Stuart Russell Email & Phone Number

Maidenhead, England, United Kingdom

I spearhead the strategic development and operational excellence of our company's sales and marketing technology platforms. With a keen understanding of business needs, I ensure our systems deliver high performance and cost-effectiveness while aligning with the organization's long-term vision.My expertise lies in translating complex business requirements into robust technological solutions that empower our sales, marketing and customer success teams. I collaborate closely with stakeholders across the company to gain insights into their current and future needs, enabling my team to architect scalable and future-proof platforms.Under my leadership, our sales and marketing technology stack remains at the forefront of innovation, equipping our teams with cutting-edge tools and capabilities to drive revenue growth, enhance customer experiences, and maintain a competitive edge in the market. With a strong focus on maximizing return on investment, my team and I continually optimize our systems for efficiency and streamlined operations.

London, England, United Kingdom

I spearheaded the digital transformation of our sales and marketing technology stacks to create a unified global platform that drives revenue growth. With over 15 years of experience leading large-scale IT initiatives, I excel at leveraging emerging technologies to maximise business impact. - Consolidated siloed CRM and lead generation systems into a single instance of Salesforce and Market to streamline operations, boost sales productivity and improve customer experiences. - Assembled a world-class team of IT professionals and instilled an agile, user-centric culture focused on delivering cutting-edge solutions aligned to corporate strategy.- Championed AI adoption across sales, service and marketing including chatbots that resolve customer issues faster. - Forged strategic partnerships with IT vendors to implement best-in-class platforms for Configure, Price, Quote; Contract Lifecycle Management; Customer Success Management and Sales Enablement. - Architected seamless interconnectivity and data flows across core sales systems and ERP/Enterprise Data Warehouse/Order to Cash/FP&A to generate actionable insights. - Spearheaded IT governance best practices for cost optimisation, risk management and controls.- Evangelised digital-first mindset across the organisation through inspirational leadership and change management.We increased sales productivity, boosted customer satisfaction and increased revenue growth through technology innovation. But this is just the beginning – my relentless drive is to leverage IT to catalyse the next stage of business transformation.

I was responsible for directing McGraw Hill's international sales, marketing and product/solutions for our internal and external customers. I directed a global team, covering everywhere outside the US, to deliver these services, working hand-in-hand with the global Managing Directors to understand their business strategies, priorities, goals and challenges and adjusting our deliveries to meet those needs once we'd agreed on priorities. Uncovering, understanding and aligning our efforts to true business needs and driving best-practice processes with an aim to reduce complexity and increase agility and responsiveness by, for example, standardising on shared global systems, was critical to our success.Achievements:Improved Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Salesforce.com (SFDC) development improvements to ensure we met requirements for high quality deliverablesSelected and managed external vendors supplying both Time and Materials as well as fixed-cost deliverablesImplemented blog functionality on regional websitesManaged several platform upgrades for our online presence globally with no disruption to activity

Maidenhead, Uk

I was responsible for directing McGraw-Hill Education's international sales, marketing and product/solutions for our internal and external customers. I manage a global team, led by the Service Delivery Manager – International Digital support; Technical manager – Business System Services; Technical manager – Sales & Marketing Systems to deliver these services and work closely with the regional MDs to identify the business strategies and adjust strategy accordingly. Uncovering, understanding and aligning our efforts to true business needs and driving best-practice processes with a firm view to standardising on global systems is a critical success factor.Achievements:Selected platform and external vendor to reimpliment global websitesDelivered new global sites segmented by major regions to give local customes an optimised experienceDelivered Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy, implementation and ongoing deliveryImplemented new payment gateways to support regionally diverse payment methodsRationalised development and delivery of new features for our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform Salesforce.com (SFDC)

Maidenhead, Uk

I worked on new and innovative solutions for the Higher Education Market, developing and releasing a number of 3D, immersive simulators. I was the product manager for the Marketing, Accounting and Operations Management simulators, leading the process from conception to delivery of these ground-breaking products. Product Manager - PowerofUI was seconded to the New York office for 10 months from the beginning of 2010 to act as Product Manager for an innovative project to disruptively re-imagine how 6th and 7th grade Maths students are taught. I managed a team of 12 people in different divisions to a tight deadline to take the idea from inception to delivery within 6 months, test it in a school in Indianapolis for a 4-week period and gather data to build a buiness case to fund the product to take it from a pilot to product including plans for GTM (go to market) strategy. The pilot was so successful that the school in which we tested paid for it after seeing the results. I managed a smooth transition to a permanent successor at the end of the pilot. The team was awarded The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Corporate Achievement award for the successful completion of the pilot.

There were two major areas in this role:USA: Successfully implemented improvements to fix numerous performance problems with the biggest revenue-earning platform. When I first started, there were a large number of outages, but through a mixture of hardware and software improvements coupled with process controls, outages were reduced by 95% and customer support calls fell significantly. I worked closely with the infrastructure and software development teams to identify issues and resolve outages thereby delivering a good customer experience. I was awarded the Divisional Award for Excellence for my dedication and commitment to improve performance and stability. International: I led Digital Publishing initiatives and investigated and implemented digital learning trials and products. This included serious game/simulation research and development. I also managed software projects to tight deadlines using Agile development methods, reducing costs through development being conducted entirely offshore. I interviewed, recruited and managed a team in our Indian offices to support and enhance internal and external facing applications; this allowed us to deliver more functionality to the business coupled with improvements to the level of support while reducing costs. I also managed traditional outsourcing companies to build and support applications. A significant part of this role was using my contacts in the USA to ensure that MHE International’s ongoing requirements were being met and they had access to the right tools so that business benefits were realised across the company. The two areas required that two different sets of priorities and styles of working were needed. In the USA, there was more funding for products that generated greater revenues from domestic and global sales but the projects required much more paperwork and approvals. The projects outside North America were characterised by being smaller and more nimble with shorter deadlines.

I was Technical Operations Manager on a project to provide rich media content to 3, one of the UK’s major mobile phone companies. I was the main technical contact for the client. We provided an asset management service in an accurate and time-critical fashion. One of the major drivers was to have the system available 99.99% of the time and able to deliver content to our client within 75 seconds of an event occurring. A significant piece of work involved integrating Broadcast Engineering solutions with standard IT equipment to allow us to provide near-live TV feed clips (FA Premier League) and other media suppliers (movie trailers, MTV) to 3.The success of this project meant my close involvement with further bids for work for other mobile phone companies as we developed the solution into a product that had wider market appeal.

I was recruited as the Technical Authority for the Infrastructure piece of the bid process and subsequent contract negotiations at the beginning of this project. The goal of the project was to provide rich media content to 3. I also designed and implemented the infrastructure solution.

I was originally hired as a Server Manager and was promoted to Network and Server Engineer and then Technical Specialist. The Server Manager job entailed covering all the London Sites for the BBC with full operational responsibility for all servers on a day-to-day basis. I worked in a seven-member team, which operated on a 24-hour duty roster. My promotion to Network and Server Engineer increased the scope of my role to include support of the BBC’s Local Area Networks. A further promotion to Technical Specialist involved acting as a Technical Authority for changes and improvements as well as proposing and implementing longer-term solutions for new requirements and outstanding issues.

I was employed as Senior Systems Administrator and promoted to IT & Telecommunications Manager in January 1997. I had full budgetary and operational responsibility for IT and Telecoms across all ten sites in the UK and managed the Systems Administrator and PC Support Analyst – who I recruited. We managed and expanded the existing Local Area Networks and Wide Area Network across all sites as well as commissioning new infrastructure in satellite offices. I reported directly to the managing partner and lead partners in each office but had autonomy in day-to-day decisions, I was also responsible for the management of external suppliers and service contracts. During my time here, we connected all the offices to one another, implemented inter-office and internet email, and significantly upgraded and extended the infrastructure. The biggest change was the increase in the number of PCs from 20 to over 200. The increased support load had to be offset by the use of a common desktop, remote support, the use of file servers and user training to ensure we were able to deliver the same level of support without increasing the cost or size of the team.

Education record

Education record