Flex Manager
21219 interim professionals
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Business and IT Management

Business and IT Management

Work Experience

Career History
XL Re Limited
Reinsurance Company
Turnover £100M
Project Manager – Interim Management Role
June 2001 to present
Responsibility for the implementation of a new Life underwriting system. Activities include project planning, preparation and execution of UAT, system environment configuration.

Ongas Limited
Electricity Supply Company
Turnover £3M
Operations Director
Oct 1999 to June 2001
Reporting to CEO
A co-founder of this electricity and gas supply business utilising leading edge information technology to create a competitive alternative to the existing incumbent suppliers.
The key role has been to prepare the business operation for OFGEM accreditation in order to qualify for an electricity supply licence and preparations for NETA. The principal objectives were to recruit a design team to develop business processes and create IT requirement specifications and to find and implement an IT solution including on-line web based customer sign-up, integrated into a CRM and Customer billing engine which in turn integrates to a national electricity EDI network.
Project work has required the coordination of thousands of EDI data items and the creation of several volumes of business processes to meet the electricity industry standards, creation and implementation of an IT Strategy, installation of Network infrastructure over a WAN, recruitment and training of call centre staff and evaluation of call centre routing technologies.
Due to the current cautious investment climate the company has suffered due to a lack of VC finance and the project has been put on hold.

Rattner Mackenzie Limited
Reinsurance Broker
Turnover £16M
Head of IT – Interim management role
April 98 to Oct 99
Reporting to CEO
Consultancy role to review and re-engineer core business processes and write and implement an IT strategy for this London Market Reinsurance Broker. The IT objectives within the first year were to introduce an infrastructure that would support company growth from 60 to 120 staff. Work entailed the refit and re-cabling of two floors, upgrading the telecoms system, upgrading the server infrastructure, building an IT team and generally applying IT and business administration best practice solutions.

Liberty Re
Reinsurance Company
Turnover £20M
Head of IT – Interim management role
July 1997 to March 1998
Reporting to CFO
IT budget £3.8M. A start up Reinsurance Company as Head of IT provided strategic IT direction until such time that Liberty Re recruited their own IT Director. Involved building a team of IT professionals to work on-site at Liberty’s offices. The initial project requirements were to establish an IT infrastructure from a ‘green field’ site to support the 1997 reinsurance renewal season which included managing a move to new premises at the peak of the insurance renewal season. During the course of the contract, business staff numbers grew from 20 to 70. Activities included:
· A remit to exploit the latest technologies to gain competitive advantage.
· building and managing a team of IT professionals (10-12), both contract and permanent.
· setting up an interim office network in temporary offices while planning and installing the new office network infrastructure, cabling, telephone exchange and building a server room to support 200 users.
· selecting and implementing a core reinsurance underwriting administration system (SICS/nt), client contact, general ledger and HR packages as well as numerous support and information packages.
· identifying communications carriers for voice, internet and frame relay WAN requirements for overseas offices.
· Introducing best practice IT and business standards, procedures and polices.

Monsoon Malabar Limited
IT Consultancy
Turnover £0.5M
MD
From July 1997
Original founder of Monsoon Malabar, providing services to companies in many different industries. Founded in 1997 the company has grown from a pure consultancy base to be able to offer products that can add benefits to large and small businesses alike. The company employs four permanent staff as well as a number of contract staff from time-to-time.
The company specialises in three main areas; IT consultancy, product development and web site design. Principle clients have included XL Re, Zest4, Liberty Re, Munich Re, Rattner Mackenzie, Houston Casualty Company and Bank of Nevis with a number of smaller clients making up the balance.


JIB Group plc
Wholesale Insurance Broker
Turnover £100M
Various roles – see below
1986 to June 1997
A London based international insurance broker; 3000 employees in 30 countries.
· Group Business Systems Manager (Mar97 to Jun97)
Initiated the development of the Group Web site and Intranet projects. Further tasks included initiating an MIS project to consolidate group global statistics and implementation of standard client and risk data references across all overseas offices.

Business Systems Manager – London Market Wholesale (1995 to Mar97)
IT Budget £3.5M
Leading a team of four project managers and Reporting to the Group IT director. Responsibility for the development, procurement, implementation and management of the overall portfolio of business systems and their infrastructure, supporting the information systems needs of up to 600 business users.
The role involved the following principal activities:
· Contributing to the group IS/IT strategy and developing the IT applications portfolio.
· Facilitating structured meetings with business users to identify business objectives and critical success factors. Determining opportunities to utilise IT to fulfil or support these objectives.
· Management of the Implementation of new information systems and their supporting environment. Included setting up project teams within the IT and business areas and monitoring project progress through the entire project development life cycle.
· Re engineering business practices in preparation to implement new business system applications.
· Management of the Business Information Systems portfolio within the agreed budget.
· Established disaster recovery plan. Also worked on network administration, complying with auditors requirements, maintenance of our Service Level Agreement, introduction of an Internet Firewall and the introduction of an Electronic Commerce Interchange agreement to clarify the legal implications of conducting insurance business via email.
· Worked closely with business users to prepare User Acceptance Tests, user training courses, implementation plans, feasibility studies, Business Requirement Documents, Acceptance Sign off Documents, Help Text etc.
· Business Process Redesign
Worked for several months with consultants on a Strategic Development Project deploying structured techniques to reengineer all business processes within the company.

Business Applications Representative for Jardine Insurance Brokers International Ltd (1993-1995)
Principal objectives of this role were to ensure our IT strategy would support our business goals and to exploit the virtues of IT where appropriate. It involved reviewing and reengineering the majority of working practices and procedures within the company. .
Managed the business migration from Wang WP and dumb terminals to MS-Word introducing PC LAN\'s and 400 PC’s within 12 months. During this period a standard PC desktop was introduced including a bespoke General Business Document Production System with integrated fax, telex and email, greatly improving user effectiveness. Versions of the same model desktop were later implemented in a number of international offices.

Head of Support Services department (1992 to 1993)
Assumed this role after initiating the restructuring of the 130 staff in regional Chelmsford office. As head of the Support Services (57 staff, principally cover noting, debiting, stats preparation and policy production) formed a management team to implement proven and successful working practices adapted from previous experience in the Marine and Energy Division. Over a one-year period a significant impact was made on the business, reducing unallocated cash, average debiting times and generally improving business processes in all areas.

Head of Marine and Energy Division\'s Chelmsford Office (1991 to 1992)
Responsible for moving 30 staff to a new office based in Chelmsford. The department\'s function included a Marine Cargo business team, the Energy, Marine Hull, Cargo, Liabilities and P&I Premium debiting and Claims departments. The move provided an opportunity to radically review and re-engineer the traditional business working practices and procedures and remove outdated departmental barriers.
The role involved all aspects of people management. The move to the new location required managing many redundancies and recruitment of local staff to build new teams whilst trying to maintain client service and meet their expectations.

Head Marine Support Services Department (1988 to 1991)
Managed a department of 16 staff, handling the back office work from the Marine Hull, Cargo and Liabilities departments. Radically changed the office working practices and procedures, removing a number of traditional work boundaries, eventually carrying out more work with four less staff.

Marine Hull Broker/Technician (1986  1988)
Marine Hull Broker/Technician initially working on the US account then later on the Far East account. Principally involved broking to overseas offices, placing slip production, preparation of broking statistics and entertaining clients.

Gateway Shipping Ltd 1984  1986
Gateway shipping operated four refrigerated cargo vessels principally carrying fruits to Europe from South Africa, Central America and North African ports. Sailed as 4th Engineer Office with full watch keeping responsibilities in charge of the ships engine control room with additional responsibility for six engine room crewmen. Occasionally required to operate ship’s refrigeration plant.

Shell Tankers (UK) Ltd 1976 – 1984
Shell Tankers operated 35 oil and gas carriers. Sailed on most types of vessel including 2 VLCC\'s and a LNG carrier as 5th Engineer Officer on watch keeping duties and UMS. During this period had the opportunity to operate the main steam plant of a VLCC.






Education

Qualifications
- Business Strategy – Sundridge Park School of Management
- Managing IT Strategy – Cranfield University

- Professional Qualifications (Marine Engineering):
- Dept of trade Marine Engineer Class 1 Part \'A\' Examination
- Dept of Trade Class 2 Part \'A\' & \'B\' Steam Certificate of Competency
- Dept of Trade Class 4 Combined Motor and Steam Certificate of Competency
- Marine Engineering M.E.T.C. - Subjects: Engineering Knowledge, Control Systems and Instrumentation, Applied Mechanics, Electro Technology, Marine Thermodynamics, Mathematics, Engineering Metallurgy.


Skills

Skill Set
Managerial
- Board Level Manager
- Managed start up situation within new Reinsurance Company and Electricity Supply Company
- Business operations management
- IT department management
- Business and IT project management
- IT strategy development
Administrative
- Implemented best operational practice and business processes
- Critical software system implementation project management
- Conducted due diligence audits on business operations and IT
- Evaluated impact of change and managed the implementation of change
- Conducted business process reviews, re-engineered processes and developed new processes
- Prepared and implemented quality management standards
- Written business plans
- Prepared and managed budgets
- Business analysis and software requirement specifications
- Recruited and selected staff at all levels
- Specified, implemented and maintained telephone systems
- Specified, implemented and maintained IT and comms network infrastructures
- Specified and implementing IT best practice
- Conducted feasibility studies
- Prepared UAT plans and managed test execution
- Prepared software test strategies and test plans
- Web technologies system specification
- Prepared Request for Tenders (RFT)
- Specified IT hardware standards and standard desktop builds
- Specified and implemented business interruption and disaster recovery policy
- Identifying business objectives and critical success factors


Languages

English

Other

Note
Graham has the capability to take on the most daunting of challenges and make them work. He can apply himself to investigate the minutiae of a business process, assess its appropriateness and devise and implement changes if required.
Graham is an exceptional leader with the ability to empower the staff who work for him.
Having worked with Graham on many different projects over the last 3 years I would not hesitate to recommend him to any organisation. - GP Monsoon Malabar Ltd


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