CPW acquired the UK broadband delivery interests of AOL inc. Working as a Business Analyst I played a key role in initiating the data migration project to consolidate the AOL customers onto the CPW platform. The project had false-started before I became involved and I was highly instrumental in returning business confidence and a sense of calm determination to the data migration itself which is now back on track for delivery.

The Phusis Consultancy’s Principal Steve Pearson identified an opportunity to make significant savings in BP’s IT provision by means of improved business information. Working as a “one man team” I was able to convert Steve’s vision into reality by developing every aspect of a small pilot from analysis to design, to DBA and front end report development in Microstrategy 8. Following the successful pilot a larger team was put in place to exploit the opportunity operationally.

Government Data Migration Project - I acted as a data management consultant in a migration to an Oracle 11i E-Business suite ERP system coupled with Primavera project management. My role was to identify and profile source data using the BDQ suite of tools, recommend software tools and contribute strongly to strategy. The migration was successful.

I introduced the BDQ data cleanse tool, managed the initial implementation and resolution of issues. I generated the profile metadata and then successfully trained a Tokio Marine business analyst in trawling through it for value directly plus provided an issue prioritisation mechanism. The client was sufficiently impressed to invest heavily in the toolset for their future data cleanse needs.

I implemented a claim and policies data warehouse This involved analysis on site in France and Germany leading towards a common data model. A Phusis colleague added Norway and UK. Despite the diverse commercial and legal frameworks in these different countries (not to mention the confusion of overlapping automobile brands) the model was successful in delivering pan European figures on a common, level playing field basis that achieved the buy in of all the local operating companies individually.

I assisted Markel with their Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) compliance project. This involved constructing a set of Business Objects reports that verified the figures in their local UK staging area, and consolidated US staging area were equivalent and reported divergences as alerts to be dealt with. The project was significantly shortened when I personally discovered and implemented a Business Objects technique that leveraged the user’s login details as a parameter, reducing 860 possible reports to just 86 that needed to be written.

I was initially data conversion team leader responsible for arranging the migration from System 21 to SAP. The T-Mobile data migration was broad and deep – comprising many SAP modules, each used extensively. I hired the migration team, generated the resource and timing estimates and oversaw the first parcel of work.

I then advised senior Finance Department executives on formulation of a Data Cleanse policy and helped them drive it through the business. I developed an issue classification and monitoring system that provides weekly statistics. This separated the mandatory cleanse issues from the nice to haves and identified weak spots and “slow runners” to drive the process effectively.

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In a follow on phase to initial migration (below), I delivered a legacy to SAP PS migration himself. It had initially been intended that he would perform the analysis and roll off for an MS Access programmer to implement the migration. However the client had chosen to remodel their project plans during migration. (Reconnect the tasks of existing running plans within a different execution order and project plan template) This generated such complex data relationships that I advised that he should carry through the programming himself to ensure the right result for the client. This was duly executed with excellent results for the extreme logical complexity of the data modelling problem.

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I improved T-Mobile’s telephone mast location data beyond recognition. Errors were causing engineers and materials to go astray. Yet a valid mast address can include terms such as “50 yards from road junction” which are not easily cleansed or recognised as valid by conventional address tools. I identified that a mixture of software and human intelligence would be the most cost effective solution and created an MS Access based data entry workbench that highlighted potential issues. Temps were then hired to operate the system and resolve the issues it highlighted. The result was a clean database at reasonable expense.

In 1999 GlaxoWellcome migrated their entire set of manufacturing data from legacy systems to SAP R/3. In conjunction with this the whole mindset of the manufacturing business had to be altered to new ways of working fitted to the integrated material requirements planning philosophy behind the new system. Particular difficulties faced by the company were that performance of the legacy systems could not be guarantied beyond year 2000, that significant pressure was being mounted by regulatory authorities to have these old systems decommissioned, and finally that all migration of data into the new environment had to follow safety critical pharmaceutical industry guidelines.

I was appointed the Data Manager for the Ware manufacturing site (staffed by some 1800 people) and was responsible for ensuring that this manufacturing location’s data arrived in the system on the time and to the stringent quality levels required. As legacy systems coincided my team also took technical responsibility for a second site of similar size. The team rose to around 50 heads leading into migration, at which point the data was delivered on time and with an extremely low rejection ratio. It is notable that the business itself has to stop for such exercises and during this period GlaxoWellcome effectively manufactured nothing for several days and would not do so again until the data was safely in SAP. The high quality of the data delivery ensured that my two sites restarted promptly and were back near full capacity within a month. An exceptional recovery given that ways of working and job descriptions had also changed to fit the system.

Following the SAP project he organised clean data for a rewrite of a pharmaceuticals barcode system, which safeguards consumer health by ensuring pills, packets and leaflets are brought together in only the permissible combinations.

Developed the E-FIT facial composite system seen on Crimewatch most recently in C#.Net I originally worked on this at the Home Office, then as technical director of a startup, then having sold my stake, finally as a freelancer via my own company Vivamex Limited. After I had sold my shares in the E-FIT software and before I started Vivamex I worked for City of London consultancy Gresham Bell for presitigious clients such as Shell, Shell Chemicals, Ernst & Young, The Charity Commission and GlaxoWellcome