David V.

Helping organisations transform their digital business and technology capability.

• Currently helping Article 19 to stand-up a Transformation Programme; to refresh Vision, Strategy, Identity, Technology and Finance for a 'new world disorder' and a material hit to funding (following USAID and State Department cuts).

The Aga Khan Development Network is a $6bn turnover for-profit business, a $1bn international development NGO, and a sovereign religious order all rolled into one. 96,000 employees work to improve the quality of life for people in 30+ countries, primarily in Asia & Africa.

• I sit in the International IT Leadership Team and lead our Digital Transformation Programme Delivery. Our portfolio encompasses Modern Workplace / Campus Transformation, ERP Upgrades, Application Rationalisation, Digital & Data Platforms, and Cloud Migration.
• A key priority has been maturing our global delivery capability:
• Developed 4 clear Strategic Themes to improve focus
• Launched a 5-stage Lifecycle for Demand & Project Management
• Built an 18 month, rolling Transformation Roadmap to realise our Vision
• Overhauled our Programme Board to tighten governance & operational grip
• Developed 10 Key Performance Indicators to strengthen accountability
• Enhanced Risk Management and Financial Management Methods
• Key Projects in-progress and/or delivered include:
• Cyber: SOC implemented, 5k endpoints protected, 14k users awareness-trained
• Application Rationalisation: 14 applications upgraded, decommissioned, or migrated
• ERP Simplification: Dynamics Business Central & Sage Cloud Migrations. SAP upgrade
• Cloud Migration: closure of two data centres and uplift to Azure
• Modern Workplace: Domain Consolidation & Migration to Global Office365
• Data & Digital: Data Frameworks & Ways of Working Transformation projects

Heathrow is the largest airport in Europe, and the most connected megahub in the world. The airport serves over 230 destinations in nearly 90 countries; welcoming over 80 million passengers a year and serving as Britain’s fulcrum for tourism, investment and trade. 1.4 million tonnes of cargo (including 26% of UK exports, by value) go through Heathrow. And 90,000 people working at the airport; the country's largest single-site employer.

• My brief on the Heathrow IT Leadership Team included Cloud Platforms (mostly Azure), Data Platforms, and legacy data centre, networking, CCTV, and radio assets. I carried a Counter Terrorist Check (CTC) / Level 1B security clearance for this role. Together, we were focused on our mission; to make every journey better; in an extraordinary airport, fit for the future.
• It was a busy interim director assignment, and I:
• Designed new Platforms Target Operating Model (TOM) & Target Organisational Design (TOD)
• Developed a 5-year Platforms Strategy for Heathrow
• Rebooted & enhanced a £22m Cyber Resilience Programme
• Completed a £120m Digital Control Tower for NATS, on-time and on-budget
• Engaged with Airlines on our Digital Transfromation and H8 (27-31) Price Control Review
• Reviewed our Data & AI Capabilities for the "Intelligent Airport" of the future
• Other Projects I led included:
• Cellular 5G Upgrade & Migration to Neutral Host Operator (NHO)
• Migration from Broadcom VMWare to Microsoft Hyper-V
• Network Core & Distribution Upgrade
• Upgrades to our Counter-drone (C-UAS) Capability
• Replacement of Physical (Card) Access Security Systems
• Upgrades to Reference data management (RDM) & Commercial Data Analytics

I led Platforms at the world’s leading marketing business ($18.5B revenue, 100,000+ employees, 110 countries); spearheading a digital transformation of WPP into an integrated, tech-driven organization powered by global ERP, CRM, Digital & AI platforms. Key Achievements:

• ERP ROLLOUTS (Workday & Deltek Maconomy)
• Deployed ERP for 25k users across 23 countries, increasing platform coverage to 25% and decommissioning legacy systems.
• Maconomy: Rollouts in APAC (8k users, $2M saved), EMEA (4k users, $3M saved), and LATAM (2k users)
• Workday: Deployed in UK & Eire (10k users) and NAM (4k users); boosting billability 86.3% vs. 82%, reducing freelancer spend by $13.3M)
• WPP OPEN (AI-Driven Marketing OS)
• Built industry-first AI-powered marketing operating system with a (200 Product) Marketplace, API Gateway & Data Framework
• Developed AI studios with NVIDIA, IBM Watson, and Google Gemini, securing major new business (Nestlé, Allianz, EasyJet)
• Spun off WPP Open into a standalone entity with its own P&L
• CRM CONSOLIDATION
• Standardised onto single Salesforce instance covering 52% of the global sales pipeline
• Unified disparate CRM systems across key media agencies
• DATA & ITSM MODERNISATION
• Built an Azure & Informatica-based Data Platform to improve data analytics & integration
• Built new ServiceNow Platform serving over 90k users. Decommissioned Zendesk & Freshservice
• DEVOPS STANDARDISATION
• Consolidated 30+ agency-specific DevOps platforms into world's largest single Atlassian environment (30k+ users)
• COST OPTIMISATION & GLOBAL SHARED SERVICES
• Saved $7M via outsourcing retender; shifting 311 applications & 25 staff to TCS
• Established offshore engineering hubs in Mexico, Bucharest, Chennai & Kuala Lumpur, increasing lower-cost staffing from 24% to 60%
• Scaled platforms team; tripled headcount, quadrupled ticket volume, and achieved +23pts employee engagement and highest diversity scores in WPP (93)

The British Standards Institute (BSI) is both the UK national standards body and a fast-growing testing, inspection & certification business; operating in 193 countries. I led projects, development & support across (client-facing) Digital Platforms and (internal) CRM, ERP (SAP / Workday), Digital Workplace, Data and Operational Scheduling systems.

• BUSINESS PARTNERING
• Member of Global Assurance Executive; leading business & new product development and growth in our core business of management system certifications, compliance software, training programs, advisory services, and supply chain solutions
• ERP IMPLEMENTATION
• ERP Projects across all our business lines; mainly in the support of new product or service offerings in a mature SAP estate
• First-to-market with systems for new EU Medical Device Regulations in our fast-growing, highly regulated Regulatory Services business
• New Global Training Platform (fronted by Salesforce Community Cloud and integrated to SAP), with innovative FinTech for payments
• New Service Offerings for the Automotive Sector and for Global Supply Chain Resilience (using Blockchain)
• Global implementation of Workday HCM across 170+ countries in a single go-live; then take-on into long-term support (with full integration to SAP)
• eCOMMERCE TRANSFORMATION
• eCommerce Transformation of BSI Publishing; unifying our e-Commerce, subscription, and content platforms into a single standards leadership hub
• Build-out of a fully containerised SaaS platform; integrating Shopify, Contentful, Stripe & OneSource to legacy SAP ECC6
• Decommissioned old & unstable tech. Revenue enhancing to £12m+ per annum for an overwhelming return on investment
• DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
• CRM Consolidation; merging 3 instances into a single Salesforce (Lightning) platform, backed with a new Data Intelligence service
• O365 Transformation; migrating legacy intranet, collaboration & business management systems to a single Office365 tenant, cloud-hosted in Azure

Macmillan is the fastest growing charity in the UK. Their 2,000 staff, 4,000 nurses & 20,000 volunteers serve 1.5 million people in the UK living with cancer.

• Interim Contract, to reorganise Systems Development & Operations

Arup is a UK-based multinational firm providing engineering consulting across 92 offices in 42 countries. I led the Enterprise Systems Team, managing Financial applications, HR systems, CRM, Intranet, Helpdesk, SaaS, and Web Apps.

• IT LEADERSHIP
• Cut operating expenses by 8%+ and change costs by 40% despite 20% business growth through cost control and outsourcing
• Enhanced project governance with formal investment proposals, progress reporting, and steering groups
• Implemented ITIL, creating a 24/7 global support team for mission-critical apps
• Boosted IT customer satisfaction from 76% to 87% and employee engagement from 59% to 71%.
• ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS
• Replaced four recruitment systems with Oracle Taleo, saving 10% in agency fees
• Upgraded JDE (Finance) & Oracle (HR), improving performance by 200%
• Rolled out SAP Concur (SaaS) for Expense Management & AP invoicing
• Built a bespoke .NET Core financial forecasting app in Azure, saving £0.5M in licensing costs
• CRM TRANSFORMATION
• upgrades in 3 years (to MS-Dynamics 365) delivered 40% faster systems performance and 20% less form-filling (through technology & process improvement)
• DIGITAL WORKPLACE TRANSFORMATION
• Modernised collaboration & document management, consolidating 7 older intranets into a single, global Digital Workspace; based on Office365 (PaaS) Platform & SharePoint online
• DIGITAL & DATA TRANSFORMATION
• Developed a world-first IoT Structural Health Monitoring platform for Queensferry Crossing; encompassing Sensor Arrays, Big Data Streaming, Blob Storage, Machine Learning & Business Intelligence Dashboards (all Azure hosted)
• Built an AI chatbot and web dashboard (Azure/New Relic) to monitor system availability
• Created a Data Hub & Master Data Management system using Azure Data Factory & SQL Data Warehouse for analytics and PowerBI reporting.
• ▼

The BBC is the UK's public service broadcaster. Together with a World Service (broadcasting overseas) and a commercial arm - BBC Worldwide – the BBC then employed 23,000 staff (making it the largest broadcaster in the world).

• IT LEADERSHIP
• Major OJEU Procurement of Development Roster
• Creation of Sharepoint Centre of Excellence
• % cost-of-change reduction, through a re-negotiation of our Outsource contract with Atos
• % reduction in service calls and uplifted service levels
• Introduced Agile delivery and offshored development, for the first time, to BBC Technology
• CLOUD MIGRATION OF LEGACY ESTATE
• In just 2.5 years, I transformed the systems portfolio; decommissioning, refreshing and replatforming over 75% of the entire estate
• Built 22 applications for flagship productions like Archers, Eastenders, Watchdog, Blue Peter, Songs of Praise, and Antiques Roadshow
• Decommissioned 86 applications (including Ceefax); self-financing all the development above and still saving (net) £6.5m for the taxpayer
• DIGITAL WORKPLACE
• Two major SharePoint upgrades in three years
• Migrated Intranet, Collaboration, Documents & Records Management Workloads to SharePoint 2013, then on into the Cloud.

Built own company from nothing to a (5 year) turnover in excess of £1m and personally led all bids and project delivery. We employed up to five people at our peak and delivered numerous projects at a wide range of large (and typically global) organisations:

• Award-winning intranet/extranet sites (in SharePoint 2007) for London Underground, East Coast Rail and First Capital Connect within the Transportation sector (representing three of the biggest rail sector players in the UK; employing almost 30,000 people between them)
• Intranet delivery in the Oil & Gas Sector for Kuwait Petroleum (“Q8”) and PetroCanada. For Q8 (the fourth largest European oil major), we migrated 10 operating units to a single intranet platform and also relaunched their Corporate Website; all in SharePoint 2007
• Visually impactful, Global Intranet sites (again in SharePoint) for branded multi-nationals, Atkins (FTSE-250 global engineering firm) and Tata Beverage Group (a Global 500 FMCG business).
• SEO assignments for Amazon (the world’s largest online retailer) and Microsoft UK (with multi-million benefits). SharePoint 2010 Document Management solution for top-three UK charity, Cancer Research UK. Accountable to Science, Corporate & Fundraising Directors
• I learnt a lot about how to win great clients and attract, retain & motivate great people. We built a strong reputation for delivery to time and budget, often against very challenging deadlines.

Led the provision of IT change and business-as-usual services into the Personal, Commercial and Claims businesses in RSA UK, including the award-winning MORE>THAN car, home and pet insurance business. I supervised over a third of a 100-strong retained IT function, in an otherwise substantially outsourced model (Accenture, IBM, BT and Energis).

• Led on Business Case for innovative telematics solution (to enhance profitability of the motor insurance lines)

Promoted through three roles at Centrica; then the FTSE100 leading provider of energy & other essential home & road services; through British Gas, the Autombolie Association (AA), OneTel, and Goldfish.

• I led the £10m relaunch of the AA brand online, and developed the UK’s first satnav (the "AA Navigator")
• I also delivered a £12.5m employee portal project (from business case to live service), partnering with Accenture.
• Then led IT transformation projects to deliver £1.8m of data centre savings and a £53m (19%) reduction in Change expenditure.

Promoted through three roles, from internal audit, to IT Project Management in (first) Year 2000, then eBusiness delivery. British Airways was - at the time - a FTSE100 business and the world's #1 best loved airline.

• As an internal auditor, I led the American Airlines due diligence and head office reviews; saving over £2m.
• As Finance Project Manager for Year 2000, I readied 1,800 systems, 250 suppliers and 8 cross-functional processes, to a £10m budget.
• As e-Working Programme Manager, I saved over £1m, by automating finance, purchasing and people processes.

Trained as a Chartered Accountant, with one of the ‘big four’ and worked on a 50:50 mix of audit & consulting assignments. First time passes in all professional examinations, including several strong passes.