Carl Stanley
Chorley,Lancashire
Summary
Senior portfolio and transformation leader with 20+ years’ experience shaping and governing large, multi-year change portfolios across financial services, defence, healthcare, government and technology-enabled environments. Skilled at translating strategy into prioritised, measurable portfolios, building PMO capability, strengthening governance and risk controls, and leading high-performing teams to deliver digital, operational and organisational transformation at scale. Comfortable operating at C-suite level to secure investment, accelerate outcomes and protect value.
Overview
19
19
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work history
Transformation Portfolio Director
Maximus
Remote
2025.06 - 2026.04
- Aligned and prioritised 60+ initiatives to realise ~£12m of benefits and secure ~£25.8m in contract awards through commercial gating and benefits tracking.
- Established enterprise portfolio standards, toolkits, investment controls and risk frameworks that cut approval cycle time by 35% and increased throughput of high-value projects.
- Built and scaled 20+ FTE rapid delivery function, introducing capacity management, delivery assurance and forecasting that materially improved on-time delivery and forecast accuracy by over 20%
- Mobilised and stood up multi-site operations for major government contracts: ~£5.3m CTW Lancs (1,379 participants; 44 FTE) and ~£20m VDPS (11,000 participants; 40 FTE).
- Led £1.5m Workday HCM & UK payroll implementation replacing legacy Cascade (HCM, Talent, Compensation, CPM, Absence, Payroll), owning data migration and integrations and delivering £100k pa running cost savings.
- Redesigned underperforming operating model to stop contract losing £6.2m, introducing standardised structures, real-time dashboards and performance gates; cut attrition ~40%, reduced sickness ~20% and lifted productivity ~60%.
- Implemented AI Career Pathfinder (CV, cover-letter and interview tools) delivering 6% uplift in job starts, 13-point satisfaction increase, £1.5m job-start benefit and £252k time savings.
Head of Project Portfolio
BAE Systems
Preston
2023.07 - 2025.06
- Directed governance, prioritisation and financial discipline for £250m+ cross-functional portfolio comprising 90+ active initiatives and 150+ item pipeline, improving predictability and executive decision making.
- Led 40+ FTE cross-functional delivery organisation and matrix-managed ~150 FTE across business units and suppliers, implementing resource optimisation, capacity planning and performance management.
- Designed and embedded portfolio risk, scenario modelling and escalation frameworks, standardising reporting and executive dashboards to surface dependencies and accelerate decisions.
- Established £10m finance modernisation programme (SAP Cloud / CFIN) to centralise financial transactions and standardise enterprise data model.
- Oversaw £15m HR transformation migrating to single global ServiceNow instance, delivering 45+ integrations/ downstream system changes over 3-year schedule, supported by 50+ team across architecture, development and deployment
- Delivered M365 Phase 2 (on-prem to cloud), implemented Teams telephony and migrated SharePoint while governing £25m IBP across five agile squads and 40+ shared-services team.
- Partnered with C-suite and suppliers to align strategy, maintain contractual compliance and strengthen supplier governance and commercial controls.
Senior Manager
Deloitte
Remote
2022.12 - 2023.07
- Owned delivery assurance and strategic oversight for multiyear regulatory, operational and technology portfolio at Tier-1 UK bank, leading remediation, customer rectification and audit-ready governance to stabilise operations and reduce regulatory exposure.
- Directed multiyear outsource partnership for Tier-1 UK bank, overseeing complex redress calculations, CRM build, telephony, mail and contact-centre setup across multiple third-party suppliers in off-site environments.
- Managed full lifecycle delivery in matrix environment, coordinating mobilisation, design, build, testing, training and iterative releases to achieve operational readiness and accurate customer outcomes.
- Built senior stakeholder trust and strengthened reporting discipline, translating technical status into concise risk narratives and introducing standardised templates and performance gates.
Head of Implementation
Capita
Manchester
2018.10 - 2022.12
- Led multisite outsourced managed services delivery and commercial growth, delivering 17 RFP wins (£81m+ TCV) and mobilising large programmes with 40-FTE delivery function.
- Delivered £32m contact centre outsourcing transition, establishing multisite operations, IT/telephony integration, onboarding and training of 600+ FTE.
- Transformed recruitment and operating efficiency, increasing direct delivery from 35% to 81%, onboarding 2,000+ FTE and delivering £900k pa recurring savings.
- Embedded PMO and risk frameworks enforcing IT security, data-protection and audit controls while driving full-lifecycle IT and business change; sustained 85%+ client satisfaction and improved scheduling efficiency 20% through standardised project-management toolkit that optimised demand, capacity and benefits realisation.
- Led 18-month software transition underpinning £4m p/a collections operation, delivering new case management system, omnichannel payments portal and outsourced mail/print/scanning.
Programme Manager
Capita
Manchester
2017.01 - 2018.10
- Directed multisite financial services programmes (TCV £17.7m), delivering CRM, secure connectivity and large-scale customer redress; provided board-level delivery assurance and strengthened predictability through RAID, financial tracking and milestone control.
- Led remediation programme (£8 million TCV) for leading high street bank. Catering for over 2 million customers including redress payments of £60 million. Managed end to end SDLC for bespoke CRM system builds, networks and connectivity. Including, customer tracing, treasury services, print, mail and scanning solutions and managed service operations.
- Implemented 3-year £2million TCV redress programme (Beacon) contacting 1.8 million customers via mail/SMS with 600k cheques issued totalling over £8 million for online retailer (Beacon). Including inbound contact centre, CRM system dev, bespoke letter mailing/ SMS functionality.
Programme Manager
BLM Law
Manchester
2016.04 - 2017.01
- Managed finance systems change for top-50 corporate law firm, leading 8-FTE finance systems team and delivering Aderant PMS upgrades with strong governance, prioritisation and predictable delivery.
- Improved Aderant performance by 60%, reducing system lock outs, working with key supplier & teams identifying key problems and inefficiencies. Implementing plans addressing tactical quick wins & longer strategic benefits.
- Increased month billing revenue by 20% for top client, implementation of billing automation and workflow, submitting all bills electronically to third-party audit system using phase and task codes and set narratives via XML schema.
Business Integration Manager
BLM
Manchester, Greater Manchester
2015.02 - 2016.04
- Led high profile project with Zurich implementing bi-directional real-time flow of data between client Guidewire system and internal systems. Managed end to end aspects of definition, software delivery, test and phased deployment
- Oversaw transition of 2 separate equity partners, associated staff and both digital and paper caseload to BLM systems and offices. Liaising with current law firm to identify cases moving and all respective data/ documents required
- Implemented migration of specialist niche department in Marine law, migrating them from legacy systems to wider business CRM platform. Including moving customer/suppler data and documents across to new system and scoping out MI data capture requirements end report output needs
Project Manager
Premex Services
Bolton, Lancs
2011.02 - 2015.02
- Led projects from initiation to completion. Authoring and maintaining all required project documentation/products, such as business cases, project plans, briefs, requirements, test plans and implementation plans
- Delivered business critical project to replace 15-year-old legacy financial system (SAGE). Created detailed plans, documents and use cases in conjunction with overseeing specialist suppliers tasked to implement technical solution
- Automated paper-based process chain, removing 100,000 pieces of letterhead in phase 1, reducing cycle time by 1 week and saved 4fte overall. Used Metastorm workflow to build functionality via API’s to send/ receive system flags between operation and finance to seamlessly build workflow queues for processing team
- Reduced finance team manual processing times by 50% via process automation. Delivered functionality between multiple finance systems enabling full automation of sales invoicing replacing manual process using fixed fee or cost+ logic in conjunction with API’s to drive efficiency outputs.
Business systems analyst
Experian
Southport
2010.09 - 2011.02
- Working as Business Systems Analyst in software development team, produced detailed analysis artefacts to required quality & timelines including business requirements specifications, functional/non-functional requirements, use cases/user stories etc.
Business Analyst/ Project Manager
Premex Services
Bolton, Greater Manchester
2007.09 - 2010.09
- Created project plans, business cases and initiation documents using Prince 2 Methodology.
- Defined detailed business requirements, process maps and use cases reflecting as-is and to be process requirements
Skills
- Service-line & P&L ownership
- Team leadership
- Stakeholder management
- Pipeline & revenue growth
- Proposal & SOW development
- Governance & delivery assurance
- Resource & capacity planning
- Vendor & commercial management
- Benefits realisation & value tracking
- Budget ownership (£200k–£25m)
- PRINCE2 / Agile / Waterfall
- Digital & operational transformation
Certification
- PRINCE2 Practitioner
- Registered Scrum Master
- BCS certifications in Business Analysis Practice, Requirements Engineering, Project Management and Commercial Awareness.
Timeline
Transformation Portfolio Director
Maximus
2025.06 - 2026.04
Head of Project Portfolio
BAE Systems
2023.07 - 2025.06
Senior Manager
Deloitte
2022.12 - 2023.07
Head of Implementation
Capita
2018.10 - 2022.12
Programme Manager
Capita
2017.01 - 2018.10
Programme Manager
BLM Law
2016.04 - 2017.01
Business Integration Manager
BLM
2015.02 - 2016.04
Project Manager
Premex Services
2011.02 - 2015.02
Business systems analyst
Experian
2010.09 - 2011.02
Business Analyst/ Project Manager
Premex Services
2007.09 - 2010.09