Michael Proctor

Network Planning & Optimization tools

Cloud-hosted test process automation solution for access, fiber construction and 5G wireless driving huge increases in operational efficiency and quality through compliance enforcement for 10,000s of technicians. • Designed and implemented a comprehensive operations framework, including a first rate RACI model, vulnerability program, and security training, ensuring ISO27001 audit readiness and continuous security enhancements for a legacy solution, contributing to enhanced customer trust and compliance. • Collaborated with direct sales and channels, as well as other product groups to drive field test automation usability for mass-market contractors, balanced with web scale company API integration, and pushed customer-centric QA testing to ensure solution delivery excellence. • Prioritized single sign-on (SSO) and multifactor authentication (MFA) functionality to win key cloud provider contract and lock-in subscription renewals by meeting new compliance requirements of existing customers. • Smart device Android/iOS application integration for immediate field synchronization, and compatibility with internal cloud solution or customer mobile apps (via Explicit Intents/Custom URLs) and customer servers via native web services file upload, driving Tier-1 Telco secure backend integration and workforce automation. • Embedded Analytics for field service efficiency, progress monitoring, quality and compliance across all telecom field test technologies (CATV, Ethernet/IP, Wi-Fi, Optical Fiber, Wireless 5G), expanding legacy subscription by revealing systemic equipment and process issues, proving out workflow automation improvement, and providing new channel opportunities. • Drove world class REST API integration, consultation, training and troubleshooting using Postman tool expanding sales channel pre- and post-sales global support, increasing Tier-1 telco and sales channel trust which combined with new pricing strategy led to expanded adoption for key direct revenue driver.

Tasked with establishing a Design for Serviceability (DFS) practice to improve future product quality, customer retention and service effectiveness as well as the combined product/service solution competitiveness for large technology migration projects. Conducted in-depth data analysis across JIRA, Confluence CRM, Aha! and project management tools, identifying critical areas for improvement with MS Power BI, which prioritized actions that enhanced service quality and customer retention. • Used group whiteboard sessions, interviews and trialed forms automation techniques to collect, review and prioritize requirements from Plan & Design, Deploy, Maintain and Managed Services teams. • Collaborated with PLM/R&D groups to introduce services requirements early in product concept/design phases to maximize impact on service quality/efficiency. • Drove usage of service guidelines to help automate New Product Introduction services readiness assessment and helped drive earlier focused engagement on new products/features requiring advanced notice for downstream services preparation, tools development and training. • Led the iterative development and tracking of DFS processes, ensuring consistent alignment with service requirements across product releases, resulting in improved product quality and customer satisfaction; worked across photonic, optical transport, packet networking and network management system software products.

Assumed product line management responsibility after effectively establishing a strategic plan to deliver test process automation solutions in high growth field telecommunications service markets and reducing typical fiber construction jobs from days to hours. Built a scalable multi-tenant SaaS solution utilizing off-the-shelf components for IAM, results streaming and real-time field instrument status sync across multiple locations, and BI Analytics of returned test data, reducing time to market, enabling security and scalability whilst allowing focus on the group’s key competitive differentiation in field test automation and orchestration. • Successfully communicated plans to dependent development teams and product managers to establish an aggressive delivery and release frequency schedule while maintaining support for established solutions. • Spearheaded cross-functional collaboration with product managers and R&D, aligning roadmaps and transitioning the company to agile practices, which accelerated delivery cycles and enhanced product innovation. • Collaborated with R&D and corporate InfoSec security group to establish security questionnaire framework baseline, increasing efficiency and customer response timeliness to remove key customer reservations about using SaaS solution. • Pushed alignment with other key marketing initiatives to maximize ROI and adoption of new solution concepts. • Developed detailed optical, CPRI and Ethernet data modelling concepts to drive key tool and technological decisions and provide necessary demonstrative capabilities of the solution analytics functions. • Prioritized and resolved critical quality issues including using Apache JMeter to troubleshoot API usage, leading to subscription renewals and significant business expansion with key customers, contributing to a stable and growing revenue stream.

Migrated to new Solutions group to drive increasing adoption of cloud-based services through execution of strategic directives for workflow automation and test functions virtualization. Completed 3rd party test instrument integration proof-of-concept leading to key industry partnership. • Orchestrated solution requirements and development to deliver on industry-leading test functions virtualization solution and managed services platform; instrumental in driving workflow automation and smart device integration initiatives. • Won large contract at large cable MSO and associated fiber inspection probe business from key competitor by architecting OTS analytics tool integration with legacy cloud field test instrument SaaS solution. • Developed core application design and roadmap for DAS field test automation solution for Tier 1 provider using contractor workforce including framework for test results analytics yielding vast improvement in delivery quality.

• Responsible for managing and evangelizing the cloud-based test set management solutions business globally, focused on optimizing field operations efficiency in the telecom market space. Drove existing business with regional sales teams while creating strategic alignment between future customer/industry trends and solution roadmap. • 2 years of triple-digit service revenue growth and over 30% YoY impacted revenue growth; developed updated business metrics monitoring framework using Salesforce.com. • Established strategic vision for future direction and roadmap plan of achieving target objectives; supported Go-To-Market (GTM) team developing internal and external collateral and positioning, with responsibility for engaging parties as strong, dedicated sales point-of-contact for trials, proof-of-concepts and custom demo configurations.

Managed the re-architecture of two major product lines whilst balancing immediate customer needs and tactical market requirements. Instigated and maintained cross-organizational processes to foster collaboration, increase quality and provide quicker time-to-market for new releases. Instrumental in driving key technological advancements to increase market share in existing markets, as well as position the company to capture new business in emerging markets such as UCaaS and NG911 migration. Responsible for product line management of the company's cloud-based emergency voice routing service, hosted and on-site gateway appliances, and supporting client technology, as it transitioned from a start-up company to an established E911 provider. • Supported sales and marketing with trade show booth support, public speaking conferences, marketing collateral and pre-sales presentations capturing many Fortune 100 company sales. • UI requirements and management of outsourced development for customer portals within existing environment and next generation GlassFish-based hosted call routing solution. • Created a documented development process for the company, combining the best stage-gate practices for effective QA in a highly-integrated environment and on-time delivery (necessary to secure key customer wins from roadmap commitments); and agile development necessary to promote rapid implementation of a next generation platform supporting a new PSAP connectivity partner. • Strict cross-functional backlog prioritization balancing functional customer requirements with necessary security-focused updates demanded by government, defense contractor and major enterprise customers. • Assumed management of team focused on system engineering and technical documentation, closing feedback loop from pre-sales to a critical customer touch point, improving both documentation quality as well as solution selling consistency.

Led the design, product introduction and delivery of new professional consulting services for carrier ethernet, IP/MPLS and mobile backhaul networks, in the areas of new services introduction, test/monitoring planning, technology training, service specification design, field trial planning and test execution, and mass deployment field test verification. • Collaborated with multiple groups and three major divisions to grow a services practice from scratch into a million-dollar operation in less than 9 months whilst achieving high profitability in a traditionally margin-constrained market. • Drove a nationwide field trial consulting service that led to winning a mass deployment field test verification program ensuring an accelerated and effective migration to Ethernet/IP mobile backhaul for a leading US Wireless Carrier.

Guided engineering through several key software and hardware developments resulting in the productizing of four new applications for Carrier Ethernet, Telco VoIP, Cable VoIP and IPTV service assurance, with multiple contract wins. Maximized utilization of resources to sustain legacy revenue whilst supporting migration to agile development methodologies for new projects. Recognized as an applications and technology expert within the Complex Solutions division, a primary technical liaison for network equipment manufacturers, and design consultant to interface engineering custom services for access and packet-based technologies. • Guided sales, marketing and engineering efforts to combine my vendor-agnostic service assurance solution with JDSU’s active and passive IP probes to capture significant VoIP and carrier ethernet deals including $20M+ initial deal at Tier-1 CATV provider. • Opportunistically developed network inventory reconciliation solution with existing reporting, DB, processing engine and NE/EMS interface framework expanding footprint in several key customers with minimal R&D investment. • Developed and executed strategic plan to transition legacy voice traffic engineering solution into VoIP and extend into adjacent markets extending growth trajectory. • Steered engineering through reporting technology transition from SAS to Cognos reporting to take advantage of disaggregated customer IT spending and faster, more flexible custom report development enhancing solution positioning with more immediate customer ROI. • Provided NE (network element) and element management system (EMS) rapid interface prototyping to promote key competitive differentiator, working closely with interface engineering to productize and maintain long-term. • Experience with a wide-range of optical/packet transport, switching, routing and network interface devices using SNMP, NetConf, SFTP/CSV, TL1 and CORBA interfaces to interface with NE/EMS solutions.

Provided technical sales/marketing support and solutions definition for OSS Service Assurance and Network Capacity planning, primarily in North America as well as internationally. Helped to stabilize the revenue in our existing software product line during a difficult time for the telecommunications industry; and paved the way for the introduction of our new service assurance solutions. • 2003 Sales Achievement Award (Top Performer category).

Technical sales support in North America, helping project teams drive business in sales of Centralized Test Systems and Protocol Analysis equipment. • Tripled protocol analyzer sales from 1998-2000 by leading product launch efforts of Ethernet and ATM OEM analyzers and focusing on key strengths of existing product in the Frame Relay, ISDN, SS7 and GR.303 technologies. • Led successful trial project definition and introduction of TDM (DS0/DS1) centralized test system in Canada's 2nd largest wireless carrier and contract win at a regional telecommunications provider in 2001. • 1999, 2000, 2001 Sales Achievement Awards (Top Performer category).

Established a significant presence for TTC's test products in the telecom network equipment manufacturer sector, by focusing on our strengths in T-carrier testing and re-introducing a North American product to fulfil a unique application. • Expanded account territory by targeting UK operation hubs of US-based and International alternative service providers, and choice opportunities in the banking sector. • 1998 Top Performer - Europe. • 1998 Top Sales Award - Data Services Test Equipment. • 1998 Sales Achievement Award.

Placed on secondment to UK Royal Air Force and private industry projects. Four placements, including Research (Thompson Simulation, Crawley), Project Management (Ministry of Defence, London), Installation & Commissioning (Howard Management Systems, London) and Marketing & Business Analysis (Defence Research Agency, Farnborough).

Sponsored by the UK Ministry of Defence onto their IEE-certified Student Engineering Program. Nine-month training program and three summer 3-month work placements, including Production Engineering (Ericsson, Scunthorpe), Quality Assurance (Royal Ordnance, Blackburn) and Electronics Design (Defence Research Agency, Farnborough).