Group Applications Director
IHS Towers
Total years of experience :16 years, 10 Months
Group Applications Director (based in Lagos, Nigeria) Oct 2016 - Present
Global ERP Programme Leader (based in Lagos, Nigeria) Jun 2016 - Present
§ Recommending, building, and managing software applications for the Group (Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Zambia, Rwanda, Lebanon, and the UK).
§ Staffing, training, and developing the staff of Group Applications Department.
§ Laying project management methodology and leading its execution.
§ Leading the ERP implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX (Dynamics 365) for all group countries.
§ Integrating Dynamics 365 with the other operational and commercial applications.
§ Leading the migration into Microsoft Office 365 including the introduction of the new tools.
Major Accomplishments
• Delivered and signed off the FDDs (Functional Design Documents) and FRDs (Functional Requirements Documents) for all functions and countries.
• Conducted CRPs (conference room pilots) for all departments.
• Establishment and ongoing facilitation of Programme Board headed by the COO, and the members are the Group Directors, and countries CEOs.
• Formation of 10 cross functional/countries Delivery Teams; R2R, P2P, O2C, R2O, H2R, Corporate Manual, Training, Data, Reporting, and Communication.
• Establishment of IHS programme management team.
• Development and communication of a Stakeholders Map including the roles and responsibilities of around 120 staff across all functions and countries.
• Development of a SharePoint Portal for both communications among stakeholders and management of project documentation and deliverables.
• Maintaining up to date registers/logs (e.g. Risk Register and Issue Log) and strategies (e.g. Data Migration, Testing, and Training) accessible on the portal.
• Issuance of bi-weekly highlight report monitoring the progress of each delivery team and the update of RAID (risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies).
• Progressing in configuration and master data gathering and cleansing across all functions and all countries.
• Maintained updated Project Plan.
Providing strategic guidance to both business and IT business partners across CIT countries (CIT is an IT business unit that supports the worldwide pharmaceutical business excluding US and Canada).
Reassessing and authorising local and regional ERP initiatives/projects, ensuring alignment with corporate IT strategies and programmes as well as recommending strategic alternatives that meet business requirements.
Representing CIT countries in the governance board, in charge of following up on the service and ongoing projects related to ERP Workflow.
Major Accomplishments:
Outlined a set of global ERP Roadmaps including the deployment plan of Core ERP and related software applications; e-procurement, consensus forecasting, ERP workflow, and ERP BI, that enabled business and IT planning and decision making.
Developed an ERP strategy simplifying the operating environment for Africa, Asia and Latin America, through consolidation/migration of over 40 different ERP implementations (JDE, BPCS, SUN, & MfgPro) into GSK template of SAP.
Identified standard solutions for the wide used ERP related peripheral applications (Advertisement and Promotion, Travel and Entertainment, and Tender Management) in more than 70 countries.
Led the delivery of standard e-procurement solution integrating with the ERP in 16 countries.
Evaluated ERP landscape in Central and Eastern Europe (approx. 30 different implementations of SUN) and recommended short and medium-term solutions that align with the strategic plan of migration into SAP.
Represented the strategy track in establishing two finance shared service centres; in Russia serving Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and in India serving Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan.
Identified and evaluated the interface patterns between corporate financial consolidation/reporting applications and 70 different implementations of ERP (JDE, BPCS, SUN, MfgPro, and Business Commander).
Developing IT strategic plan and annual budget in line with the company requirements.
Recommending, building, and managing software applications and hardware and networking infrastructure.
Responsible for IT department, staff development, IT security, risk management, and IT policies and procedures.
Contributing and/or facilitating executive management, supply chain planning, risk and compliance, and job evaluation committees (added responsibilities to IT Director role).
Performing architecture review of MEA projects (added responsibilities to MEA IT Architect role).
Major Accomplishments:
Delivered MEA IT application re-use target (reassess and authorise around 15 projects per annum).
As a part of a global taskforce, developed BI/DW architecture and standard tools for international markets.
Successfully led GSK Egypt IT due diligence and integration teams in major mergers and acquisitions (e.g. Local acquisition of Bristol Mayer Squibb Egypt and local acquisition of the largest pharmaceutical company in Egypt).
Achieved significant operational efficiencies and business performance improvements by introducing new IT solutions to GSK Egypt (e.g. Siebel, PeopleSoft, Cognos, DataStream, & BPCS).
Established and maintained GSK Egypt IT infrastructure (LAN, WAN, IPT, etc.) that connects manufacturing, distribution, and sales (10 remote sites) to GSK international network via high speed links.
Designed and executed a new HR model harmonising internal and outsourcing recruitment of IT services in GSK Egypt, leading to a 50% IT headcount reduction and more focus on key talents retention and development.
Significantly reduced GSK Egypt IT costs by initiating and leading a servers’ optimisation project, based on which all local business applications were migrated to global data centres resulting in zero local servers.
Led smooth Y2K transition for GSK Egypt computer systems, manufacturing equipment and sites’ utilities.
Master of Business Administration, Advanced Management Institution, Arab Academy for Science & Technology, Egypt 2000
B.Sc. of Electronics & Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt 1988