Global Head of IT Sourcing for Infrastructure Services and Supplier Management

Based in Singapore I was responsible for all Indirect spend categories across the Region, with a total spend under Management of approximately $300M USD. I was a member of both the Senior Asia Supply Leadership Team as well as the Global Purchasing Leadership Team reporting directly to the CPO. I managed an extended team of 40 ersonnel across 13 countries for three divisions, (Crop Protection, Seeds and RD), including India, China, Australia and Span. the team was responsible for all indirect category spend in Region including capital expenditure across 7 chemical manufacturing sites.In addition to the above I was the Regional Procurement process owner for two large Global transformation projects which resulted in a separation of transactional activity from core competency in procurement, finance, HR and IT.

Responsible for all of Merrill Lynch’s software sourcing and technical professional services within EMEA. I operated as an interface between Senior Business Management and the supply base, delivering to internal clients expectations including Finance, IT, Equity Trading and the International Bank.A number of significant achievements were delivered during this period. Particular highlights include: Leading the procurement effort supporting the expansion of Merrill Lynch business into new markets including Turkey, Russia and China.  The evaluation, negotiation and implementation of a new consultancy engagement model across EMEA and Asia which delivered savings in excess £5m pa.  Working as part of a multi-disciplined team delivering £40m savings against a £150m data centre budget associated with the move of the existing EMEA data centre to a new 4000sq m Tier 4 facility. Facilitating 3 major system upgrades to ML reconciliation, settlement and transactions systems achieving savings in excess of £1m. Represented EMEA on the Global Supplier Diversity Program

Undertaking a variety of roles while employed with Reuters, I was primarily responsible for software vendors and stakeholder Management on a global basis. Major accounts I held responsibility for included, Microsoft, Oracle, EMC, IBM, Veritas, Computer Associates and Siebel .On a consistent basis I was able to provide innovative solutions which saved the organisation approximately £7m pa over existing deals. Large strategic initiatives included a capacity on demand leasing model for DMX arrays with EMC, saving approximately £2,5m. A global Veritas site license deal saving £2m, as well as the new service provider license agreement with Microsoft. All of these were market influencing. Although based in London during my four years with Reuters I gained significant overseas experience working in the US, Singapore, Geneva, Hong Kong and Bangkok.

Originally recruited into a general purchasing role after spending 2 years in customer services I became responsible for MRO items such as travel, operations, facilities and professional services I was promoted into an IT generalist role consisting of Hardware, Software, Application Development and Telco. Major deliverables I was responsible for included: replacing the then existing travel providor and overhauling the travel policy, outsourcing magnetic card production, introducing AVR and predictive dialling technology into customer services as well as several major SI projects worth in excess of £15m

During this time I completed a full indentured engineering apprenticeship. This included milling, turning, welding, CNC programming, drawing office, procurement and managing the MRPII program.As part of the apprenticeship I attended college on a weekly day release and obtained a BTEC ONC in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering