AREAS OF EXPERTISE
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- Transforming resources into value
- Developing, modifying, documenting and implementing project management frameworks
- Managing teams of professionals in transitions, projects, program management and proposal management
- Communicating with internal and external stakeholders at all levels of management
- Influencing senior executives Managing multiple projects simultaneously
- Compiling proposals, defining solutions, negotiating services, service levels and prices
- Selling solutions at senior levels in major corporations
- Working with global enterprises in Europe and the US
- Motivating, training and coaching professionals to achieve challenging goals
CAREER SNAPSHOT
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Program/Project Manager
Sinius, Frankfurt (June 2002 – July 2006)
Subsidiary of Siemens Business Services which provides desktop support, call centre and hosting services and operates the largest Windows Terminal Server Farm worldwide for Deutsche Bank with over 1,000 servers providing Citrix Application Services to over 40,000 end users throughout Germany, Italy and Spain.
CEO
iNetVision, Eschborn, Germany (March 1999 – May 2002)
$2.5m a year business with 16 employees which developed and maintained customised content management applications which assisted major corporations identify, acquire, organise and communicate business information.
Project Manager
Deutsche Bank, New York (February 1998 – March 1999), Frankfurt (July 1996 – January 1998)
Systems Analyst / Application Developer
Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt (October 1993 – June 1996)
Trainee / Intern
Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt (1988 – 1993)
EXPERIENCE & ACHIEVEMENTS
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Program / Project Manager & Transition Manager
Sinius – a subsidiary of Siemens Business Services (06/02 – 07/06)
Managed and developed a team of high performance project and program managers undertaking several major change and transition projects and programs to either transform new contracts with customers into daily operations, undertake roll outs for customers and to implement major process and infrastructure changes. Responsibilities spanned the development and establishment of the project and program management framework and methodology, providing project governance, undertaking project audits, steering committee representation and conducting post implementation reviews.
Migration of the Software Distribution System of Deutsche Bank’s Centralised Server Farm
Six month, $8.5m+ program with 20+ project staff engaged to replace the proprietary Sinius software distribution system with a standard product provided by VisionApp.
Managed all facets of the replacement of the bank’s software distribution system to the bank’s stringent quality requirements within budget on schedule.
- Resurrected the project to restore customer confidence by assigning the right people, engendering senior management commitment, securing empowerment from the project steering committee and frequently informing senior management of progress.
- Overcame resistance to the new system by involving staff and functional managers from the outset, identifying user needs by developing a requirement and functional specification sheet and including their input in the development of the solution concept and architecture.
- Saved Sinius $6m following the decision to enhance the original Sinius system rather than replace it with a different system by convincing the steering committees of the benefits of enhancement as opposed to replacement.
Implementing all ITIL Processes within Sinius and transforming the Company’s IT Service Management Infrastructure
12 month, 4m+ project involving over 40 staff to analyse, design and implement IT Service Management Processes based on ITIL best practice to standardise all major delivery processes and achieve and maintain the BS 15000 /ISO 20000 certification needed to provide its services within the Siemens process framework. Also included designing and implementing the IT Service Management Infrastructure needed to support the delivery processes.
- Accountable for managing the project to deliver objectives on schedule within budget. Involved analysing the organisation’s existing processes, designing ITIL based processes, a training and process implementation program for 800 employees and managers.
- Managed the transformation from a structurally based organisation to a process based organisation which reduced its cost structure, improved its effectiveness, elevated service quality and enabled the business to achieve BS 15000 certification to ensure that Siemens could remain listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
- Secured BS 15000 / ISO 20000 certification following several previously failed by assigning the appropriate resources to analyse and fill the key gaps, ensuring a rigorous presentation and preparing the audit team for over 7 days.
- Standardised all historical processes based on ITIL best practice approach by combining project management approaches with process implementation practices to a new Process Implementation Framework which was published as a book by me in September 2006.
- Trained over 800 employees in the new processes by developing a detailed and sophisticated implementation plan and an approach to ensure that the right people were trained in the right sequence.
- Ensured project continuity in the face of a major cost cutting drive by convincing senior management of the substantial benefits of the project.
Development of a new BCP-level infrastructure for Eurohypo USA (subsidiary of a major German financial institution with assets of $400 billion)
Five month $7m project based in New York involving 20 staff engaged to establish the IT infrastructure for the new US branch of Eurohypo in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and to establish a business continuity site to provide all major services in the event of a disaster. Included setting up the network and integrating it into the Eurohypo network, implementing security based on existing company and US policies, implementing desktop services and a Windows based computing platform, implementing email infrastructure based on MS Exchange and Blackberry devices, complete voice and telephony setup and the establishment of comprehensive onsite user support.
As Project Manager, accountable for ensuring that the project delivered against challenging milestones in the areas of client/server implementation, application integration, network, security, mail, voice, separation, migration and BCP.
- Delivered the project within a tight timeframe to enable the bank to meet its commitment to its customers by prioritising the milestones, involving the appropriate resources, working overtime, using a pragmatic approach to addressing issues and rapidly resolving urgent issues.
-Overcame cultural and language barriers by providing a communications interface between project and client staff.
- Overcame the resistance to the solution of the client’s local management by adopting a professional approach, consistently delivering to client requirements and maintaining frequent communication.
Development of Proposal to Transform & Migrate a Client/Server based Branch Infrastructure to a Centralised Terminal Infrastructure for Deutsche Bank.
Key role in securing the contract to build and maintain the world’s largest Windows Terminal infrastructure.
As Deputy Proposal Manager, managed the documentation of all facets of the contract.
- Incorporated all negotiated achievements into the document, communicated the outcome of negotiations to senior management, prepared the negotiation time plan, devised the negotiation approach, discussed the contract and contract changes with delivery to ensure that negotiated outcomes could be delivered and address the impact on the price, communicated the commercial model to senior management and prepared senior management level for further negotiations.
- Negotiated the content, services, service levels and pricing with the customer’s chief negotiator, with technical and commercial representatives and the bank’s sourcing management team.
- Provided the interface between daily operations/delivery, Sinius senior management and an ongoing parallel, simultaneous transition project and reflected changes to the project in the contract, the commercial model and price.
- Identified and assessed the risks with commercial and delivery personnel.
- Ensured service, price and the potential to deliver within service levels and the costs calculated by coordinating and synchronising the relevant resources within the organisation including finance, operations, the proposal team and functional and senior management.
- Coordinated resources to enable delivery within a tight time frame by communicating all achievements to the team, securing senior management commitment and the empowerment to involve all necessary staff.
Transition / Integration Management
Transition and Transformation Management is responsible for ensuring that contracted services are delivered according to contract terms, that service levels are met, and that the products can be delivered. Also responsible for ensuring that customer roll outs and internal change projects are undertaken according to the company’s project management frameworks and processes.
- Developed project methodologies and tools for project managers and the business based on best practice approaches including PMI / PMP / PMBOK and PRINCE2 and trained and coached eight Project Managers in adopting this framework.
- Provide project governance, undertook audits and health checks to ensure the quality of the company’s major projects and the compliance to the defined Project Management Framework
- Developed and implemented strategies and processes to ensure that project targets were consistently achieved.
- Coached and mentored project managers and other key project staff.
- Ensured that projects successfully transitioned from proposals through to development, implementation and production.
- Converted transition management to regular organisation.
- Report project progress and tabling project governing documentation to steering board and senior management
Proposal Manager / Sales Consultant
- Managed all facets of the development and delivery of proposals to undertake projects and programs of up to $250m for major multi-national enterprises, particularly in the financial services sector.
- Represented the firm at presentations and bidder conferences.
- Designed solutions for clients to outsource their IT services and development and replace their IT infrastructure.
- As Interim Manager of the Proposal Management and Solution Design unit, coached and developed the competencies and confidence of 15 sales consultants to enable them to professionally represent the company’s capabilities and expertise to major clients.
Principal & Program Manager
iNetVision (03/99 – 05/02)
Co-established the company, managed its sales, marketing, public relations, human resources and finance functions and managed the firm’s key projects which included:
- Development and implementation of a virtual learning environment comprising 600 courses for Deutsche Bank.
Involved the global implementation of a new learning approach, building the required learning delivery technologies, developing the advertising for local training managers and building the technology in five countries.
- Development and implementation of a global personalisable news and information service for 95,000 employees of Deutsche Bank.
Ensured that the system was sufficiently robust by adopting state of the art technology, implementing a specific load balance architecture and performing stress tests during software development.
- Development of an intranet portal for 3,000 users at Deutsche Bank.
- Development of an all-European intranet, single sign-on concept and the associated corporate processes for the European Transaction Bank.
Defined a European common structure and the functionality needed to address the needs of each independent country organisation by convening the required resources to develop the functional specifications and accommodating their specific requirements where possible.
- Development and implementation of an intranet search engine with 1.5m documents for Colt Telecom.
Required convincing the customer that the firm’s product was superior to other available products which had been in the market for longer and integrating the search engine into a different product.
- Integration of a global search engine for Deutsche Bank.
The firm was one of the first to undertake global integration on this scale.
- Development and implementation of a personalisable internet newspaper portal for a major newspaper group.
Involved the development of new approaches and technologies to achieve new functions and enable this newspaper to be the first in Germany to provide a daily updated website with all of the articles published in the printed format.
Project Manager / Systems Analyst / Application Developer
Deutsche Bank, New York/Singapore/Frankfurt (1993 – 1999)
- Managed the development and implementation of the bank’s North American intranet web hosting platform.
Selected and designed the platform, marketed the solution internally, adapted the solution to accommodate diverse requirements, integrated the various solutions developed by the project teams and managed platform upgrades.
- Enhanced the functionality the bank’s private and business customer systems for the bank’s foreign entities.
- Managed the porting and integration of the bank’s document based payments system developed in Singapore and India.
Established a systems management group to provide technical advice and support, coordinated the developers in Singapore and India, managed the installation of the interface and development environment in Singapore and India, ensured the quality of the project deliverables and provided technical support for installation and data migration.
- Deployed and enhanced the software which supported global banking activities used by the bank’s branches in Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore, New York, Toronto and other locations with responsibility for systems analysis, performance enhancement, systems administration and maintenance.
- Developed a new hardware and software platform for the bank’s domestic branch network which controlled graphic user prompts, host communication and connection of bank peripherals. Responsible for systems analysis, application development, user training, quality assurance, integration and implementation.
IT PROFICIENCY
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Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Visio, program development in several C, C++, Perl, PHP, Java, XML, several other languages and website development.
TERTIARY EDUCATION
Professional Development
Executive Bachelor of Business Administration
Graduate School of Business Administration, Zurich (completed in 2005 with distinction)
Best BBA Award and Dean’s Award
Project Management Professional
Project Management Institute (completed in 2005)
ITIL Certification
ITIL Foundation (completed in 2005)
Have completed numerous in-house and externally conducted specialised courses in a wide range of operating systems, application development tools and programming, banking systems, conflict management, selling and project management.
PUBLICATIONS
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Compendium for ITIL Projects: People, Methods, Milestones – from analysis to self optimising processes (2006)
LANGUAGES
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Fluent in English and German
