michael church cv version 3

Michael Church Technology Manager and IT Professional

T. 07836 625300 E. [email protected] , Based in Farnborough, Hampshire.

HEADLINES Over 25 years as an IT professional at senior management and program management level. Bridging

science and engineering with business and management

Acting as the ‘glue’ between IT, Business leaders and service providers.

Extensive experience of business transformation, customer services, negotiation and relationship management, governance and compliance and financial management capability.

Ability to operate both strategically and operationally with a high level of general management competency.

Demonstrable understanding of leading and securing value from business IT solutions.

Looking to deploy my skills and experiences into a credible, established organisation where growth and business development are of paramount importance.

I offer a creative, business minded approach to everything I do with a heavy emphasis towards relationship investment and the growth of revenue and profitability through the intelligent positioning and delivery of IT solutions.

KEY SKILLS

Plan, design, co-ordinate, manage change and governance of IT in line with business and IT roadmaps.

Able to integrate and work closely with decision makers/heads of department to identify, scope, and recommend cost effective solutions for all aspects of an organisation. Experience of delivering best of breed solutions through a range of operating models including on premise, shared and outsourced.

Negotiation of contracts and relationship management of IT and business suppliers ensuring delivery of top class prices, terms and conditions, service and supply performance.

Exceptionally strong at identifying opportunities and positioning propositions and strategies in order to maximise commercial success for my employer.

Delivering to budget, controlling department operating costs of £4million and capital spend of £2 million per annum, focusing spend on commercial benefit and transformation in line with key goals.

Leading business transformation activity providing cost reductions, increased efficiency, enhancing working practices enabling a competitive advantage in the market place.

Very skilled and adaptable communicator with comprehensive capabilities deployable from department level through to senior management sponsors and CEO/Board Member signatories.

Detailed understanding of complex multi-stakeholder scenarios, navigating politics and agenda whilst meeting all the necessary business & operational requirements in an organised and fluid manner in order to achieve goals.

Diligent, considered and hard-working attitude in business with a strong desire to succeed is what motivates my instinct to plan and execute successfully wherever possible.

Very comfortable driving forward alone or as a critical cog within a well-oiled machine and capable of moving seamlessly between the two.

Clear understanding of the critical need for accurate budget forecasting and detailed and accurate business planning and service strategies in order to motivate and provide clarity of progress for myself and the wider business.

Bid/Tender writing experience producing solid business cases, cost benefit analysis, presentations

AREAS OF SIGNIFICANT EXPERTISE IT Strategy Relationship Building Contract Negotiation Governance and compliance

Business ROI Planning Budget Execution Incident Management Bid/Tender writing and management

Staff Engagement Business Development



PROFESSIONAL TRAINING, BUSINESS FUNDAMENTALS & EDUCATION

I’ve been certified in many technologies including Microsoft Server, SCCM, Exchange, Cisco networking and Ericsson telephony.

Advanced user of Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Visio)

Completed Business management program at ThomsonLocal from Cranfield

9 GCSE’s from A-C; including Maths, English, Science, & Business Studies.

CAREER EXPERIENCE

Gap year Self Employed June 2014 – Present After 27 years of successfully progressing my career, of which the last 17 years were spent at one organisation, I took the opportunity to nominate myself for voluntary redundancy during an uncertain and transitional period for my employer and had planned to take an extended travelling sabbatical. However after a shorter time than planned, circumstances led to me supporting close family members through difficult illnesses. I now find myself 18 months in the future, ready and raring to recommence my career having had sometime travelling and been lucky enough to have made an immeasurable difference to people’s lives. I am looking forward to swapping the care home for the far more enjoyable structure, community & goals of working for a corporate organisation once again.

Thomson Directories Ltd – Technology Manager June 1997– June 2014 Significant achievements

Data centre and hosting

Created performant, high availability, resilient data centres in multiple locations using both on-premise and Shared/Outsourced models

Responsible for ITSCM ensuring backup, recovery and business continuity strategies. I have first-hand experience initiating business continuity processes and recovery of data/services having experienced a catastrophic failure of enterprise storage.

Directed the delivery of Thomsonlocal.com public presence fulfilling millions of business search requests per day for consumers and an affiliated network. Negotiated managed hosting agreements and third party search engine contracts.

Led projects relocating data centres from On-premise to Outsource/Shared models and vice versa according to business goals and objectives

Produced business proposals with RFP’s, SOW for data centre enhancements, introducing HP/NetApp Enterprise storage and a robust McData fibre channel network followed by the subsequent introduction of virtualisation (VMware) consolidating 200+ physical servers to two clusters of four servers, reducing capital costs and ongoing support and environmental costs.



Operational management of enterprise messaging environments utilising MS Exchange, Enterprise vault

and Ironport for message filtering and protection.

Relationship Management

Accountable for the organisations IT service contracts.

Owner of relationships with managed service providers and Third party vendors

Conduct regular service review meetings ensuring quality and value, manage issues and incidents to a timely and satisfactory conclusion, ensure any service credit or contractual penalties are managed appropriately. Liaise with financial or internal IT teams verifying appropriate billing/costs enabling accurate budget forecasting.

Experience of working with legal counsel on commercial terms and condition.

Re-negotiated all IT service contracts after the company went through pre-pack administration.

Governance

Accountable for all IT and software licence agreements and compliance.

Responsible for assuring appropriate security, technical change management, governance and compliance controls exist in IT and could be relied upon to support the businesses annual financial audit process. Managed the relationship and engagement with IT and financial auditors.

As smart phones and tablets have become the tools of choice for today's workers and Enterprise productivity has gone mobile I've experience of introducing technologies protecting corporate data and company policies, such as Blackberry/BES and latterly Apple iPhones managed with Maas360 'cloud' MDM

Scoped and presented the business benefits in transitioning to Microsoft software assurance returning significant annual cost savings and flattening expenditure spikes whilst expediting key business technology projects utilising the benefits of software assurance.

Experienced defining KPI and compliance protocols for licensing and using various tools to confirm licence and compliance positions.

Familiarity leading and coaching people, providing an end to end delivery of IT service operations including service desk (ITIL orientated), technical architects/3

rdh line engineering and the SQL database and

operations groups.

Network and Telecoms

In a customer and sales lead organisation ensuring your contactable by your customers and your sales channels can contact leads is imperative and I was accountable for high availability communication services within the business.

Specifically managing telecom service provider relationships including BT, Virginmedia, Verizon, Thus, Vodafone, Orange/T-mobile and subsequently EE. Responsible for over 800 mobile connections, successfully negotiated zero line rental ‘black’ tariff multiyear agreements for fixed line services and effective ‘flat’ non variable costs for mobile contracts mitigating budget spikes and ensuring a predictable cost base.

Accountable for introducing Unified communications, identified key business goals and drivers, went to tender and reviewed proposals from third parties based on Cisco, Mitel, Microsoft and Avaya. Presentation to the CEO/FD and subsequent implementation in 2014 of Avaya solution as this was 'best fit' for the organisation.



Responsible for all network services, utilising Cisco for LAN services (switches, routers, ASA, WLC), Cisco,

Checkpoint/Nokia and F5 technologies for public service delivery and managed a complex MPLS based wide area network and internet connections principally with Virginmedia/BT

Spearheaded the introduction and various upgrades of both hardware and software telephony dialler solutions. The dialler was revolutionary in increasing the rate of contact of 2 million listings in the customer database and enabled opportune data enrichment programs. Cloud based dialler was also introduced to the direct sales channels accelerating successful contact of sales leads and improving conversion rates

Business Transformation

Evaluated and reviewed offshore customer and sales contact outsourcing, notably in South Africa and the Philippines to identify if any competitive efficiencies or cost advantages could be achieved. This resulted in successfully outsourcing several business functions.

Converted contract/sales processing to a digital work-flow generating digital asset creation facilitating a more professional customer service experience, and a streamlined approach to the internal work-flow.

Overhauled the point of sale approach with the introduction of mobile technology to every sales person which enabled the introduction of CRM solutions to drive sales productivity and the transition to selling 'digital' products which was critical to the transformation of sales in the market. Technology was deployed using Microsoft SCCM and Windows 7 with bitlocker and Apple iPhones managed via a 3

rd party MDM

solution.

Lead project participant in major transformation of business processing systems, this encapsulated replacing order processing, fulfilment, digital asset management, sales and purchase ledger. This project was a huge business enabler reducing overheads and producing efficiencies end to end.

Business premises and working practices

Led a number of reviews of the locations of business premises, assessing if cost bases were efficient and locations were advantageous to service our customers whilst allowing the business to recruit high quality staff and talent from the local region. Produced documentation and presentation on findings with recommendations including cost benefit analysis.

To drive sales productivity and to reduce facility costs I was a lead participant in consolidating Telesales from multiple distributed offices to three central call centres. This enabled the business to down size and relocate the direct sales staff to smaller premises producing a significant reduction in facilities costs.

Relocated the Head office premise and the primary on premise data centre to a new building and associated services in 2014.

Explored the opportunity of adopting agile working practices by conducting a feasibility review of operating in longer term fixed leased premises to serviced offices. Subsequently the organisation transitioned to serviced office locations for field sales staff, reducing costs and increasing productivity.

ABOUT ME

I’m 43 in a long term relationship and blessed with 2 children, a son aged 18 and daughter 17. In my downtime I enjoy relaxing with friends and family and generally recharging my batteries, I’m a fairly fit and active individual enjoying being outdoors whenever possible. I’m a keen basketball player since being



introduced to the game at school, and I’m a member of a local league basketball team at Lightwater, unfortunately as age has been catching up with me I now only occasionally play in competition though I’ve now become the coach in the club which I thoroughly enjoy.

REFERENCES Geoff Wiliis (Head of IT at Thomson Local), 7 Summer Gardens, Camberley, Surrey, GU15 1ED

Simon Davies (Head of Customer Services at Thomson Local), 39 Camus Close, Church Crookham, Fleet, Hants,

GU52 0UT

michael church cv version 3

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