Andre P.
IT Service Operations Manager, Processes and IT/Service Strategy
Experience
IT Service Operations Manager, Processes and IT/Service Strategy
Westnetz
- Ensure implementation of the group guideline for the functional control of “Digital Technology”.
- Assess the guideline’s impact on Westnetz.
- Develop a roll-out strategy for the management board’s resolutions.
- Communicate at division manager level and identify potential action areas.
- Initiate a two-phase “Grey IT” project with evaluation and implementation stages.
- Provide conceptual support for establishing a service and product organization.
- Define premises in service design.
- Details on the Grey IT project in the energy supplier environment:
- Ensure implementation of the group guideline for the functional control of “Digital Technology”.
- Assess the guideline’s impact on Westnetz.
- Develop a roll-out strategy for the management board’s resolutions.
- Communicate at division manager level and identify potential action areas.
- Initiate a two-phase “Grey IT” project with evaluation and implementation stages.
- Conduct analyses and shape the target structures.
- Execute the project.
- Establish an IT service & product organization:
- Consolidate ongoing initiatives and projects for service design.
- Identify overlaps and dependencies with group transformation efforts.
- Support operational roll-out and set up governance roles and internal interfaces.
Interim Head of Provider Development
GKV Informatik
- Responsible for provider development including provider management, technical alliance management, and telecommunications & mobility.
- Overall responsibility for steering and developing strategic providers (Computacenter, T-Systems, Avaya, DTBS) and output and shipping service providers.
- Organizational and strategic realignment of the division.
- Direct reporting line to the CEO.
- Active member of the management board.
- Support the company’s strategic reorientation.
- Stabilize daily operations.
- Set up interfaces with business units.
- Initiate a project to build operational provider management.
Technical Alliance Manager
GKV Informatik
- Tactical interface to provider Computacenter for service desk, field services, and catalog for about 38,000 workstations of statutory health insurers.
- Escalation point and chair in governance meetings with the provider.
- Contract compliance and change requests.
- Provider performance monitoring and penalty definitions.
- Conduct a price benchmark.
- Manage the tactical provider interface in the workplace environment (service desk, field services) for ~38k seats.
- Negotiate and finalize a settlement to ease the customer-provider relationship.
- Chair the Service Delivery Committee.
- Approve penalties.
- Handle escalations from operational governance bodies.
- Support business units with escalations.
- Assist with SLA reporting.
- Ensure delivery of contractually agreed services.
- Price benchmark execution:
- Initiate a contractually regulated price benchmark.
- Select benchmarking partners.
- Run the benchmark project and report regularly to management and stakeholders.
- Evaluate results.
- Define negotiation strategy and conduct price negotiations based on benchmark results.
Head of Technical Services DACH
Lowell Service Center GmbH
Overall responsible for IT Technical Services in the DACH region, including Workplace Services, Infrastructure Services, and IT Service & IT Automation Management; direct reporting to the DACH CIO.
Unit of 52 employees organized in three departments and seven teams with nine leaders.
Authorized officer responsible for budget, budget planning and monitoring, and identifying cost-saving opportunities.
Develop regional IT strategy in line with group IT strategy.
Partner and supplier management.
Implement processes and procedures, including KPIs, to ensure smooth IT operations.
Direct reporting to the Group CTO (UK) from 05/2016 – 01/2018.
Integrate and expand the group in Scandinavia.
Introduce agile project management methods.
Build DevOps capabilities.
Expand service design and delivery functions.
Introduce IT vendor management.
08/2017 appointed authorized signatory for Lowell Service Center GmbH.
Integrate the DACH Technical Services into the group organization.
Budget responsibility approx. €8.8M p.a.
Build the IT Process Automation team.
Group Industrialised Infrastructure Project (06/2017 – 12/2020):
Consolidate six existing data centers in the UK, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and Germany into a joint managed service operation.
For DACH, select Vodafone Cloud & Security to migrate the entire IT infrastructure to a customer-specific public cloud and design a hybrid cloud approach to leverage scale-out potential in Microsoft Azure.
Role: IT business owner for DACH; report to group CIO and regional CIOs to coordinate dependencies with UK and Nordics regions.
Team: ~35 internal and 25 external staff plus various application migration vendors. Budget €18M.
Activities:
Vendor selection: prepare RFP, define and align project scope; select vendors on commercial, strategic, and technical criteria.
Contract: negotiate and draft a group-wide UK-law contract in English; detail service terms and commercial conditions (8 months, mainly in Manchester); plan acceptance for a 60-month contract; total commitment €16M.
Build project team and adapt IT org: recruit project team (PM, analysts, technical specialists); add technical design and delivery experts internally; appoint lead engineer/vendor manager; train and develop existing infrastructure and network teams; involve works council and draft an operations agreement.
Transition: align and approve technical designs from HLD to LLD as contract basis; oversee delivery and configuration; develop and approve service details; define service catalog and data center services; implement ITIL processes and adapt internal communication; set up incident, problem, change, capacity, and availability management.
Transformation: plan and prepare internal application migration; ready existing application servers; coordinate software vendors and partners; establish redundant migration paths.
Escalation management: a 9-month delay by the provider led to a €2.1M settlement agreement and a realistic replan with discounts to complete successfully.
Technical environment:
Private cloud: Compute (Cisco UCS, Oracle Exadata), Network & Security (Cisco Nexus, F5 BigIP), Storage (EMC VMax, EMC Isilon), Hypervisor (VMware vSphere, Horizon View).
Hybrid cloud: Compute (MS Azure), Network (Azure DC Connect), Hypervisor (Kubernetes).
DevOps stack: Atlassian, Azure DevOps.
Methods: Traditional PMI project management.
New receivables management platform development (03/2019 – 12/2020):
Aim to evolve the fragmented software base into a microservices platform to meet digitalization and automation needs; shift to a product-centric agile organization.
Role: Lead technical delivery in core team (product management, solution design, component management, technical delivery). Ensure infrastructure for component development and production operations.
Team: 25 internal IT staff and up to 200 offshore/nearshore developers. Budget €22M.
Activities:
Plan and ensure production readiness of technical components.
Build DevOps support for component teams.
Provide dev environments for offshore/nearshore teams under strict data protection and cyber security rules.
Adapt IT service organization to the new product-centric structure.
Technical environment: MS Azure, Kubernetes, Docker, Confluence, Jira, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Splunk.
Methods: Custom “Way of Working”, Scrum, DevOps.
M&A IT integration of 4 companies (03/2016 – 12/2018):
Acquire a small group of three companies in 2016 and integrate an Austrian firm with its own software subsidiary in 2017.
Role: Overall responsible for IT integration.
Team: 25 operational IT staff in the companies and 5 developers in the Austrian software firm.
Activities:
IT due diligence: tech and organizational assessment; review license and maintenance contracts; consolidate IT costs; recommend and cost integration; highlight risks with mitigation plans.
Organizational integration: merge IT staff into central IT; involve works council for agreements; adjust service models and finalize SLAs; review and adapt existing vendor relationships; unify license contracts; centralize software asset management; consolidate technical docs.
Technical integration: connect sites to central MPLS; stabilize data center infrastructure and provide central services; integrate into central IT security.
Tech environment: various legacy IT systems.
Methods: Traditional PMI project management.
Lead overall IT integration project in Potsdam.
Head of System Operations
GFKL Service Center GmbH
- Lead teams in IT infrastructure, IT network, workplace services, and IT service management including the service desk.
- Implement IT centralization.
- Project sponsor for group-wide IT projects.
- Centralize IT in the DACH region (05/2014 – 08/2015):
- The IT organization was highly fragmented with multiple operational units within OpCos. The goal was to merge IT into a central organization with unified planning, control, and cost management.
- Role: Operationally drive centralization and build the new central IT organization.
- Team: 65 internal staff directly or indirectly affected.
- Activities:
- Identify OpCo employees and align with managing directors.
- Create detailed job profiles for existing and incoming IT staff.
- Involve works council and negotiate social plans.
- Design and set up the new IT organization, appoint leaders, assign staff.
- Document operational tasks and establish production schedules.
- Retention management to prevent knowledge loss.
- Methods: PMI project management; many one-on-one talks with staff and OpCo leadership.
- Plan and set up a central service desk with an external provider, then insource and move to steady state.
Head of Network and Systems Operations
GFKL Financial Services AG
- Lead IT production team.
- Sub-project and project leadership in group projects.
- Lead and organize the Architecture Review Board.
- Help shape and implement the GFKL IT strategy.
- Design and implement IT service, processes, and organization.
- Technical project lead in multiple DMS projects.
- Plan, build, and run the disaster recovery data center including relocation and redesign.
- Manage IT support for leasing and factoring business units.
- Participate in drafting and establishing the IT strategy.
- Design, implement, and hand over virtual desktop and server infrastructure.
Senior System Engineer
GFKL Financial Services AG
- Sub-project and project leadership in infrastructure projects.
- Operate and enhance storage, network, and server infrastructure.
- Set up and run software distribution and desktop management systems.
- Build storage and backup infrastructure.
Summary
As a consultant and interim manager, I support companies in all aspects of IT infrastructure operations. Process consulting and design, provider management and provider development, as well as leading IT operations organizations are the focus of my freelance work today. In the 20 years before that at a financial services provider, I had the chance to develop the company’s IT and shape many changes. That company started as a startup with a classic founder loan and grew through strong organic and inorganic growth with venture capital investors. It eventually became a pan-European group with private equity funding. During a 3–5 year turnaround, constant organizational developments and changes in management and ownership, I experienced the classic lifecycle of a company with all its ups and downs. This included shaping my area of responsibility. I gained experience in classic line organizations in various roles and learned the pros and cons of matrix organizations and different project structures and methods. Through the group’s internationalization, I expanded my skills with international experience. With direct reporting lines to the Group CTO and Group CIO and close cooperation with colleagues from the UK and Scandinavia, I analyzed different working styles to highlight and fix communication and organizational gaps. Recruiting employees, managers and project teams, as well as developing existing colleagues, was a key part of my work.
Languages
Certifications & licenses
IT Architecture and Technology Professional
TÜV
ITIL 4 Foundation
PMP Project Management Professional
PMI
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