The first phase of my career was spent in telecoms and mobile, working on some of the largest, most mission-critical technology environments in operation globally, supporting tens of millions of customers and national infrastructure. This gave me the opportunity to work in the USA, the Caribbean, Australia, South Africa, and across Europe.
A consistent theme of all my work was technology-enabled business transformation: helping large telecoms operators reshape how they could sell products and serve customers online for the first time, within their complex product sets and embedded existing technology. Much of this early digital work focused on e-commerce, secure online self-service, and fraud detection and prevention. These capabilities were genuinely new for most organisations and sat at the leading edge of what was technically and commercially possible.
Over 15 years in consultancy, I led engagements for top-tier telecoms clients, typically designing and mobilising major transformation 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 the teams required to execute 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) businesses and, among other achievements, created the first mobile application to run on T-Mobile’s new GPRS network in the UK.
O2 #
My most recent telecoms role was in-house at O2 (Telefónica UK), where I ran the internal consultancy team. The team worked with senior leaders across the business at the earliest stages of idea formation, helping to clarify objectives, explore technology and partnership options, secure funding, and mobilise major programmes of work.
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 a large online and contact-centre estate.
Projects included:
- High-profile 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)