excange with servers at the bank's branches, scanning incoming data for viruses, checking audit trails, etc. I had my first experience with x86 technologies in this position, and liaised continuously with IT staff to improve the infrastructure and software available.