Chris Briggs

Socitm Advisory is a transformation partner, working with public service leaders to improve the services they deliver. Specialists in ERP Advisory & Delivery, Digital & Service Transformation and Technology & Infrastructure Modernisation, Socitm has an enviable track record of success with over a hundred customers citing significant improvements to the services they deliver.

Engaged by Derbyshire County Council as part of a four person advisory team tasked with leading and managing a complex IT departmental and service stabilisation effort, in conjunction with acting as interim Heads of Service.

Manages the Enterprise Architecture team comprised of Solution, Data and Security Architects, Business Analysts, Project Managers and Information Governance managers.

Key initiatives focused on;

• Addressing senior management and staffing challenges.
• Developing an Enterprise Architecture practice based on TOGAF principles.
• Developed a Cyber Security Strategy.
• Developing a Data Management Strategy and implementation approach.
• Working with corporate PMO to develop a process for business engagement and resource management.
• Helped develop Cloud Strategy.
• Helped develop new Target Operating Model and Service Implications Report.
  

• Led the delivery of the Oracle Cloud Fusion HR & Finance system to replace an outdated SAP environment.
• Acted as the link between the Executive Sponsors and the programme team, co-ordinated the efforts of internal and external partners and manages complex relationships with a wide range of stakeholders.
• Worked in a strategic capacity across the programme, making design decisions and being proactive in providing leadership and direction throughout the implementation of the programme and has line management responsibility for SMEs within the programme.
• Responsible for maintaining programme budget.
• Identified inefficiencies and recommended changing functionality or behaviours to eliminate concerns.
• Line managed programme resources and budget of £15M

• Provided specialist solution architect knowledge and experience to deliver Procure to Pay and PIM projects.
• Defined high-level strategy and high-level design, working with the business, development teams and 3rd party suppliers to define process scope and business change required to meet the programme mandate
• Delivered enhanced web-based customer application with multiple integrations with SAP and other key line of business applications.
• Developed and implemented system testing plans in support of deployments.
• Prepared proposals outlining requirements, potential solutions and required resources, timelines and costs to achieve objectives.
• Virtualised or graphically visualised system operations to identify areas for improvement

• Delivered New Ways of Working programme transforming how the business operated in a post-covid workplace, including the rationalisation of property, redefinition of the network landscape and modernisation of applications to meet the remote workforce.
• Migration of data centre services (Windows and Unix servers, storage arrays and network infrastructure) in Nutanix in a managed hosted service.
• Technical lead helping define a Future Fibre strategy. A city wide transformation programme of helping to bring a full-fibre network to the city to help bring forward inward investment (expected to by £18M), reduce the digital divide and enable the Smart City vision, ensuring that the Smart City needs of the Council were meet, for example, traffic monitoring, creation of small cell 5G, expansion of the ‘always on / always available’ council services, strategy for smarter social care.
• Planned the decommissioning activity Cisco end of life Wrote a compelling business case to reduce investment required to replace EOL hardware by analysing hardware failures of router cards and chassis and network traffic, accepted the potential loss of service risk (very low risk) in return for a £970k capital investment saving.

• Delivered Azure hosted Learner Management System across 3 nations.
• Designed and managed delivery of a mobile application to better engage construction industry apprentices.
• Defined application roadmaps, strategy and a total cost of ownership model for cloud migration.

• Led the technical design of a Cloud Migration Project for the Insolvency Service
• Developed technical options and financial reports examining how the organisation could move away from the existing outsourced solution, including application retirement, re-platforming and upgrades to the existing services, estimated cost saving £2.1M over 5 years.

• Technical lead on the Cloud Migration Project which was defining the strategy for migration to Azure and Crown Hosting for the on-premise server infrastructure
• Developed Solution Options Paper reviewing current operating model and organisation of the IT department, the long term strategy and a detailed analysis of the costs of operation with the outcome influencing whether or not to outsource IT.
• Mapped out the IT service (infrastructure, applications, networks, facilities and personnel), built a Total Cost of Ownership model and developed the high level design for the cloud migration. Anticipated cost reduction of £400k per year with migration of 45% of services to Azure, remainder moved to co-lo data centre.

• Managed the Strategic IT team comprising of Solution Architecture, Programme & Project Management (7)
• Defined and managed the strategic direction of the technology, these included cloud and internal hosting, strategic line of business applications (Oracle, Capita, Mosaic and the GIS platform)
• Developed strategy for Robotic Process Automation within the Customer Service Centre.
• Responsible for managing departmental budget.

• Pre-Sales Technical Consultant for an omni-channel retail deployment, consisting of 300 stores with a back office using Oracle Xstore, Genesys telephony (5000 seat contact centre call management system) solutions and Adobe Experience Manager (Content management for campaigns, website, user experience, etc) deployed to Microsoft Azure.
• Responsible for delivering the proof of concept including dev-ops environment using Pivotal Cloud Foundry for java micro-systems development based on a Mongo-DB and hosted on Microsoft Azure.

• Managed a team of 15 architects and engineers on the HMRC account, defining, deploying and delivering solutions and systems across a highly complex and diverse technology and application estate
• Acted as architecture delivery lead for a change programme that was assessing and updating design and delivery processes, governance and documentation on the account.