The first phase of my career was in telecoms and mobile, working on large, mission-critical technology environments supporting tens of millions of customers and elements of national infrastructure. This included work in the USA, the Caribbean, Australia, South Africa and across Europe.
A consistent theme was technology-enabled change: helping telecoms operators reshape how they sold products and served customers online for the first time within complex legacy estates. Early digital work focused on e-commerce, secure self-service and fraud detection. These capabilities were new for many organisations and often at the edge of what was technically and commercially possible.
Over 15 years in consultancy, I led engagements for major telecoms clients, designing and mobilising large change programmes, particularly around online sales and service platforms and global IT consolidation. I operated across both sales and delivery, securing multi-million-pound engagements and building teams to deliver them.
Earlier in my career, I was also one of the founders of a technology startup that was acquired by Vodafone in 2006 to form its mobile applications business. The company was one of Europe’s earliest software-as-a-service (SaaS) ventures and created the first mobile application to run on T-Mobile’s GPRS network in the UK.
O2 #
My final telecoms role was in-house at O2 (Telefónica UK), where I led the internal consultancy team. The team worked with senior leaders at the earliest stages of idea development, helping clarify objectives, explore technology and partnership options, secure funding and mobilise major programmes.
This remit covered the full UK business, which at the time served 23 million consumer and enterprise customers, employed 11,000 people, operated 450 retail stores, and ran extensive online and contact-centre operations.
Projects included:
- Major product launches, including iPhone
- Online services, mobile apps and loyalty schemes
- 4G network rollout
- Sales and service transformation
- Engagement with regulators, government and industry bodies
- Home broadband and fibre rollout
- New businesses in big data, financial services and mobile advertising
- Public Wi-Fi
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Legacy system modernisation
Previous work #
Earlier projects included:
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Online sales and service platforms (Three, Vodacom, Vodafone)
- Mobile applications (Vodafone UK, T-Mobile, Orange)
- Global IT strategy and architecture (Vodafone Group, Three)
- Consolidated spend analytics (Vodafone Global Enterprise)
- Field service systems (T-Mobile, Orange)
- Billing and customer care platforms (MCI WorldCom, MoviStar Puerto Rico, Global Crossing)
- Finance system integration and tax (Vertex)