Consulting Service description & delivery summary -- Interim Executive engagements

Page Title

Engagement Description

Perform in an Interim Executive role as:

CTO, CIO, COO, Software Product or IT VP or Director, Engagement Lead, Program
Executive or Sponsor, Account Executive

Representative Duties and Deliverables:

Manage the group and all important projects and deliverables in the interim.

		Program Executive. Sometimes brought in to manage a large highly visible and
		important program full time to offload the Executive who would not have adequate time to oversee it.

		Organization Delivery Effectiveness Assessment. When managing a group, often
		asked to assess the effectiveness of service delivery and deliver a summary of strengths/weaknesses with phased improvement recommendations. Also used as a turnover to the full time executive once hired. Can also perform skills assessments.

		Often asked to benchmark the spend of the group against similar organizations
		based on Industry available data and recommend how to improve the value delivered for the cost invested as well as typically to recommend how to reduce that cost.

		May conduct a Customer or internal Client Satisfaction survey, if desired, and
		work with the group to deliver a phased improvement plan and slate of projects.

		May deliver an organizational "turn around" plan which would be based on the
		results of both an organizational effectiveness assessment and customer/client satisfaction survey.

		Screen full time position candidates and formulate the slate of candidates to be
		interviewed further.

		May deliver a strategic plan or selected deliverables of a strategy to resolve
		important issues of focus and direction. This may be required to improve an organization's ability to deliver what is "most important" once that is defined by the strategic plan deliverable requested. For example, this solution may be needed to prioritize a backlog or an application software delivery plan, or to perform an application rearchitecture after a merger and select "the enterprise suite" of software applications to be migrated to, or in making/prioritizing other organizational investments.

		Turn over all deliverables and assessments or satisfaction survey results and
		recommendations to the full time executive once hired.

Representative Delivery Summaries with Benefits Achieved

Interim Program Executive, Global Infrastructure Operations -- Brought in by the CIO of a
$1B Business Intelligence Software firm (Canada) -- tasked to complete highly important
projects required to conclude the merger of several IT organizations (i.e. from prior
corporate mergers). Programs managed were on the personnel reviews of the CFO & CIO.

Successfully lead the following initiatives resulting in the on time, on budget delivery of
each, and culminating in 55% budget savings of minimally $12.5MM. Also, through re-
architecture, virtualization, and global Data Center Consolidations (from 9 to 2), avoided
the need to acquire over 7200 square feet of new data center space (incremental savings).

		Outsourcing Strategy and advice: Executive advisor and "in-house" expert on
		approximately $50MM of potential Outsourcing deals -- advising the CIO and EVP Purchasing on outsourcing strategy, whether to outsource (including advising against outsourcing some functions), and introduced the concept of "outsourcing readiness criteria". Where decisions were made to outsource performed as the Executive Sponsor.

Led the competitive bidding of all voice/data/cellular & (WAN) services.

		Rebid existing contracts on US and Canadian voice (60%+ savings) and US
		and Canada cellular (30% savings).

		After re-architecting, ascertained that the proper skill sets and infrastructure
		was not in place to design, build, and run the needed Wide Area Network (WAN) for the combined companies in the timeframes required. With the full support of the staff, outsourced the WAN for 55% budget savings, while dramatically improving service. Also avoided $3.2 MM in termination fees.

		Assessed the capabilities of the IT Operations organization, delivered a gap
		analysis, as well as a phased capability improvement organization chart, adding key skills and entire departments, over the next 3 years, and as the organization matured.

		Application software rationalization & selection of core strategic applications suite
		and elimination of duplicate applications. Eliminated 100 applications. Key risk mitigation advisor to CIO on critical Peoplesoft upgrade of financial systems.

Interim Director, Worldwide Server and Network Operations - - for a $7B semiconductor
equipment manufacturer managed 121 people and a $22 million budget. Supported more
than 55 large Unix servers (HP and DEC) and “mission critical” applications such as: SAP,
Oracle Manufacturing, Peoplesoft, Lotus Notes, Electronic Document Interchange (EDI. In
addition managed the Global voice and data networking organization.

		Helped screen and recruit two Directors. Managed the two organizations in the
		interim -- Infrastructure Operations & Voice/data networking.

		Resolved failed Consulting Engagement -- money refunded. Negotiated and
		recommended how to resolve a failed, partially implemented, multi-million dollar professional services engagement to establish a "real time fail over" architecture. The customer wanted a refund, which we secured.

		Successfully led a “swat team” to identify and resolve the “root causes” of severe
		performance issues with a SAP/Oracle ERP implementation.

		Delivered an organizational assessment of strengths/weaknesses with
		improvement recommendations and implementation plans, which was used as a “turnover” to the two new Director’s once hired.

		Led designing and building of a new data center. Also Leader on selection team to
		pick a new Unix, “mainframe” class, hardware vendor.

		Negotiated & resolved customer satisfaction issues with the current server vendor’s
		pricing and support.

		Identified budget savings in excess of $2.2 million (20%) after internal staff had been
		unable to produce further savings recommendations.

Interim CIO for a $70 million storage manufacturer. Hired to manage an IT department in
the interim, assess its capabilities, and recommend a service improvement strategy for an
IT department that was viewed as non-responsive, internally focused, and unable to meet
its commitments or deliver on-time.

		Performed IT staffing & executive skills assessments and made staffing and
		organizational recommendations to resolve a perceived inability of the IT staff to set and meet deliverable dates.

		Resolved Partial Implementation of Wrong Product. Recommended resolution for a
		premature purchase and partial implementation of an ill advised, expensive, CRM vendor’s product that did not meet business requirements.

Evaluated Sales Force Automation (i.e. CRM) packages and options

		Formulated a three-year Application Strategy "bought into" by IT clients and the
		executive team.

		Developed & conducted a client satisfaction survey -- Interviewed 37 executives and
		clients.

		Compiled and presented the IT backlog of work and recommended actions
		required to deliver it, and manage it better in the future.
		Delivered diagrams of the current application software portfolio and the
		various technologies it ran upon.

		Delivered a “soup to nuts” organizational turnaround plan. Presented to CEO and
		the executive team. Also served as a "turn over" document to the new CIO.

Interim VP/COO -- for a $8 million PC software business, after an unexpected failed launch
of their market leading product -- brought on by the Founder to groom the company for sale
and avoid Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

		Reporting to the CEO, in charge of staff of 20 in the areas of finance, marketing, sales,
		telemarketing, customer support, product development, research and development.
		Successful in reducing expenses by 30% or $2 million a year.
		Improved customer service delivery by resolving performance issues with an
		outsourced telemarketing call center vendor.
		Hired an investment banking firm to reduce debt, avoid chapter 11, and groom the
		company for sale.

Interim VP Operations -- for a venture backed Supply Chain Management (SCM) B2B.com
-- responsible for Web Hosting, for building out a business plan to create the product
technical support and customer help desk capabilities as well as worked with the Product
Development and Product Management team to redevelop their product for the large
enterprise target market. As a large enterprise market expert, resolved large Fortune 10
customer objections after a lost competitive bid.

		Created new product specifications. Worked with the product management and
		software development teams, as well as the Customer, to create the specifications to redevelop their product to better meet the requirements of the large enterprise market (new target market).

		New Product Plan. Revised product functionality, prioritized and finalized a product
		management plan, resolved serious scalability architectural issues, and addressed disaster recovery and enterprise security requirements.

		Designed the Customer Support business processes and infrastructure. Developed
		a flexible plan showing the design and evolution of their customer support services as they grew from a dot-com on a “shoe-string budget” to a fully mature company supporting Fortune 500 customers. Delivered organization and staffing plans for each stage of development and maturity, definitions of roles and responsibilities, and job descriptions.

Developed business process maps that were used in responses to customer RFP’s:

		Product Technical Support and Customer Service help desk
		Problem severity and escalation processes; Problem management

		Competitively bid and selected a new web hosting vendor reducing costs by 20%
		while (initially) offering co-location through fully managed web hosting services (to host large customer product implementations), locking in current and future pricing with a not to exceed “cost plus single digit” profit margin approach.

ENGAGEMENT DESCRIPTION

Engagement Description & Delivery Summary
INTERIM EXECUTIVE

Improving IT & Product Delivery Success