Head of Data | Interactive Investor

Defining Data Strategy, technology solution, operating model, and execution plan to transform Interactive Investor’s (ii) data capabilities.

So far our team has:

• worked with consulting partners and developed a Data Strategy and Roadmap;
• evaluated technology options and selected a combination of cloud services to provide our modern data architecture (Talend for ETL, Amazon S3 + Snowflake for Data Lake and Mart, and PowerBI for visualisation and reporting);
• implemented our new data platform and commenced migration; and
• worked with 3rd parties to accelerate predictive analytics capabilities.

The journey continues …

IT Project Manager | Warke IT

Provided infrastructure consulting services to TD Direct Investing (TDDI). In preparation for sale of the business, I assisted TDDI separate their infrastructure services from their Canadian parent company TD Bank. Then subsequently assisted with the integration of IT services with Interactive Investor following their acquition of TDDI.

This involved:

• selecting, designing, and implementing a new MPLS WAN service covering TDDI’s office and datacentre locations;
• setting up a new Microsoft Enterprise agreement, along with migration from on-premise Exchange to Office 365;
• migration of firewall management services from group to local control;
• selecting and migrating to a new DDoS service provider (F5 Silverline); and
• on-boarding new locations and infrastructure support from Interactive Investor’s IT function.

Head of Strategic IT Change | Swinton Insurance

As Head of Strategic IT Change, my role included governing the design of the company’s insurance broking re-platform solution. I was the chief architect during the IT solution delivery and managed the safe landing of a number of peripheral solutions to the main packaged application provided by CDL.

This included: the introduction of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) using software from Blue Prism; and the implementation of Real-Time Process Optimisation (RTPO) software from NICE Systems.

The combination of RPA and RTPO generated savings over £3m and removed reliance on 3rd party software suppliers for most application process changes.

Head of Development | Swinton Insurance

I led Swinton’s software development function supporting all our line-of-business applications through 160 software engineers and managers.

During this time we:

• delivered 1st phase of sales platform replacement as part of company-wide transformation programme – reduced end-to- end sales time from 47 mins to 29 mins and achieved first major milestone in decommissioning legacy systems;
• scaled up team with 40+ contract resource and designed an Agile at Scale approach across 13 distinct feature squads. Allowed us to support aggressive transformation timescales – ultimately leading to successful delivery of the 1st phase;
• delivered in-house developed eCommerce web site plus third-party managed marketing content. Through responsive design and attention to UX we improved tablet and smart-phone conversion rates in line with consumer trends;
• delivered new platform for real-time pricing allowing retail pricing and discounting models to be deployed within minutes instead of days;
• eradicated deployment outages through more extensive automated testing and automated deployment pipeline;
• introduced greater collaboration and transparency through team-wide adoption of Jira and Confluence; and
• responsible for setting and managing £18m budget across internal resources and third party contracts.

Head of IT Infrastructure | Swinton Insurance

I led Swinton’s internal infrastructure team and management of third party contracts providing all voice, data, network and computing services – across head office, 450 branches, and 5 call centres.

In this time we:

• supported 4,500 users & multiple business projects by effective management of 25 managers and engineers;
• responsible for £14m budget - saved £1m pa through technology innovation and effective contract management;
• retendered WAN contract reducing annual spend by >10% whilst increasing bandwidth and improving resilience;
• developed IT strategy to support dynamic business plans using virtualisation approach with 14 month payback;
• replaced 450 branch PBX’s, leveraging VoIP capabilities and consolidating voice and data services. Improved call routing, productivity improvements and cost savings led to £3m increase in profits;
• increased telesales productivity by 40% by selecting and implementing a replacement auto-dialler; and
• setup new IT Security function and overhauled security capabilities.

Head of Infrastructure Development | Swinton Insurance

I managed a small team of skilled technicians driving forward technology change.

During this team we:

• delivered high availability eCommerce web infrastructure supporting Swinton’s web channel. The scale-out infrastructure supported a ten-fold increase in quote volumes through price comparison websites;
• implemented broadband WAN increasing bandwidth and reduced running costs by £175K pa – 25% y-o-y savings;
• iproved branch availability by migrating from SCO Unix to Red Hat Unix – using innovative features within Red Hat;
• innovated with supplier to replace tape backups in remote offices with central NetApp backups. Reduced backup time from 3 hours to 15 mins – first implementation of its kind across Europe; and
• integrated major acquisition of 90 sites to Swinton infrastructure within 3 months.

Various | Swinton Insurance / Shop Direct / PwC

Qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC). I specialised in IT assurance before moving to an IT internal audit role at Littlewoods Group (now Shop Direct).

Then in 1997, I moved to an IT analyst role at Swinton Insurance - primarily working on Finance System related solutions. During this time I was lead analyst on our successful SAP R/3 implementation as well as a number of other packaged software solutions.

Following this, staying within Swinton Insurance I moved into various IT line management roles, starting in 2002 as Technical Services Manager.

Various courses

Cloud Analytics Practitioner (2018)

Cloud Analytics Architect (2018)

Stanford University Machine Learning (2017)

Agile in the Real World (2015)

Prince 2 Practitioner (2005)

ITIL Foundation (2002)

SAP FI-CO configuration (1998)

ACA

ACA chartered accounting qualification (ICAEW)

Mathematics BSc (Hons) 1st class

Completed at Manchester University