The British Red Cross helps people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are. Key to their success in making a difference within the communities they operate is being able deliver effective IT Services.Within the British Red Cross I work as an Application Support & Development Manager - managing a team of expert analysts responsible for the maintenance and development of key IT applications. These systems are used by core business processes within British Red Cross including Finance, Human Resources, Training and Procurement.My core responsibilities are to:• Manage and Develop a team of professional analysts who maintain core IT systems• Manage and Deliver services in-line with documented Service Level Agreements• Work collaboratively with business partners to define and enhance Work Level Agreements which in-turn deliver improvements in IT support.• Effectively manage 3rd parties providing IT Services• Act as a Subject Matter Expert providing strategic guidance to IT Projects• Plan and Deliver an upgrade strategy for the portfolio of software supported by the team

As an IT Service Manager within Lloyds Banking Group, I was responsible for ensuring key systems under my management were always available to colleagues and customers of Scottish Widows - the most well-known Life Insurance, Pension and Investment brand in the UK.My main function was to act as a first point for IT to senior business stakeholders in the Group, ensuring IT services were provided in line with Service Level agreements.Systems under my management were hosted on PC, mid-range and mainframe technical platforms, and used by 3,500 colleagues to administer complex financial products and provide access to 60,000 Independent Financial advisers and Internet Banking customers of Lloyds Banking Group.My main responsibilities in the role were to:▪ Maximise the availability of key business systems.▪ Ensure IT systems were recovered rapidly in the event of a failure▪ Manage and identify operational risks, to allow business units to make well informed investment decisions.▪ Facilitate the smooth transition of system changes into the live environment with minimal risk to service availability.

Working as an IT application developer I was responsible for producing code and associated documentation for Clerical Medical and Scottish Widows consumer websites. My main achievements in this role were:▪ Enabling Lloyds Banking Group to select a preferred supplier of a Single-Sign-On platform.This allowed Insurance customers to view all Insurance Products held with Lloyds Banking Group via a single set of logon credentials.▪ Rolling out eCommerce Services to third party Employee Benefit providers to enable employees to see details of their pension Provision online.This role gave me exposure to a wide range of eCommerce technologies, and was invaluable in my next role as an IT Service Manager looking after Insurance Division eCommerce systems.

As part of the integration of Lloyds TSB and Scottish Widows I took the opportunity to become a Technical Lead and Team Leader. My team provided operational support for the strategic workflow system that underpinned the day-to-day operation of the Insurance division in the combined group (1,500 users). I completed extensive training in IBM midrange technologies as part of this role. Key Achievements▪ Successful delivery of 4 major system upgrade programmes▪ Creating and leading a team of technical colleagues to maintain the system▪ Enabling the professional development of colleagues through the creation of a skills management framework▪ Delivering substantial cost savings to the Group (Circa £400K PA) through delivering an investment system migration successfully.▪ Successful service support transition to an offshore support partner with no deterioration in system availability.▪ Successfully migrating 9 million work items from a fated workflow system to allow decommissioning and realise cost savings for the Group.

I worked as Senior developer in an Operational Support team responsible for addressing live system incidents, recovering systems and making changes to key mainframe and PC systems. During this period I performed day-to-day team management responsibilities, and latterly performed the role of project manager.Key Achievements▪ Successful management and delivery of the Annual Pensions Benefit statement project. This delivered financial statements to 125,000 customers of Scottish Widows.▪ Leading a team of 6 technical colleagues effectively to provide day to day operational support of key mainframe systems - including the main Client system.