Case Studies
Team Building – TAS Software
TAS Software developed Accountancy and Payroll software for SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises).
I was taken on with the brief to build a world class sales team. When I joined the company the sales team consisted of three staff dealing solely with inbound enquiries. Over the next two years I increased the sales team to 20+ staff in the UK creating dedicated outbound telesales teams targeting Training, Renewals, and a telesales/field team targeting Partners and Retail sales. I also took on responsibility for the recruitment and training of a Team in Ireland.
During my time, we established TAS as the number two accountancy software company in the UK behind Sage Software who then bought the company.
More Team Building – PowWowNow
On the back of my success at TAS, I was approached with a similar remit for PowWowNow, a voice conferencing company. Here I again created, trained and mentored focussed teams that helped greatly increase the turnover of the company. PWN also branched out into video conferencing and and grew the turnover leading to a $53 million takeover by PGI.
Workflow/Business Process Management
Edexcel
Edexcel’s world-class academic and general qualifications include GCSEs, A levels, International GCSEs, as well as some vocational qualifications, including NVQs and Functional Skills.
A new department was being set up to oversee the creation of examination papers and a 12 stage process had been identified. Edexcel wanted a system in place that would provide clear and concise information about where each examination paper was in the production process.
Once I’d met with the Edexcel team it was obvious that there was far more potential with this opportunity. Whilst there were 12 high level stages, there were numerous sub-steps that needed to be taken into consideration. Due to the complexity of the processes I initially sold a consulting/scoping project which I subsequently led. During this time I also cross-sold the technology into the specification development department.
The result was two of the UK’s largest workflow/BPM projects. The first addressed the creation of examination papers and mark schemes and comprised over 150 different steps (many repeated) which took place over a two year period. The second equally complex project addressed the creation and approval (by government department) of the subject specifications – these describe what is covered by a subject and therefore what should be taught.
I was invited to join the project team when they presented the business case to the Board of Directors and introduced as the person who knew more about Edexcel’s processes than any of their own employees.
The supplied system is still being used many years later and has been worth over $2.5 million.
Digital Mailroom – Alliance Trust
Alliance Trust are a leading British financial services company based in Dundee and listed on the London Stock Exchange. I led a project to sell them a Digital Mailroom solution built around EMC data capture, workflow and content management technology (Documentum). As documents come into the mailroom they are scanned and the system automatically recognized the document type and processes it accordingly. This includes data extraction, validation and forwarding to the relevant department.
Project value to date in excess of $1 million.
Hansard
Hansard is the daily verbatim record of everything that is said in Parliament and dates back to the 1770’s. Today it is an A4 two column document (indexed by column number) that is also available online, a ‘bound book’ version is also created every four to six weeks. For many years Hansard had been created by HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office) but when HMSO was privatised a public tender was offered.
Amongst the challenges of Hansard are the fact that the members of parliament are able to amend what they have been reported as saying between the daily version and the ‘bound book’ – this creates pagination problems as the indexing of the columns cannot change. The Houses can also sit until 2:00 am yet the daily printed version has to be available by 7:30 am and the website updated by 9:30 am that day.
I led the bid and helped design the solution based around Adobe FrameMaker, XML and the use of XyEnterprise XPP. Our solution was selected ahead of a lot of much larger companies including HMSO. For the final presentation the selection committee had intended to see two companies demonstrate their solutions but the strength of my response led to us being the only company reaching the final stage.
The solution is still being used 10 years later and has been worth several million $.
Exam Specifications
AQA
AQA are the UK’s largest examination board for qualifications for 16 to 18 years olds. They had had ruled out working with the company I had recently joined (another salesperson had been working with them), but when that salesperson left, I was able to rekindle their interest. AQA were looking for a way to effectively create and manage the creation of exam specifications and associated mark schemes. The final solution was based on the DITA XML standard and used components from several suppliers for collaboration and content management.
Current value is in excess of $2 million.
Mobile Solution
Responsible for producing guidelines for the British rail industry. RSSB produce a set of 56 Rule Books that dictate how rail workers should work safely, a single worker will normally have multiple books but not all 56. The aim of the project is the conversion of their existing content to DITA XML and deliver the Rule Books to mobile devices for viewing both online and offline. I led the bid team, completing the RFI and RFP documents myself and using contributions from subject matter experts where necessary. I also led the onsite presentation that led to us being selected and dealt with all subsequent negotiations. Project value to date in excess of $800K.