Key Features

Experience at Previous Clients

Petrochem Carless

Project Manager (Contract Position) - Jun 2003 to Jan 2004

Petrochem Carless is a leading chemicals distributor and refiner of gas/oil products with a turnover of around £120M. They wanted to replace their aging BPCS system, as it no longer provided the flexibility and functionality to support and measure the rapidly changing business. My role as Project Manager was to

Although the project was on budget and on schedule it became obvious that Petrochem Carless did not have the resources to manage a full scale ERP implementation. Consequently, the project is being scaled back and no longer requires a full-time project manager.

Sun Microsystems

Project Manager (Contract Position) - September 1999 to September 2000

Sun is a leading supplier of IT hardware, software and services. Prior to this implementation, each country ran their own local system, uniquely tailored to their business practices. As Project Manager, I was responsible for the management of the Oracle 11 financial implementation on the Sun Solaris platform, which provided project accounting for their Professional Services Division across 8 countries. This included

·        Recruiting and managing a project team, comprising of Sun employees (8 people from 3 separate departments in 2 countries), Oracle consultants and external contractors.

·        Managing project in accordance with PRINCE 2 guidelines and Oracle's AIM Methodology.

·        Developing and maintaining the project plan and justify schedule, resource requirements, budget, etc. to the Steering Committee in USA.

·        Designing a common business process across all European businesses that provided both local and group requirements, business processes

·        Leading regular multi national workshops to explain the common business process, project progress and future plans, publicise the project and maintain the agreement and support from each country.

·        Maintaining communications between the various parties i.e. Functional Team, Technical Team, Steering Committee, User Community to ensure ‘the message’ remained clear, easily understood and were effectively conducted

·        Ensure objectives, tasks and schedules were discussed, agreed and then delivered on time.

This was originally a trial project but proved so successful that Sun decided to roll it out to Asia/Pacific and North America. This global implementation and the following upgrade from Oracle 11 to 11i were expected to take about 2 years. Consequently, this Project Manager's role became a permanent position located in San Francisco. Although Sun offered me this position, I chose to remain contracting in Europe as my daughters were at a critical stage in their education.

J D Edwards (UK) Ltd.

February 1996 - September 1999

JD Edwards are a major international supplier of ERP software and services to medium to large enterprises. Whilst at JD Edwards I was promoted rapidly from consultant to senior consultant to client manager, receiving several awards in the process.

Client Manager

I was promoted to Client Manager in January 1998 and was immediately responsible for managing the implementation of OneWorld B732 at Skandia, a large, multi-national insurance company based in Sweden. Skandia were unwilling to use Big 5 implementation services. I therefore had to locate, appoint and manage a consulting team at a period when experienced OneWorld resources were desperately scarce. This team worked exceptionally well and every production date was achieved throughout the project. JD Edwards and Quest (the JDE User Group) have since showcased this implementation as an exceptional project.

It was necessary to operate beyond the normal boundaries throughout this project. For instance, the client required that JDE perform volume testing to substantiate their claims for the processing speed. JDE would not normally have considered performing this test as the expense and resources required were greater than the benefit to the project. It was therefore necessary to justify the project internally at VP level, organise both HP and IBM to provide hardware at no cost and mobilise a technical team at the Corporate HQ in Denver to perform the testing. The test results were presented to the client within a month of the original request and the success of this project helped justify the creation of the Denver Advanced Technologies Group.

The project was successfully completed and provided OneWorld access to 300+users in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. This multi-currency, multi-site, multi-server system was interfaced to over 160 insurance sub-systems and processed in excess of 12 million transactions per annum. At the time it was the most technologically advanced OneWorld configuration in Europe.

As a result of these efforts I was presented with the “JD Edwards European Client Manager of the Year” award at the end of 1998.

Cincom Systems (UK) Ltd.

Senior Financial Consultant - January 1990 to January 1996

Cincom are a US based supplier of ERP software for complex manufacturing and defence markets. As the senior financial consultant outside the USA, I was responsible for managing the implementation of the ERP software at clients by providing project management as well as financial implementation advice and training. For the final two years I concentrated on managing the implementation of the financial modules at two major clients, British Aerospace (Prestwick) and Ericsson (Sweden, Spain and China).

Last modified: February, 2004