I have over 35 years experience in the IT industry focused on translating business requirements into value-adding IT solutions. Starting in mainframe operations, I taught myself programming and moved to a Systems Programming role, being responsible for managing implementation and support of IBM mainframe operating systems. I have performed this role working both in-house and for major services organisations. I have additionally undertaken technical consultancy assignments on behalf of services organisations.
I added PC application development to my capabilities, covering all aspects from the initial requirement analysis, through design, development, documentation, distribution, support and marketing. Applications have been both in-house and package development sold to blue-chip clients in the UK, US and Europe.
My delivery experience with service providers has embraced project and people management, design and development across wide ranging platforms, where an ability to learn new skills quickly was key.
I have management experience and a wide ranging business knowledge across a broad range of industries. However, I have chosen to retain a hands on technical element to all managerial roles undertaken.
Designed and developed commercial software for a number of companies. This gave me a perspective of the whole life-cycle from the initial idea, design, prototype, develop, document, package, distribute and support. This experience rapidly gives you an understanding of the many priorities involved in software development.
Management means many things to many people. Over the years, I have lead teams of Systems Programmers, Analysts and Developers, all of whom have their own unique challenges. Protecting and motivating the team is key to hitting targets.
Designed, developed and implemented an effective web strategy on a limited budget. Created an extensive WEB site, including user downloads and interactive forms/JavaScript/PHP components. Developed the tools necessary to support an e-mail based marketing campaign. Suggested and Implemented money saving strategies such as use of Skype and Persony (web presentations).
I am a developer through and through. Starting out in IBM assembler on System/370 machines, I have progressed to an experienced C# and VB6 developer. My ideal situation is taking a 'fag packet' spec through to production systems, doing the analysis, design, specification, coding, documentation and distribution. Not many employers give me that much scope, though that was what I did for Lucidus for over 14 years, making it an invaluable experience.
The following list represents just some of the highlights of my career.
I firmly believe that, in development, there are specialists and generalists. Specialists know everything there is to know about their chosen subject (or two) while generalists know a enough about a number of technologies to be able to be injected in to any project and bring themselves to a productive state quickly. I'm a generalist and happy to be so.
In the dim and distant past, I was IBM mainframe through and through. Now, I'm Microsoft and happy to be in that arena. My day to day life involves coding Winforms in C# with a healthy dose of VB6 to keep me grounded. My online efforts revolve around knowing enough about web technologies to achieve the results I need, so include a reasonable knowledge of HTML and CSS, enough JavaScript to be dangerous and a smattering of PHP.
I have had experience of working on ASP.Net projects and, for my sins, have use Java.
IPM is a flexible commercial modelling package, that has been used for such diverse applications as the assessment, communication and tracking of value in sales and the deployment, communication and management of corporate improvement & change management
Sales improvement begins with a clear definition of what solutions are being offered to the customer and how that solution contributes to growth and and profit margin improvement. Effectiveness Assessment is a tool for defining the components of the solution, how they bring profitable growth and what factors affect how effective the solution is.
Performer is a suite of software tools to help individuals, line managers and organisations develop their performance using occupational standards. By keeping the code flexible, three versions of the product were produced covering Management standards, FENTO (Further Education National Training Organisation) standards and Business Link Standards..
pmSuite is a software package aimed at senior management in an organisation to give them the tools to manage the performance of the organisation as a whole. It allows management to spot areas of strength and weakness with a view to spreading best practice from the successful areas of the business to the struggling areas of the business.
School Mentor - designed to enable school professionals at all levels of experience to look at their teaching skills, professional and management characteristics.
Enabler is an application that profiles a manager against a set of core competencies, benchmarking the managers capabilities against the profile of the "ideal manager" and produces a report of specific actions to take to improve their effectiveness. The process is based around a 360 degree review of competence.
And these are some of the commercial products I have maintained for others.
Adviser Office is a market leading client and practice management system for adviser firms of all sizes. It provides all the CRM and back office tools needed to simplify and streamline the way you operate, helping to automate manual processing which significantly reduces costs and saves time.
Trigold Prospector is the market leading mortgage sourcing tool, providing a complete end-to-end system for mortgage advice. It is regarded as the most user-friendly, compliant, and accurate sourcing software available; over two thirds of mortgage professionals use Trigold Prospector on a daily basis.
When Lucidus decided to shut up shop, I found myself looking for a new position and Third Financial Software was the result. This is probably the best fit position I have had in a long time, our products being a mixture of web services and desktop WinForms based applications all written in C#.
Returned to Lucidus with the intention of upgrading the existing VB6 Business Modelling application to meet the needs of the new Value Based Sales processes. At the same time, to redesign and redevelop the tool-set to C#.
I was invited back to Avelo in order to pick up on the project I was working on when I went to South View Solutions.
South View Solutions have two development streams, dealing with mobile applications for the housing associations and with integration products providing low cost add-on tools for the back office systems (financial and job management) used in those housing associations. At the time I joined there was no support for the integration products and I was to pick up, support and enhance those products leaving the rest of the team to concentrate on mobile.
Recruited to maintain the flagship Prospector product (mixed VB6/.Net), with a view to converting it to a .Net platform during 2012/2013. Prospector had around 14,000 users at the time.
Joined in order to expand the software development team for their financial planning software; Adviser Office. Started as a b strong coderb and quickly progressed to deputising for the Team Leader, taking responsibility for
Adviser Office is the primary software package used by around 15,000 users.
While working for 1st, I have also kept in contact with Lucidus and continued to actively support and develop IPM.
Clients included BP Chemicals, Pilkingtons, Yorkshire Water and the MoD.
In addition to working for Lucidus, I also developed software packages for