ASSOCIATE PARTNERS

Associate Partners

Basharat Bashir

Overview

Basharat is an accomplished Director of Transformation Delivery with over 15 years of experience leading global and complex technology programmes, driving revenue growth, operational excellence, and strategic outcomes. He excels in client & stakeholder management, building high-performing teams, and delivering impactful transformations through strategic vision, financial acumen, and a passion for driving lasting change.

Industry & Service Expertise

Basharat has experience in Telecoms, Engineering, Aviation, and Financial Services. With a global perspective, he has led transformative initiatives in these sectors, consistently achieving exceptional results. His expertise extends to portfolio, programme, and project management, driving revenue growth, operational excellence, and strategic outcomes. Basharat’s unique blend of technical expertise, commercial acumen, and cross-functional collaboration sets him apart as a leader who delivers impactful transformations in regulated markets.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Basharat is a leader with extensive experience in creating, planning, and delivering global technology programmes. He has successfully delivered game-changing technologies and client winning solutions, demonstrating his ability to drive innovation and implement strategic concepts at the process, system, infrastructure, and data levels. Basharat has a unique ability in combining strategic expertise with a detailed understanding of operational processes to deliver IT-enabled benefits.

He is adept at leading waterfall and agile transformation programmes. Basharat’s achievements include leading significant multi-year programmes within regulatory and commercial environments, creating, owning, and driving successful business case achievement through collaboration with client senior stakeholders, suppliers, and internal business units. He has demonstrated excellence in global network and security transformation, cost transformation, data integrity, enterprise level migrations, decommissioning, organisational change, and restructuring. Basharat’s collaborative leadership style, attention to detail, and risk awareness consistently delivers outstanding results.

Jerome Bertin

Overview

Jerome is a highly regarded Programme Director with 35+ years’ experience in leading value assured programme delivery. He has developed commercial business software, been technical programme delivery for oil & gas supermajors and latterly worked in pharmaceutical supply chains in serialisation, big data systems and the medicines supply chain.

Industry & Service Expertise

Jerome has worked across pharmaceutical, oil & gas, healthcare, utilities, digital/ multimedia publishing and software development. He has worked on the European Medicines Verification System implementing serialisation and anti-counterfeiting measures for prescription medicines. Jerome built a £10m non-profit business since 2017 for the UK and has recently jointly started a business for climate and carbon-net zero for businesses. He is widely regarded for his extensive tech expertise in setting strategic direction, building high performing teams and delivery execution.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Jerome built the not-for-profit UK Medicines Verification Organisation to a £10m business in 2 years, delivering the EU Falsified Medicines Directive, a regulatory requirement, for the UK, for a regulatory fixed go-live date of 9th February 2019. The company onboarded 17,000 end users in the healthcare and pharma supply chain, contracted 600 pharmaceutical manufacturers to fund the system, built a high performing team and operated a medicines verification system containing the data for billions of packs of prescription medicines.

He navigated implementing an EU regulation whilst the UK was leaving the EU which added significant complexity, and has taken a leading role in the 28-country European Medicines Verification System — seen as world leading in medicines anti-counterfeiting measures. Jerome was a joint founder of a carbon accounting business in 2019, focused on helping businesses engage with climate change, assess carbon footprints and develop net-zero plans.

Jerome built an portfolio management digital strategy for an oil & gas supermajor operating in the Caspian, integrating business and IT strategies at global and regional level. His work was rolled out worldwide by the customer as an example of best practice in programme and portfolio management.

Conner Birch (Technology Delivery)

Overview

Conner spent the first ten years of his career as a software engineer, including contributing to three IBM products, and becoming Expert Consultant on software development to NATO HQ. Over the last 20 years he has mostly been delivering technical programmes, making him one of the most widely experienced technical delivery-focussed Programme Managers.

Industry & Service Expertise

Conner has worked for blue chip companies in many industries (banking, pensions, telecoms, oil & gas, global security, retail, manufacturing, public archives, and food & beverages). He builds and leads high performing teams and creates real partnership working. He has worked in nine countries on three continents, with particularly experience in India.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

As Interim Director of IT and Partnerships, Conner changed the way the largest pension scheme in Europe managed its outsourcing. By making outsourcers directly accountable to the departments they served, the emphasis changed from “conformance to contract” to “delivering value”; departments could decide what they really wanted and at what cost.

Conner created a new target operating model for a nascent division of Staples, using RFID tags to manage customer’s stationary cupboards and rooms, automating reorders, invoicing, and payments, and used the same tags to manage logistics, delivery, and recycling

For Siemens, Conner used original CAD data for bespoke power generation plant to create 3D ‘digital twin’ models of customers unique equipment. The models provided exploded views so that customers could select parts that needed to be replaced. This, along with a pricing engine, was incorporated into an e‑commerce system and an ERP system so that customers could order parts for their installed equipment without having to contact Siemens’ engineers.

John Cheshire

Overview

John is a Programme Transformation Director of Big‑4 heritage with a record for helping his clients drive lasting change. His 17-year consulting career focused on major business transformation programmes in complex organisations from inception, through delivery to hand-over. He has also turned around many troubled programmes.

Industry & Service Expertise

John has cross sector international experience with a particular sector focus on Telecoms, Energy & Utilities and FS. He is very experienced with setting up programme governance and managing third parties including Systems Integrators. He has been involved with the technical, regulatory, financial and operational aspects of large transformation programmes and also M&A integration.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

John’s background was in Microprocessor Technologies, leading to early experience within Racal and BT. From there he developed significant expertise in Programme Management and delivery models, going on to deliver a range of services through IBM, PwC and before that, Coopers & Lybrand. His clients have been based around the world including Europe, South Africa, China and the Caribbean. He has led a number of large-scale transformation programmes which have included radical IT, organisation and process change. John has set up and managed supporting governance and change functions and mapped client strategy into realisable programmes of work with defined business benefits.

Dan Dickinson

Overview

Dan is a 20 year experienced business technology, IT leadership, programme delivery and transformation leader with particularly strong interpersonal skills and an inspiring style that enables organisations to derive commercial benefit from technology change.

Industry & Service Expertise

Leveraging his expertise in building high-performing teams, Dan has successfully built IT and Digital capabilities across various industries. He has also held Executive Committee positions, directing technology strategy and overseeing large company growth and transformation initiatives.

Dan is skilled at delivering large-scale technology transformations spanning systems, infrastructure, and business processes. He brings a collaborative leadership style focused on connecting technology to core business objectives and fostering partnerships between technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Dan’s background training in leadership at Cranfield, and with an MBA, formed the basis for his many effective and successful roles, with specific experience highlights including:

Assembled and managed an IT Function with 18 staff, 4 departments
Delivered Enterprise Architecture Programme deploying 4 new core business software sets (PMS, Revenue Management, Datawarehouse and Oracle NetSuite ERP)
Key in enabling rapid business growth from £20m UK only, to pan-European with £120m revenue over 5 years as a founding member of the Executive Committee
Created an holistic Data Security Strategy, including technical security tools, CSOC contract, GDPR, with full alignment across 3rd party contracts

Chandra Dusi, PMP

Overview

A Senior Programme Leader / Programme Manager, with a broad experience in delivering ERP and Data Transformation initiatives including Master Data Management Solutions for Clients in both Public and Private Sectors.

Industry & Service Expertise

Chandra has a wide range of experience across several industry sectors including Pharma, Oil & Gas, Telecoms, Consulting, Technology, Utilities/Energy, Manufacturing, Insurance, Financial Services, Retail and Public Sector.

His expertise is in setting up and managing highly successful Programme structures to deliver highly complex Business Change and IT transformation initiatives for clients, on budget and on time, and leading high-performing matrix teams including remote and third-party teams.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Chandra comes with significant Consulting expertise along with considerable Project and Programme management experience in global environments, gained over the years working with IBM’s Core Consulting Division. He has clear and proven ability to collaborate successfully across IT and Business stakeholders including ‘C‑level’ executives.

In recent years, he has been instrumental in delivering complex Master Data Management solutions, including helping set-up Data Governance strategy and Data Management frameworks for several clients.

Chandra has Technical and System knowledge of several ERP Platforms in Oracle, SAP S/4 HANA, Salesforce and NetSuite, with experience in several Business / ERP transformations and System Integration/ Technology Implementation assignments. Importantly he also has in-depth process knowledge of key Business Processes in Order-to Cash, and other Financial Accounting Processes.

Gareth Evans

Overview

Gareth is a highly regarded executive level Programme Director with 30+ years’ experience in leading significant (£100m+) cross-functional change initiatives specialising in all aspects of corporate restructuring (M&A), target operating model definition / realisation, business transformation and systems re-platforming.

Industry & Service Expertise

Gareth has focussed his career in delivering all aspects of change initiatives across both Technology and Business Change. His main involvement has been in the Banking and Insurance sectors, with some exposure within both pharmaceutical and manufacturing. His approach and experience ensures he is equally comfortable in any sized organisation be it FTSE25 or a private equity backed start-up. He is experienced in reporting up to CEO level.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

End-to-end programme set-up and delivery accountability is Gareth’s forte with countless major achievements and successes.

Over a distinguished career he has successfully led the creation and launch of new companies and implemented strategic business transformations ranging across systems and technology, to sales and service. He has demonstrated a particular flair for post-merger integration activities (joining, closing and disposing).

Gareth is very much a hands-on leader who takes ownership and builds high-performance teams which in turn reduces both delivery risk and cost. He is extremely personable and teams enjoy working with him.

Gareth is particularly strong in working with executive teams in defining and agreeing target operating models, and the subsequent delivery of these.

Throughout his career he has enjoyed successes with Finance and HR transformations, all aspects of migrations, programme recovery, partnering and white-labelling, plus 3rd party delivery oversight.

Som Ghosh

Overview

Som is an experienced Business Change Programme Manager, specialising in utilising his extensive cross-business process transformation knowledge, and with considerable experience in delivering significant business improvement programmes.

Industry & Service Expertise

Som has significant industry expertise in global Food & Retail organisations, Energy Utilities, Manufacturing, Consumer Products and Pharmaceuticals. He has successfully delivered many multi-country ERP/SAP global roll outs for organisations such as Nestle, GSK, PZ Cussons, Marks & Spencer and Ingersoll Rand.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Som has been instrumental in turning around failing projects and programmes, leading them on to successful benefit achievement on multiple occasions. Keen to understand business and people, his ability to leverage technology to implement tactical solutions has been the strength behind many a comfortable “roller coaster” ride within complex programmes.

Som is a certified business change and programme leadership professional with a proven track record of delivering business change across continents, transforming many corporates from “bricks and mortar” to digital processes.

Som excels in leading cross-functional teams, utilising a collaborative and inclusive leadership style. He demonstrates an ability to create practical, pragmatic solutions to complex problems and to develop strategic options, prepare business cases, secure C‑Suite stakeholders’ endorsement and on through to implementing the full business transformation.

Andy Grieves

Overview

Andy is a senior Pharma / Biopharma Operations Professional with 30+ years’ international experience in leading pharmaceutical manufacturing sites, in capital programmes, in business transformation, in manufacturing strategy and in new product acquisition due diligence.

Industry & Service Expertise

Andy has balanced his career to gain global experience in both pharmaceutical manufacturing sites and in corporate roles with increasing responsibility up to VP level. He has successfully operated in both ‘big’ and ‘midsized’ Pharma companies and has also performed operations roles supporting Consumer Healthcare and Beverage businesses.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Andy has successfully turned around the performance of pharmaceutical manufacturing sites and implemented business transformations to focus the site on its new role. He has established partnerships with Universities and Governments to enhance new product development capabilities.

Andy has created new External Supply and Manufacturing Strategy capabilities for a midsized pharma company and built the required organisations.

Andy thrives in leading cross functional teams involving Commercial, R&D, Manufacturing and Corporate functions, utilising a collaborative and inclusive leadership style. He demonstrates the ability to ‘join the dots’ from development of strategic options, preparation of business cases, securing endorsement from C‑Suite Stakeholders through to implementing the full business transformation.

Rob Lowe

Overview

As a Programme Director, Rob understands how to take the helm of large corporate programmes with full knowledge of what makes delivery successful. Over the past 30+ years Rob has delivered some mission critical programmes for well-known corporations — going the extra mile to ensure that the client’s delivery scope is satisfactorily fulfilled to timescales and budget.

Industry & Service Expertise

Rob has worked within many sectors including Finance, M&A, Telco, Utilities and Software Development. Client track record includes, Motorola, Psion, Vodafone, 3‑mobile, PWC, ebookers, HMRC, Companies House, Siemens, npower, WaterPlus, Google and Munich Re.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Rob was responsible for HMRC’s BAU Programme consisting of 750 IT Staff and 65 Projects and Programmes of Work; at PwC he was Programme Manager responsible for the separation of Financial Systems and data globally to enable the sale of PwCC to IBM for £3.5billion; as Motorola/Psion JV Programme Director Rob developed and managed an international team that developed the first colour smartphone called ‘Odin’ with a budget of £100m. Rob was founder of SyncML to support the device in its various environments, still used globally to this day.

Rob was from a coding, analysis, architectural and technical administration background, therefore providing vision within highly technical environments. Rob has worked in technically challenging environments and was fortunate to work alongside Martijn Koster at the time when he was credited as the developer of the World’s first Internet Search Engine ‘ALIWEB’. Rob has built large teams to oversee some key mission critical programmes.

Francisco Santos Meireles

Overview

Francisco is a Senior Technical Consultant with 20+ years’ experience in Project Management and end-to-end delivery ownership, including digital transformation projects while designing and implementing scalable cloud solutions with high usability and substantial business value.

Industry & Service Expertise

Experienced across several sectors such as Automotive, Health, Dental, MedTech, Insurance, Banking, Construction, Chemical, Real Estate and Retail.

Francisco developed and continues to maintain a network of global contacts in companies across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and America, including from his time on the Owner President Management Program at Harvard Business SchoolHe and from membership of YPO (the global leadership community of extraordinary chief executives).

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

He possesses a solid technical background in current public and private cloud technologies, in product development, product re-engineering, cloud migrations, and in DevOps automations in both Agile and traditional environments: this is combined with strong management ability in global distributed environments.

Francisco has architected client cloud solutions operations based on AWS, Azure, GCP and OpenStack, improving usage through GitOps approaches and most recent Kubernetes solutions He led the development of the first cloud digital dental platform for Portugal and Spain in an Agile environment with a fully automated DevOps approach. He also successfully developed and led a turnaround of what become the biggest Dental Chain in the country whilst re-architecting the development of a new cloud based dental practice management system.

He has developed and launched a German SAP technology consulting company in the Portuguese market, providing thought leadership to business and technical teams, with full P&L responsibility.

Andrew Miller

Overview

Andrew is a senior Programme Director with 25+ years’ experience leading a wide range of M&A transactions and strategic change programmes globally. Andrew has diverse experience across a range of sectors including technology, professional services, insurance and information businesses.

Industry & Service Expertise

Andrew has built deep technical M&A expertise through his experience leading transactions as a lawyer, both in house and in private practice. He also has extensive experience leading delivery of strategic and business cases for acquisitions and disposals, as well as driving successful integration of acquired businesses, out-performing against key acquisition metrics, and delivering effective transition and separation out of sold businesses. Andrew brings extensive experience of change project and programme management, working effectively with a wide range of stakeholders to achieve critical business goals.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Andrew led the first two acquisitions by a private equity-backed professional services business, developing the business case, negotiating successfully with the vendors, and building and leading a cross-functional team to complete an efficient and effective due diligence process. He led the delivery of highly successful acquisitions that performed well ahead of all target metrics. Andrew implemented an effective and repeatable playbook for the efficient acquisition of multiple targets, building expertise and ongoing M&A capability across the team.

Andrew has successfully led diverse global M&A portfolios, working closely with senior stakeholders, functional teams and external advisors to deliver a range of successful acquisitions and disposals, enabling diverse organisations to achieve critical strategic and financial goals.

Andrew has also led a range of successful strategic projects, managing operational and cross-functional teams to deliver strategic organisational change and enhanced business performance.

Samarjit Mishra

Overview

Samarjit has 20+ years’ experience in Software Development, DevOps, and Agile delivery of projects. He has worked as an Enterprise Digital Transformation consultant, as a Programme Manager, in Data Governance, in Engineering Product Delivery and as a Service Improvement consultant.

Industry & Service Expertise

Samarjit has extensive knowledge of delivering financial products across payment, cards, control compliance, and trading data integration with front office management. He has excellent knowledge of data analytics for a financial product and setting up the required governance model to have the right reporting metrics for decision making. He also has a good understanding of setting up service management and infrastructure for retail and manufacturing customers.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Samarjit has managed and transformed end-to-end Portfolio Product Development and Delivery starting from business engagement, project scheduling, and collaborating with offshore & onshore teams to deploy customised solutions for clients. He provides guidance on agile project delivery to achieve schedules and budgets and improves agile delivery processes through training/mentoring Scrum/DevOps teams through different Agile best practices. His core expertise areas cover Scaled Agile (Scrum, Kanban & XP), product optimisation through design thinking, CI/CD, incremental evolving design, infrastructure management, release management, and product management at portfolio, program and operation team level. He has a strong track record in portfolio mapping, creating delivery roadmaps, mentoring on continuous release, architectural integration procedures, designing prototypes, and standardising operating process to manage service engagement with a “lean” mindset. He drives customer centric design thinking with a strong focus on ensuring customer satisfaction.

John Monk

Overview

A highly-experienced, versatile, hands on & results-driven Programme Manager with a very successful background in M&A transactions across multiple geographies, legal and contractual frameworks.

Industry & Service Expertise

John has expert knowledge of international businesses through the cultural, financial, technical and process changes involved in company/division disposal or integration. His experience is predominantly in regulated markets – specifically Pharmaceuticals and Financial Services.

He has excellent third party management experience, from requirements definition, contract negotiation, onboarding and managing delivery through M&A specific experience with global legal and advisory teams, through vendor/purchaser relationships to impacted business teams and unions.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

John’s collaborative approach to successful business case achievement has been built on his ability to engage with senior business stakeholders and internal and external teams to finalise achievable terms, and then lead execution of delivery. He has been the lead on a global data disposition programme in the process of integrating businesses prior to the separation of a major new Consumer Healthcare organisation; he has led acquisition and joint venture programmes for one of the world’s leading stock markets; he has directed multiple programmes related to organisation change and multi-national re-structuring for a major Pharmaceutical business. John’s style is marked in such programmes by a confidence calming style that overlays an attention to detail and awareness of programme risk.

Les Murray

Overview

Les works with major organisations to bring about large-scale change through restructuring projects which cut complexity, reduce costs, and make businesses more efficient. Quick to comprehend a business and how it works by using advanced business insight, he has achieved success for major companies throughout the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Far East, and North America.

Industry & Service Expertise

Les has been engaged to complete commercial due diligence, business case development, strategy development, organisational re-structuring, process simplification, cost reduction, rationalising operating sites, the production of M&A led integration playbooks for use by leadership teams, and has been the lead through the integration process. In all, Les has worked with over 30 FTSE 250 clients, spanning 20 sectors, and completed 17 post-merger integrations.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Schooled in high-street marketing and a first-class communicator, he has honed his broad skills on diverse projects – in aerospace, manufacturing, nuclear and service industries. Les’s work spans both B2C and B2B sectors and markets. Motivational, driven, and a respected executive, Les applies his energy and skills to manage large-scale change, and integrates structure with processes and systems. Les knows how to restructure and how to get results – particularly in challenging and pressurised environments.

Frederick (Rick) Nicolas

Overview

Rick is a Senior Programme/Project and PMO Lead with 30 years of global experience in leading and supporting pharmaceutical, petrochemical, oil & gas, cryogenics civils and rail, for both CAPEX and OPEX full lifecycle programmes/projects, in strategic business transformation, divestments, IT infrastructure, engineering, procurement, design and construction delivery.

Industry & Service Expertise

Rick has extensive global project and programme management experience across multiple industries, as well as deep proficiency in both Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) and AgilePM frameworks to support full governance across all corporate function, 3rd Party Management, Technology and Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) global programme/project deliveries. His technical expertise in these fields enables him to setup, develop and lead a team supporting global budgets of in excess of £450m+ and utilising global resources of ~700+.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Rick has successfully turned around the performance of programmes and projects within manufacturing sites and corporately across complex, multifunctional teams globally. He utilises a supportive, collaborative and inclusive leadership style, gaining support from stakeholders and all levels of the organisation from grassroot to board level governance groups. His attention to detail and gap analysis capabilities, drives through delivery according to agreed KPI’s major milestones. Sectors and industries engaged in are, Pharmaceutical, Consumer Health, Vaccines, Facilities Management, Information Technology, Oil & Gas, Civil Infrastructure, Petrochemical, Pulp & Paper, Cryogenics, Rail and Water, around data centre installation & migration, manufacture & supply, strategic delivery, business transformational change, concept/scheme & detailed design, shutdowns & rebuilds, system design & control, rail blockades & major projects.

Richard Nixon

Overview

Richard has 20+ years global business transformation consulting experience and 10 years in automotive. He has worked with Hackett Group, Collinson Grant, KPMG and EY. He is a strategic procurement specialist, transforming the procurement performance of complex, multinational businesses and has written for the FT, The Times, CPO Agenda and CIO Magazine.

Industry & Service Expertise

Selling and driving procurement, transformation and cost optimisation programmes for UK, international and global clients across both the public and private sectors. Client track record includes Jaguar Land Rover, SABMiller, Imperial Brands, Vodafone, BT, Nokia, GSK, IHG, National Grid, FirstGroup, National Express, 3M, TPG, Barratt, SCA, Otis, Smiths Group and Premier Foods.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Richard started a Strategic Sourcing & Procurement practice, taking it to 75 Consultants. He also was the lead for KPMG’s Operations practice, managing a team of 100+ consultants based in the UK and India with a turnover in excess of £20m. Richard ran a major post-acquisition supply chain cost reduction programme for a FTSE100 transport operator following a significant USA acquisition, delivering $75m of benefits. He ran a global procurement transformation programme for a FTSE 50 consumer products company, building a business case to deliver >£100m per annum of P&L benefit, designed a new target operating model and processes, and identifying enabling technology strategy.

Richard ran the category management academy for a major automotive OEM, training 100+ Purchasing staff in leading edge procurement, project management and behavioural techniques. He also redesigned the Indirect Procurement Target operating Model for a FTSE100 diverse manufacturing organisation with more than 400 manufacturing sites.

Harinder Singh

Overview

Harinder is a commercially astute project leader with 20+ years of diverse experience across investment banking, financial services, technology, consulting and corporate sectors. Bringing a collaborative approach to successful transformational leadership, he has engaged business stakeholders at C‑level / Board & 3rd parties to translate business requirements into tangible programme goals, deliverables & outcomes.

Industry & Service Expertise

Harinder has extensive global project and programme management experience across Financial Services, Hedge Funds and Oil/Gas as well as deep proficiency in structured Agile framework planning and regulatory change programme delivery. His technical expertise both in finance and technology enables him to lead with content and promote a culture that promotes technical prowess alongside commercial rigor.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Harinder has been accountable for the delivery of large-scale technical and regulatory transformation programmes, bridging the gap between technology and business change to deliver on the wider strategy in various challenging environments. With his deep industry insights, he has helped businesses to navigate difficult changes and global processes in order to achieve outcomes demanded by external market pressures as well as prioritised internal initiatives.

He has led multiple teams utilising a collaborative leadership style and proven track record of translating complex ideas into efficient execution for varying intricate disciplines across buy and sell side divisions, data science and cloud computation. Where required, Harinder has been a primary interface to external regulators and external technology forums of a global nature in order to facilitate agreements and direction.

John Spencer

Overview

John is a seasoned Change Management professional with 21 years of hands-on experience, delivering benefits driven transformational change for leading global corporations. He has worked as a consultant with many of the top-tier consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, KMPG, etc).

Industry & Service Expertise

John has extensive industry experience in: Financial Services, Retail, Civil Engineering, Marketing, Telecoms and Rail. He is also a trained consultant with Bechtel and has worked with the big four consultancy firms on multiple national and international projects.

John is Agile and Lean Sigma trained project and programming managing front and back office transformation in areas including IT, ERP, automation and applied behavioural science.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

John has worked in existing and green field transformation programmes, often with an IT delivery focus. He has strong links with some of the UK’s leading universities including Warwick and Cardiff and has worked with them to deliver project focused, benefits driven company training.

John’s major strength is his ability to go into new business areas and produce on time project delivery with banked return on investment.

Mark Stenson

Overview

Mark is a senior leader of IT and business transformation programmes with strengths in strategy development and implementation, and delivering projects effectively through senior executive engagement, building effective teams, supplier management and a focus on working to process.

Industry & Service Expertise

Highly experienced in digital services and data management capabilities on a global scale from initial consultancy through to solution implementation. Extensive knowledge of Defence, Aerospace, Retail, Nuclear and Energy sectors supported by a deep functional knowledge of the end-to-end product lifecycle including Design, Manufacturing, Supply Chain (Purchasing and Logistics) and Operations.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Mark has lead significant multi-year programmes within regulatory and commercial environments, delivering game-changing technologies on a global scale. This has included award winning solutions in supply chain and manufacturing operations. With degrees in business administration and IT, he is able to blend strategic concepts with detailed ways of working at process, system and data level to deliver IT enabled benefits. He is also able to lead IT transformation programmes based upon the latest agile frameworks as a SAFe 5.0 Practitioner Consultant. He also holds industry qualifications in programme and project management and is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the British Computer Society.

Neil Stokes

Overview

Neil is a goal driven Senior Consultant/Programme Director with an impressive background of successful delivery in Programme Management, Business Change Management and Systems Integration in programmes covering Smart Metering, Billing and CRM.

Industry & Service Expertise

With over 25 years industry experience in Utilities and Telcos, obtained in the UK and globally, Neil has held senior internal roles and acted as a third-party Programme Director or Senior Consultant to several large multinationals. Neil has extensive experience in managing diverse multi-location cross-functional teams, consisting of blended on-shore/off-shore, in-house and third-party system integrator resources.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

UK SME Energy Supplier: Neil led the negotiation and establishment of MAP & MOP contracts, from initiation through to handover into BAU

UK Big Six Energy Supplier: Neil was the lead for the SMETS 1 & 2 delivery programme covering technology and business change/readiness, ensuring programme and business compliance with industry obligations

UK Big Six Energy Supplier: Neil was the programme lead for all IS and technology for the programme for the delivery of Smart meters into the UK market, the establishment of a new field force, contact centre and back-office capabilities

Major Outsourcer: Neil was a key part of the team managing UK major mobile Telco, being responsible for the UK account strategy, development of propositions, coordinating supplier Alliance partner capabilities and developing the joint innovation agenda with the client

UK Major Telco: Neil managed a team of 130 for delivery of all strategic UK Billing Programmes, such as the Wholesale Billing Upgrade Programme and the Strategic Mediation Programme

Paul Strickland

Overview

Experienced Programme Director with 18+ years of understanding complex requirements, managing largely technology-led change, to transform business in the Financial Services sector. An articulate and persuasive communicator, focused on building strong client/working relationships and inspiring evidence based confidence from stakeholders.

Industry & Service Expertise

Highly experienced in delivering technology change globally across many domains within Financial Services including; data and analytics, infrastructure, audit, pensions, HR and other functions.

Using evidence-based business cases to negotiate and build strong relationships across multiple, multi-functional, cross-supplier teams; consulting on existing programmes to steer them back on track to meet time, cost and / or quality goals.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Paul has been accountable for the delivery of large-scale technical and regulatory transformation programmes, bridging the gap between C Suite, technology and business change to deliver on the wider strategy across various portfolios. Deliverables have included:

A multi-year global data and analytics solution as part of a group wide regulatory portfolio at Barclays
The technology element that enabled Lloyds Banking Group to meet the requirements of the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR)
A review of the end to end change process of a leading UK Retail Bank following a problematic migration to the platform of the European bank which had acquired the UK bank – this led to them bringing their IT development teams back in-house
The £450m technology refresh of the network infrastructure for Lloyds TSB — at the time, the largest transformation of its type in Europe

Creagh Warren

Overview

Creagh is a Strategic Business & Technology Leader (CIO/CTO/NED) with over 25 years of experience and a passion for driving business utilising technology and digital innovation. He focuses particularly on diving into the “why” rather than just the “what & how”.

Industry & Service Expertise

An energetic leader able to manage large, diverse teams in high-pressure environments and to lead organisations through periods of significant transformation and into the digital future, facilitating growth and ever improving operations and customer service.

Creagh is a valued strategic partner, able to forge strong relationships with senior management, stakeholders and customers to develop and implement strategies and solutions to empower and achieve business goals. He has a natural aptitude for leading, motivating and inspiring people.

Career Achievements & Particular Capabilities

Advising the board of a growing insurance company, assessing a large, multi-project transformation programme and producing a report to the board, detailing strengths and weaknesses, variations from best practice and specific recommendations and areas of improvement, enabling the securing of PE investment for future growth and business objectives.

Management of the IT Carve-Out program and establishment of a global greenfield IT environment, managing global contracts with Microsoft, IBM, HCL, SAP, etc. facilitating the successful M&A of over 200 global legal entities.

Eliminated over $300k in operating expenses, introduced Business Intelligence (BI) resulting in an 85% reduction in spread sheets, time reduction of 50% for month end reporting and 90% for ad-hoc reporting and introduced significant technology initiatives that formed the basis for M&As and investment that doubled the net worth of the company (to $1bn).