I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a while since I updated this site… sorry! Like most people the last year has been ‘interesting’ and ‘challenging’ to say the least. The pandemic hit, we never left our house and we haven’t been back in the office in over a year.

Despite getting through the last year in one piece, looking back it has not been plain sailing. So what’s happened since I last typed?

Service Line

Another re-organisation, a bigger role and 12 months sitting in the corner of a room in my house and then last Summer, we became a service line.

“What’s a service line?” I hear you ask.

Basically, it’s a capability based organisation that has end to end responsibility for a technology stack.

In other words, my team expanded from 500 or so people to almost 2,000. The scope of work changed from only project delivery to now cover pre-sales, solutioning, delivery and operations. The technology stack expanded and grew from Digital Transformation, Core Applications Development and Testing, Oracle and SAP to now also include Service Now, Workday and Salesforce. As well as a local UK & Ireland team I became responsible for Applications in Middle East and Africa too (including the most amazing team in Egypt). I got a new manager, spent the year trying to predict the organisation’s finance and am still trying to take out cost.

Now we are about to hit another org change, I’m getting a new manager and maybe, possibly, slightly changing my role ?!?!

As I said to some of my team today, “It’s time to get out of this funk!”

Beyond The Cloud

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Sometimes things happen for a reason. “Serendipity (DTC word of the year 2019)”. That’s what today felt like, serendipitous! Things just fell into place. One conversation led into the next and it all came together at the end of day team call.

We were brainstorming and talking through how we approach a challenge and then it happened! We decided to get out of the funk! Infact, those are the words I used.

Maybe I’ve been too focused on financials, Brexit planning and monthly business reviews in the last year, but I’ve not been so close to the actual coal face of delivery and innovation except for the red projects (we won’t talk about them). That changed today…

Ok, so we have done digital transformation, moved to the cloud, stabilised and automated … what next? What is beyond the cloud? How do we take IT to the next level? We have a plan to find out.

We’ve got our best minds working on it, pulling together a team who will analyse, look at data, look at latest technology and see how we can add TRUE value to the business, not because we can take out cost and heads, but because it’s the right thing to do, to really bring more value for our clients. We’ve moved from mainframes to data centres to cloud and platforms. Now we are pioneering again, discovering new frontiers.

Today I remembered the passion and innovation and what truly has always inspired me about IT and it feels good!