Group IT Director
Conglomerate
Total years of experience :39 years, 1 Months
Lead the IT sector of a five billion dollar multi-national conglomerate with interests in Finance, Manufacturing, Construction, Real Estate and Petro Chemicals. Responsible for 66 IT resources multi-million pound annual IT budget.
• Developed long term IT strategy and Technology Roadmap for the mother and sister companies.
• Set up and managed a centralised Shared Services IT Department for three sectors and 19 companies within the group with 5000+ users, leading to annual savings of £ 3 million.
• Managed enterprise wide transformation program, technology upgrade and IT initiatives, including new ERP systems (SAP, Oracle) across four countries.
• Facilitated 15% reduction in inventory levels and increased revenues by 12% through automation and reduction in raw material costs.
• Introduced sales force automation leading to increased productivity, transparency on inventory and orders and enhanced customer satisfaction.
• Centralized IT service desks for each geographical region thus reducing IT response times by 30%.
• Reduced IT licensing and operational costs by 12% by renegotiating contracts with key suppliers.
• Managed infrastructure consolidation, server virtualisation and standardization, leading to tangible cost savings and increased control.
• Implemented intelligent building and IP comms infrastructure for 50 storey tower delivering a long term revenue stream.
• Carried out risk mitigation and defined / implemented security and IT policies and procedures.
Regional CIO (covering Middle East and SE Asia) for the brand leading FTSE 100 organization providing quality and safety services across the globe.
• Developed IT strategy, Technology Roadmap and Support structure for the region and local entities.
• Work with business leaders to understand IT requirements and develop IT services and solutions to enhance the business. Ensure proper and adequate deployment of IT resources across the region.
• Deploy global applications across the region and ensure that IT infrastructure has the capacity and resilience to support global organizational initiatives and objectives.
Appointed to Ashghal, the £40bn+ public works authority for Qatar, acting as IT Advisor to the President, managing 78 IT resources and responsible for a £75m annual IT budget.
• Responsible for the provision of transformational leadership and change management.
• Developed ICT transformation program, technology roadmap and integration of disparate systems to support long term business strategy and align with Qatar 2030 vision and regulatory needs.
• Implemented asset management leading to savings of 20% and reduced maintenance costs.
• Audited and Upgraded IT infrastructure (transition to blades and virtualisation) and set up DR site.
• Improved workplace efficiency and significantly reduced expenditures by standardizing on Primavera for project management and Quality Management across the enterprise.
• Improved IT services and responsiveness by negotiating partnerships agreements and reduced costs by 13% by outsourcing key IT functions and adopting cloud based solution.
• Worked with business executives to migrate from legacy systems and delivered complex IT, Oracle ERP and CRM solutions for the authority and related government bodies to time and budget.
• Created applications development and ERP support centre of excellence to enhance productivity.
• Enhanced IT services and reduced costs by 11% by creating a mix of in-house and outsourcing.
• Initiated cultural change through adoption of ITIL and the Service Framework.
Recruited to manage and transform the whole IT sector and create a centralised IT department for the group of companies. Reporting to the Group CEO, responsible for £60 million annual budget and 82 resources.
• Complete responsibility for the creation and implementation of the IT Strategy, Vision, Architecture, IT Services and Change Programmes. Developed three year operational plans with responsibility of annual budgets of £60 million.
• Defined new departmental structure, recruited key personnel and developed policies and procedures for the IT Department.
• Programme Managed the selection, procurement and deployment of a portfolio of strategic IS systems to the value of £45m including ERP (for HR and finance), Facilities Management System, Electronic Document Management System.
• Successfully managed the technology refresh of 3000 Desktop computers, laptops and printers to standardise on hardware/software .
• Set up IT Steering Committee and built relationships with key stakeholders to ensure that IT participates in strategic decisions / projects and adds tangible value to the business.
• Participated in Smart City and set-up a centralised NOC (Network Operations System) Call Centre to support 20, 000 end users.
• Enhanced IT Operational effectiveness by implementing ITIL processes, building focused teams and introducing performance metrics, SLAs and monitoring systems.
• Created PMO (Program Management Office) to ensure consistency in process, procedures, and strategy across our entire Portfolio.
• Reduced hardware/software licensing costs by 45% by consolidating and re-negotiating multi-year licenses with vendors and partners.
• Implemented IT security and data governance initiatives to protection corporate data.
Reporting to the CIO and responsible for managing the day-to-day IT operations and systems development functions with annual IT expenditure of £100 m, 400 resources and 20, 000 end users. My main achievements in this role were:
• Designed and delivered a multimillion pound major IT systems improvement programme including migration of legacy systems to new CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource planning), Data Warehouse, Work Force Management, Customer Billing to aid business transformation. This was a five year program with a capital expenditure of £200 million.
• Key member of team developing future architecture blueprint utilizing Togaf.
• Implemented Terradata Data warehouse solution for the enterprise at a cost of $30 million leading to better understanding of customer behaviour and increased revenues.
• Delivered annual savings of £9.2 million by outsourcing optimising the mix of in house and out sourced services including desktop / hardware support, procurement and 3rd party contracts.
• Developed and implemented an IT shared services environment for all business units providing desktop support, applications and related services at agreed costs and service level agreement - thus reducing overall operational costs.
• Subsequent to M&A, I successfully consolidated IT platforms / systems and services resulting in £20m benefits following a 14 month EAI (integration) programme.
• Negotiated systems implementation / offshore support contracts with suppliers including Wipro and TATA whilst producing savings of up to 22% in overall costs.
• Implemented industry governance and security standards (ISO27000, COBIT, ITIL) and developed internal audit section for oversight and compliance.
• Set up centralized NOC leading to savings in manpower and reducing downtimes.
• Managed major data centre and provisioned disaster recovery site leading to increased capability, reduced risk and increased revenues.
Assessment of existing IT environment and recomendations for future needs.
Development of RFPs to procure and implement new systems.
Contract negotiation.
Outsourcing.
• Successfully managed several projects as team leader with overall responsibilities for the provision, upgrading and integration of hardware and software solutions.
• Recruited, developed and lead the team of 20 professionals in liasing with the US Corps of Engineers to ensure projects were carried out on a partnership basis.
• Provided application advice on system & database design.
• Carried out DASD management, as well as evaluation of new products and services.
• Responsible for effective delivery of a range of project management, installation and technical training related objectives as a database administrator for the Naval Forces.
• Focused on integrating main frame and mini systems, evaluating new products, designing systems, as well as delivering training events to Naval Personnel in JCL and COBOL programming.