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The narrative below will help you get to know me.
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At the school I went to there was quite a stigma attached to science subjects. The sixth form was split into Arts and Science; the ruffians went to Science and the intelligentsia to Arts. Despite a love of technology, I considered myself part of the latter group and joined the Arts side. Now I find I have benefited by having a foot in both camps. Being an arts student didn't stop me being fascinated by the telephone. How on earth did this thing work? So I joined Post Office Telephones and they told me how it worked. I was a network planner (in Southend) so it was an essential part of the training. An optional extra was the Post Office Certificate Operational Telecommunications Grade 1 (OT1). This was a bit of a holy grail, people without sufficient educational qualifications needed it to get promotion. The pass rate for this exam was somewhere around 25%, but I was fortunate enough to succeed with flying colours at the first attempt. Passion has something to do with it I think! One thing the Post Office didn't tell me was I was already qualified to do a higher grade job, so within a year I got promoted and was appointed to that daily delight: commuting to London. It was in the international headquarters and was involved in international data policy. Although I was a junior manager, the word 'junior' was key. This was headquarters and I was also the junior person in the office. So I was put in charge of stocking the stationery cupboard; in effect I had promoted to office junior! To be fair, I did have also professional work to do, like chairing project meetings. One claim to fame I have is I once had to compile a list of companies who owned a modem! (It went to one and a half pages of foolscap in case you're interested) So all my technical passion had paid off. It was now time to pay attention to my arts skills and return to the front line. Post Office International had French speaking telephonists and they needed to be trained. I was appointed training manager and brought my linguistic skills into play and was trained as a trainer myself. During this time I ran the local tutorials for OT1, and feel rather pleased that our results were above the national average - despite having the disadvantage of the course being focused on inland telecommunications. I also became a national tutor for OT1 and studied for (and obtained) the rarer sequel, Operational Telecommunications 2. As a career move I became Customer Services Manager. Still young, I found half my team old enough to be my parents! Not fazed by my rank, I set out to learn from them. And learn I did. This period laid a firm foundation for my attitude of putting the customer first. It also helped hone my skills of problem-solving and investigation. I got an early taste of getting into lateral thinking as I did some really interesting fraud investigation. I'd love to tell you about them. Buy me an orange juice and I might loosen my tongue! Incidentally it was not long after that experience that I became a member of MENSA. I had the opportunity to work for Cable & Wireless for a time as a Voice Operations Executive running and developing voice services in key overseas locations. These were fresh challenges in unfamiliar surroundings which I met (may I say) with great professionalism and enthusiasm. Certainly bosses and colleagues were willing to write references for me when I left C&W. Before moving into sales, I had a period back in BT International planning the international telex network. The sales job was back with the UK market (Romford to be precise) selling to small companies - those who had two and three lines. Oh and it was programming larger PBXs as well! But International beckoned again. They wanted an account manager or two. I was successful at becoming an International Account Manager in the hi-tech sector. These companies are 'in the business' and it takes a special sort of account manager to look after them. These were large international companies; let's name drop: Unisys (I helped manage the combining of the Sperry and Burroughs international networks when Unisys was formed), Northern Telecom (now Nortel), Intel, Hewlett-Packard. A promotion to Senior Account Manager took me to Mobile Communications. I suppose I was in at the beginning of the mobile phone boom. I was looking after companies like Tarmac, Trafalgar House, W H Smith, Cadbury Schweppes and certain part of the British Government. It was in the mobile comms market where billing had most got out of hand and I simplified the billing for many of these key clients, identifying lost equipment etc. and gave them back control over their billing. The biggest project I managed of this nature was for the Royal Navy. (Another orange juice can get you some more stories!) As a successful account manager, I was invited to take part in rotational staffing. BT wanted me to use my skills to boost the marketing department. I was appointed Senior Marketing Specialist and oversaw projects to write an Account Manager's Handbook and select the software and hardware platforms for BT's new sales CRM system. My team was highly regarded as trailblazing and we were appointed to one of the greatest challenges - to market BT's billing. It was the greatest cause of customer dissatisfaction. Our response was to deliver bills electronically and make them easier to handle. My role was to deliver BT's EDI billing service, which I did nine months AHEAD of schedule. During my time as an account manager, BT agreed to sponsor me to study for the CAM Certificate in Communications Studies. It included relevant things like customer behaviour and sales promotion but also advertising and PR. I passed every module at the first attempt. Some of them with merit. My next paid role was sector marketing specialist focusing on the government sector. This brought me into contact with all branches of BT, giving a very broad view of what BT had to offer. The great thing about this role is it not only involved event work, which had tight deadlines, but there was a lot of project work involved too. And when I wasn't doing my day job, I was departmental LAN manager, just to remind me about the sharp end of business! Then came redundancy. I tried to escape to another department and I am quite flattered that a number of senior managers were wiling to give me safe harbour. Except that the rules cut their head count, so they couldn't. Even when a colleague in another department died, his position was cancelled. So I was fortunate enough to join Mitsubishi Corporation as departmental Deputy Manager. We were looking out for Telecomms, IT and Internet innovation and reporting back to Tokyo and doing some trading at the same time. I did product development on mobile email and paging, and created the UK market for the first combined GSM/PSTN PC Card. Problems in the Far East meant the "R" word came my way again and the good folk at Telewest offered me a position as Major Account Manager. This time I was dealing in ordinary telecomms. For a cable company, most major accounts were large SMEs, but I enjoyed success with some large household names that were on my portfolio, often by being creative in my thinking and finding solutions to problems that were not obvious. Diversification arrived in Telewest and that meant they wanted specialists. They recognised I had some Internet skills and after probing those appointed Regional Internet Specialist giving 2nd line sales support, troubleshooting and owning the regional Internet target. I am very humbled at being head-hunted by Internet Network Services (INS) one of the biggest business ISPs in the UK. They tried for me twice; I turned them down first time. I was eventually appointed Channel Manager to look after overseas business. Because I needed to resolve a lot of issues, senior management looked on me as a Country Manager (whatever my business card said!) and rewarded me accordingly. INS was bought by Cable & Wireless, who dissolved INS. I was appointed as a Strategic Relationship Manager, determining new opportunities with emerging technology from the major telecomms manufacturers. Then Cable & Wireless decided to declare my role redundant. Then I formed Web-Wright, and intermittently worked with franking machine company Neopost and as a DTI funded e-business advisor for Business Link. Before becoming self employed, my interest in technology and communication took into the online world of CIX, BBS's and, when it came along, the Internet. My thirst for knowledge led me to learning about computers, programming, Internet, websites, HTML, CGI, ASP, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and so on. I had been developing and managing another company's website since 1997 so by the time my latest redundancy came along, I was well placed to develop the hobby into a profession. I have ensured that my web company Web-Wright adopts a unique approach that focused on making websites earn their keep. I am teamed up with an international organisation that handles the design and development and provides hosting services. At the same time I have acted as consultant for many other companies and organisations. |
Fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management Registered Information Technology Consultant Holder CAM Certificate Member Essex Chambers of Commerce Member Federation of Small Businesses Licensed IT Security Member UK Web Design Association Participant UK Online for Business Holder Operational Telecommunications I and II Certificates Essex E-Business Club
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Summing my experience up in one sentence will probably be "Technically competent communicator experienced in PR, journalism, marketing and account manager". But there's more to it than that... Why "3bn"?
Apart from it including my initials, if you speak French, it sounds a bit like "très bien", which is how I strive to serve every customer.
