Business

I'm an IT professional of over 20 years, and enthused in a personal interest of all things tech, IT and security for over 25 now. I've been actively involved with practical cyber security and infosec for 15 years, and have a similar amount of business operations experience in a number of different types and sizes of organisations in all sectors.

I've worked with multinational managed service providers running from dedicated, custom-built service support centres, and with start-ups and scale-ups using shared office space. I've also worked with charities over a similar range of sizes. I've configured and deployed finance systems, HRIS tools, ERP platforms, development environments, communication and collaboration tools, and a whole lot more in the cloud, both as privately hosted products and SaaS tools, and indeed on good old-fashioned hardware, both locally and in datacentres.

When I say configured and deployed, I mean that, in wide variety. I've managed the selection process and initial configuration of tools, from deploying and configuring Xero for charities and small businesses I've worked with, to supporting the configuration, management and user training of NetSuite for a multinational HQ. I've been responsible for change management for one of the world's largest automotive groups, brought multiple startups to their feet, and managed the deployment of a datacentre installation, with responsibility for 3m GBP budget.

IT systems come naturally to me, and policy and process second nature. Where I can guide both, I ensure policies are entirely agnostic to the systems they can be applied to, allowing for the flexibility of change. 

I've been key to the delivery of ISO9001 in two companies - albeit 10 years apart and not as the lead - and more recently achieved 27001 accreditation for a medium sized company made up of over sixty remotely disparate staff in 2 countries, delivering all technical and governance elements myself. That company has since grown and successfully passed that and other audits, with a very high security maturity target.

Another thing I configure and deploy is people. People are core to any organisation, and the smooth functioning of any team. Whilst I'm certainly a very capable jack-of-all-trades for any organisation, and in an SME or charity with limited growth and measurable pace I'd make an excellent exec, in the high-tech fast paced sectors I prefer to work in the same isn't true. In these companies you need a team of specialists; people who can interface with large and growing teams, as well as speak to C-suite and executives in their language. I see the big picture, to use a hateful phrase, and once we cross that size or growth threshold, I put the right people in the right place to make that picture a reality. 

In each case and every role, how the business governs itself, and how it interacts with its staff and its users, their suppliers and third parties has always been of most interest to me. The adoption of new policies, processes, technologies and systems is often hindered by a lack of real attempts to explore and solve the Problem, develop the Solution properly, and a failure to communicate each of these steps clearly, and take all stakeholders needs into account. Often compromises are made which need not have been made, through a lack of understanding of the true impact. 

In this way, change and transformation has always been at the heart of what I do, which drives me towards smaller organisations trying to solve specific, but similar, challenges. But I'll get to that later.