james walker

Cyber security is rapidly becoming a top global priority for governments and businesses. In response to this growing challenge, HM Government, in partnership with SANS Institute, has created the Cyber Retraining Academy. An intensive and immersive ten-week training programme, the Academy aims to encourage and develop potential new cyber security professionals. The programme has been tailored to meet the specific cyber security needs of today's enterprises and government. "The Academy is like the Harvard Business School for cyber - you know the graduates are going in based on their aptitude, and will be going through the best training possible." - Jim Fox, Head of Cyber Development at e2e See https://www.sans.org/ukcyberacademy

Additional responsibility for the company critical Production operation. Multi-million spend per annum on enrichment of accepted journal manuscripts and ebooks through to web publication and print, where applicable. ~35,000 articles and ~350,000 pages per annum. Revamped the function in 2013 and from 2014 delivered substantial recurring savings. Balance between in house & freelance resources and strategic offshore partners.

Originator of Board level multi-year, multi-million investment in strategic technology programme to modernise IOPP's major platforms. Created the Programme Office to orchestrate significant change programmes across the front and back office, replacing legacy technology with enterprise class technology including the MarkLogic native XML database. Up skilled several senior management positions in the company. Negotiated significant software and system acquisitions. As well as IT, and then Production, also had interim responsibility for e-Development (covering Product Management) from November 2009 until April 2011.

Defined the CRM technology strategy for EADS DS and created the Business Case (SAP/Microsoft). Managed international Centre of Competency and support of legacy applications (including Clarify CRM). Awarded additional responsibility for Enterprise Services delivering solutions for intranet and extranet portals (principally based on Hyperwave technology but also Microsoft ASP) and real-time collaboration. Achieved cost reductions of up to 75% in the UK and savings internationally of 770K€ per annum. Created the consolidated UK IT Budget £7M+ supporting the overall 165M€ IT budget. Frequent European travel mostly to Germany and France for strategy workshops, business customer meetings, project reviews and Change Boards. Security Clearance S/C, ITIL V3 Foundation, ITIL Service Level Management, PMI Exam Preparation.

Seeking to relocate to South West/South Wales – against strong competition achieved an exciting interim role in Cornwall] Delivered proposals for the IT Strategy (including adoption of ITIL) and reorganisation of IT. Managed the procurement tendering (ITT/RFP) for the key CRM solution across ten vendors through to the decision stage – demonstrated best practise procurement (selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM). Represented company in major client account meetings (defence and aerospace inc Airbus & MBDA). Maintenance of corporate server environment, desktops and Helpdesk. Defined disaster recovery & business continuity policies and planned testing. Responsible for all aspects of IT systems development & systems management activities including re-architecting onto .NET and bespoke client work under formal SLAs.

Transferred from IT into Finance as the finance technology expert. Analysed all the existing finance systems and associated processes and planned their replacement and/or improvement. Completely re-developed the full package of budgeting and forecasting systems as an Executive Information System (EIS) for effective decision support. Responsible for the monthly financial consolidation using Hyperion Enterprise. Provided direct technical support for a high performing Financial Management and Analysis function and the Finance Director under intense pressure. Contributed to a significant improvement in performance of the function.

Role provided a solid grounding in IBM Mainframe/MVS and DEC PDP-11 mini environments. Extensive development and support using PL/1, C, Nomad 4GL, RSTS BASIC-PLUS and FoxBASE plus.

Undergraduate work implementing the company's first LAN (Token-Ring) and performing Desktop Support. Developed the PC inventory system (dBASE III plus), redeveloped the budget & forecasting system (FoxBASE plus) and wrote statistical business reports (Nomad 4GL on IBM mainframe) and collaborated with ACN on Final Year dissertation "Retailer Payments at ACNielsen".

Responsible for in-house technology team in London serving the office there as well as the +50,000 members consuming various online services, plus regional staff and volunteers. Reorganised the function and prior to the major reorganisation of The Institute hired the Head of IT and handed day to day responsibility to that role in order to concentrate on the Publishing subsidiary.