Employed to perform a high level market analysis of available vendor systems, to carry out benchmarking and an analysis of gaps relative to the requirements of the regional offices of a UK newspaper group.

Requirements were documented in the form of an RFI to which vendors were invited to respond.

The project deliverable was a presentation of the strengths and weaknesses of 5 systems, including the current in-house developed solution, together with how each might map onto the organisation’s requirements as they are predicted to evolve over the next 5 years.

Employed within the Integrated Services Purchasing Department of WYKO. WYKO is a leading European supplier of MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) services to industry.

I was asked to advise on the workflow procedures within the Bid Support department related to the manipulation of the often tens of thousands of line items representing the spare parts required to maintain industrial operations. Example operations included the maintenance of Terrier tanks (used by the British Army), British Gypsum Bagging Plants and Pfizer pharmaceutical production. WYKO maintain their own spare parts warehouses and handle millions of items directly (typically these are bearings, flanges, motors, transmission equipment, seals etc). Often, and particularly when bidding for new contracts, OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) are approached to provide prices for parts. The process of transforming an extract from a potential customers purchase ledger into a file which contains properly identified and priced parts was extremely manually intensive with little automated linking between the main WYKO Ingres parts database and other suppliers’ price files.

Towards the end of my stint with WYKO, due to my experience in working with foreign organisations, I was negotiating pricing with foreign OEM’s on their behalf for parts required in MRO contracts valued in tens of million Euros.

Atex, a leading global supplier of circulation, advertising and editorial/content management solutions to media groups.

It became clear in 2003 that there was a requirement for a full time Product Manager who could devote sufficient time to visit and liaise with staff, customers and prospects worldwide to ensure that the core product continued to develop and retain its position as market leader. I therefore handed over my man management responsibilities for the development teams although I retained the responsibility for setting their objectives. This allowed me to spend more time assisting the sales and implementation efforts.

Main responsibilities:-

• To be seen as the product ‘champion’ and ‘evangelist’ both internally and externally.
• Manage all technical aspects of pre-sales bids - many of which required detailed workshops to produce gap analysis documentation pre-contract. In many instances I managed the whole pre-sales process.
• Produce forecast project costings and implementation plans.
• Manage the post-sale creation of the detailed specifications of any required system modifications. The size of the teams required for this would vary according to project size but would normally be between 2-4 people. Naturally, this often led to revised project costings and implementation plans and I was responsible for managing these changes internally and also their delivery to the customer.
• Responsible for the quality (including sign off) of all work specifications handed to development regardless of size or origin.
• The creation and communication of strategic Product Roadmaps. This was done with consultations with regional sales teams and user groups in addition to the daily communications with existing users and ongoing sales bids.
• The translation of these outward facing documents into more appropriate instructions for development teams. This would take the form of mid to long term objectives.
• Managing and prioritising the input to development - the often conflicting needs of long term R&D, ongoing projects implementation modifications and daily support issues from the user base.
• Assisting with the creation of sales collaterals – see www.atex.com and follow the links to Solutions, Circulation and the Matrix product related datasheet.

Atex UK, a leading global supplier of circulation, advertising and editorial/content management solutions to media groups.

In 2002 it was decided to scale down the development team in the USA and to manage by region rather than by function. I therefore relinquished my line responsibilities in the USA and took on the added responsibility professional implementation services in the UK alongside my development management role. The majority of my time was allocated to the pre and post sale support and project management as listed above.

Atex UK & US, a leading global supplier of circulation, advertising and editorial/content management solutions to media groups.

Early in 1999 the UK based software house was merged with an international group. The major synergy was the fact that the international group had an ageing product line which would be replaced by that provided by Matrix. The group’s existing development centre was located in Tampa, Florida, USA.

I was given the responsibility of managing both development centres. I was tasked with streamlining the roles in both locations and integrating functions where possible. I very quickly had team members on both sides of the Atlantic working on joint projects to good effect.

I was also tasked with taking a number of the Tampa products end of life.

During this period I spent two weeks each month at both centres.

Matrix Ltd, the leading UK supplier of circulation solutions to media groups.

Matrix had for many years been a leading supplier of circulation and distribution computer systems to UK based publishers and distributors. In 1990 I led the group which created the ‘next generation’ system. This was the initial version of the system which is today truly open and exposed to web services and the newly emerged communication channels. Initially it was a £5m project to replace a stable of aging, distinctly separate systems. Once combined into a single system, it formed what was probably one of the first CRM systems in the world – although that name had yet to be coined.

My background was technical – programming, systems analysis and data base design. In addition to managing the development and QA teams I was responsible for the creation of the system specification and the initial database design. I was also heavily involved in early stages of prototype development.

With the development of this new system came the need to adopt more professional project implementation methodologies. I did this with the help of our then partners, ICL, and implemented new systems and procedures with their assistance. These procedures served us well as we installed our first implementations of this product in Belgium and New Zealand. These procedures were to subsequently evolve to follow the Prince2 methodology as they do today and a further 60 implementations have followed.