Experience Summary
2019, Alicetronics, Alice Springs
Retail team member
2015 – 2018, Audio Technology start-up (A3D Holdings Ltd / Vastigo Ltd)
CEO
2005 – 2020, Helena Consulting – Partner
Freelance Consultant
2003 – 2005, SAP Australia, Brisbane
Account Executive
2002 – 2003, KPMG, Brisbane
Senior Manager – Information Risk Management Practice
2000 – 2002, Computer Sciences Corporation, Sydney
Project Director – Optus Transition; then Manager – Strategy & New Business; then Global Marketing Manager
1997 – 1999, Wang Global, Brisbane (now known as Getronics)
State Manager – Queensland
1996 – 1997, Anite Networks, Brisbane (formerly Case Communications)
State Manager – Queensland
1994 – 1996, Intergraph Corporation, Brisbane – Senior Consultant
Computer Aided Dispatch
1992 – 1994, Motorola, Brisbane
Senior Account Manager – National lead on Public Safety Communications
1991- 1992, Case Communications, Brisbane
Senior Account Executive
| Primary Skills | Major Industries |
| Negotiation Strategy Project Direction Consultancy / Advisory Sales Organisation Building Leadership Enterprise Architecture System Integration Stakeholder Management Communications Outsource negotiations Financial analysis Marketing | ICT Government Public Safety Banking & Finance Capabilities Comprehending complexity Value definition Benefits realisation analysis Responsibility wrangling Quality Assurance Contract Rescue Relationship Repair |
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Science – Applied Physics, Computer Science and Advanced Mathematics, University of Hull, England
- Diploma in Communications Advertising and Marketing (2/3rds completed prior to moving overseas), College of Distributive Trades, London, England
- Finance for the non-financial manager, London Business School, London, England
Community
Former member of the IT steering committee of The Supreme Court of Victoria.
Founding Member and two-term President of the Queensland Telecommunications Industry Group (Now AIIA)
In-career significant learning’s
Acoustic 3D Holdings & Vastigo: CEO (Victoria)
Having invested in Acoustic 3D Holdings Ltd, was invited to take the role of CEO to drive further investment and to develop and lead this revolutionary acoustic technology. Achieving an Australian Design Award for our first ever product was significant – in as much as it supported our stealth-marketing plan. Following initial interest from global players it became obvious we needed to separate the engineering from the marketing, so established Vastigo Ltd as sole licensor marketing the IP, based in Singapore. Led Vastigo’s trial of new product applications for A3D technology with a major Chinese TV and smartphone manufacturer. Subsequently co-authored with A3D Holdings, and Dr Toby Gifford of Monash University, exciting new peer-reviewed science which was revealed to the world at the AES conference Burlingame CA, September 10th 2017.
Learning: Overturning ‘Conventional Wisdom’ takes a lot of time and effort
Helena Consulting – Consultant to NAB: Collaboration (Victoria)
Resolved a number of operational difficulties that arose from NAB’s outsource contracts with IBM and Telstra. Issues mostly centred on the collaboration space (email/calendar, video, etc.) and it’s integration with mobile (along with the necessary Blackberry user migration to IOS or Android). Was able to resolve a number of the issues that followed the ‘demise of Blackberry’ and assisted Telstra to improve their service offerings in the VC and Web conferencing space. Responsible for a number of successful service improvement plans – including the sensitive and previously problematic ‘Boardroom technologies’. Following this, was tasked with leading the resolution of many of the issues stemming from the opening of 700 Bourke Street.
Learning: ‘Technical problems’ frequently require ‘people solutions’
Helena Consulting – Consultant to Victorian Government: Strategy Development (Victoria)
After developing the ‘Whole of Victorian Government vision for IT’ and corresponding business case, was tasked with creating the Enterprise Architecture and high-level implementation plan for the consolidation of IT services across 15 Departments and Agencies. Migrating them to a single secure network, with centralised application hosting and storage, using desktop, hosting and storage virtualisation to achieve compliance with Federal Government’s Protective Security Management (PSM) standard. All of this delivered as a suite of services from a single source, at ITIL CMMI of three.
Despite the apparent focus on technology, the bulk of my work was in: ‘value’ – refining, defining, measuring and proving the source, cost and scale of savings; ‘strategy’ – demonstrating the value of linking all of the pieces and aligning them with government and departmental goals; ‘persuasion’ – selling the vision of the outcome at all levels; ‘diplomacy’ – resolving power-base disputes and techno-arguments between the project teams and service providers; ‘contextualising’ – maintaining the balance between the objectives of business, technology and people and; ‘holisticism’ – ensuring the anticipated value of the whole was maintained despite the necessary ‘by platform’ project management focus on the execution details.
Learning: Project Plans’ may negate ‘Program Objectives’
Helena Consulting – Consultant to CSC: Strategy Development (NSW)
Developed for CSC a ‘three year vision’ for their customer, AMP, enabling them to set appropriate infrastructure and application projects into motion. Interviewing and distilling the thoughts of each of the IT and Business Directors, synthesised these into a cohesive and compelling story, using “Day in the life of…” narrative, presentation and group discourse. Identified Agility, Mobility and Partnership as the key aligned business and technology drivers forming the path to value, delivering efficiency and creating opportunity. This was subsequently adopted as AMP’s own IT strategy. Learning: Global crises will override even the ‘best ’ strategies.
Helena Consulting – Consultant to Sensis: Outsourcing SME, Reviewer–Negotiator (Victoria)
Sensis, a major e-publisher and subsidiary of Telstra, sought to outsource their then current server infrastructure and support services. As vendors’ had submitted bids that were deliberately non-compliant, it was necessary to de-construct the bids’ financial responses. Was then able to show the true consequences of various consumption scenarios and test these sensitivities – proving that the lowest-priced option would indeed be the highest cost over the proposed three-year contract.
Learning: Big subsidiaries are subsidiaries nevertheless.
Helena Consulting – Consultant to NAB Australia: Trusted Advisor (Victoria)
Trusted Advisor to the then newly appointed GM Tech Ops from Deutsche Bank. Responsible for the collaborative development of requirements for the Desktop and Network outsourcing contracts (that were in renegotiation). Provided expert opinion on sourcing, technical and operational related issues and their resolution. Consulting widely within the organisation, helped identify the business value of the services sought, and communicated to a wide audience of directors and managers, the value that would result from the move to the new, highly automated, platform. This work fed the outsource scope definition, thus avoiding the sourcing of services that wouldn’t be required under the new desktop platform.
Learning: Ensure you’re answering the real question
Was able to show the then CIO the scale of the value that was at risk from an unthinking renegotiation of what was then in place. The work also included:
Establishment of initial vendor Governance capacity
Resolution of a number of long-standing service and support issues that had been bound in responsibility entanglements with the incumbent service providers.
Delivery of Mobile Mortgage Manager proof of concept. (Mobile Mortgage Manager was immediately deployed to around 1000 NAB staff across Australia)
Development of strategy and plan to replace existing Satellite Broadcast NABTV with terrestrial delivered NAB IPTV, including integrated knowledge management, content delivery and in-branch electronic signage, whilst leveraging the XP-transition-mandated core network upgrade.
Development of the business cases for, and leadership of the teams to initiate:
Bank-wide IP-based Video Conferencing
Core Network upgrade to MPLS
Bank-wide IPTel
These capabilities were delivered (by Telstra) over the following 4+ years.
Learning: Enabling Technology is future value
SAP Australia – Account Executive (Queensland)
Responsible for developing and communicating the value proposition of SAP’s products and services to the Executive level of Government in Queensland, making extensive use of collaboration tools. Leveraged SAP’s global resources. Was also extensively product trained too, trained in SOA, early TOGAF, and SAP SDLC.
Prepared conceptual outlines and demo systems to address a number of other business applications through the innovative use of the SAP ERP platform, CRM, BI and their underlying NetWeaver (SOA) technologies and SDLC methodologies to address: Power Utility and Telecommunications billing and operations management, Vehicle Fleet Management, and Operational Policing.
Learning: Always get it in writing
KPMG – Senior Manager: Information Risk Management (Queensland)
As a “Lateral Hire” (non-accountant) was responsible for developing and communicating the value proposition of KPMG’s Information Risk Management services to the Executive level of Government & Corporate clients, and to other managers within the KPMG group seeking to improve cross-sell. In the process of my business analysis of KPMG itself, was able to recommend a major structural change to their information architecture, which was adopted nationally, immediately.
Learning: Respect attention to detail
CSC – Global Marketing Manager: IGN (Integrated Global Network) (Queensland)
Responsible for the successful launch of the company’s global networking initiative – distilling the value of the proposition and highlighting its Unique Sales Propositions, and its integration with other key ‘cloud’ strategies – communicating this information to customers and staff.
Learning: Keep the story simple and compelling
Assembled a global team of engineers in Australia to resolve demarcation disputes that were delaying the development of the IGN and ‘cloud’ offerings. From initial estimates of ‘two years or more’ was able to get that multi-national team to design, build and commission key components and services of the IGN within 12 weeks of their first meeting.
Learning: The impossible is possible – provided we get out of our comfort zone
Secured world-wide agreement and commitment to the concept of IMS (Internet Managed Services – cloud delivered safe web browsing), defined it as a global service offering (CSC’s first), co-developed the cost-models, developed the service definitions and marketing material and drove the concept into fruition. BHP Steel became the first IMS customer, with the rest of BHP-Billiton following – worth an additional $18M over the life of the contract. Learning: Enlist the support of others early in the process – they really can help
CSC – Manager: Strategy & New Business -Networks (NSW)
Network Line of Service lead on all new business – developing strategy and content in major bids and solutions and/or improvements for existing CSC customers, with both technical and commercial responsibility. Formulated and implemented the business strategies, and managed the technical and commercial elements of the firm’s networked computing solutions for major outsource customers, and for CSC itself. Resolved significant call-centre issues (replacing legacy system) and delivered Global RAS and VPN services for AMP and their “Advisor” group.
Learning: Listen to customers until they’ve aired all of their grievances – root cause may be found there
CSC – Project Director: CWO Transition (NSW)
Tasked with the transition from Telstra to Optus networks, and to recognise significant savings. Refined and renegotiated the scope of works and commercial modelling to optimise the benefits of the agreement for all parties.
Managed project groups engaged in Billing & Inventory, Process Development, Network Management Centre, AHD Integration (Helpdesk systems) and Secure Internet Gateway.
Drove the new commercial model into several large clients including AMP/GIO, Allianz, Department of Community Services, and Federal Government Cluster 3, to migrate these clients from Telstra services to Optus services. Learning: Always ensure your organisation understands the real consequences – if not, you must
Wang Global – State Manager (Queensland)
Led and won the bid to design, develop and supply the Argent Terminal Adapter to Telstra – simultaneously protecting Wang’s long-held and valuable outsourcing contract to operate Telstra’s financial services network – Transend.
Sold, designed, supplied and constructed Australia’s first Internet Business Services high-performance web hosting centre for Alta.com in St Leonards, NSW.
Consulting to the Queensland Government, developed and wrote the 2nd phase of the ‘Queensland Online’ strategy. Consulted to Queensland Health re their Service Delivery Network vision – performed the original scope definition and installation data set as a map-based interactive tool.
Learning: Say you can – then prove it
Intergraph Corporation – Senior Consultant: Computer Aided Dispatch (Queensland)
Account, Bid, and Lead Solution Manager for several bids to provide GIS-based computer aided dispatch systems to Public Safety and Utility customers. Established bid strategy and conducted the pre-bid negotiations with the prime bidders (TETRA vendors) on the Belgian Police communications and control project – ASTRID securing the agreement of all to include Intergraph CAD in their bid, winning in partnership with Nokia. Proposed Object Oriented Telephony to integrate telephony into I-CAD and resolved legacy application support on mobile data terminals using an e-mail analogy agreeable to Intergraph’s software engineers.
Led ISO9001 accreditation for the company nationally – using a diagrammatic method better suited to Intergraph’s’ predominantly engineering staff. Learning: Be ambitious. Ask
Motorola – Senior Account Manager: Public Safety, Emergency Services & Secure Communications (Queensland)
Responsible for all Account Management tasks (and some aspects of engineering) for Australia–wide sales of systems to Police and Emergency Services customers, and for communicating/launching new technologies such as digital trunking, APCO-25 and VSELP-based secure telephony. Created the documentation strategy that achieved ISO 9001 accreditation for Motorola’s various State Branches (Motorola, being a 6-Sigma company and Malcolm Baldridge award winner, was very quality conscious).
Learning: Don’t assume ‘your experts’ know everything
Case Communications– Senior Account Manager (Queensland)
Responsible for sales of major networks and the first AI-based network management tool. Sold what was at the time the World’s largest LAN to Brisbane City Council, as well as Australia’s largest X.25 network and the first instance of 8Kbps voice-over-IP.
Learning: Don’t resign ’til your bonus is in your bank