Gary Paramore
Chippenham,UK
Summary
Highly-skilled IT Director, offering extensive leadership expertise in financial services, banking, higher education, government and retail industries. Developing effective, efficient digital services for increased commercial propositions and improved company profitability. Strategic and technical leadership has enabled organisations to achieve 400% global growth objectives and $150M in technology savings. Adept at building and nurturing high performing, global teams for Fortune 250 organisations, fostering a culture of collaboration, empowerment and meritocracy
Overview
38
38
years of professional experience
6
6
years of post-secondary education
Work history
Head of Enterprise Architecture
The Openwork Partnership
Swindon, Wiltshire
06.2022 - Current
- Created and delivered a cloud-first technology strategy that addressed technology obsolescence, technical debt and drove up value to the core business, 700 partner firms and 4,500 advisors, delivering wealth, mortgage and protection solutions to 1.2m clients, £23B assets under management and £27B annual mortgage lending
- Rebuilt the architecture function from the ground up, obtained Board approval for the value proposition, overhauled the target operating model, attracted and retained the right talent, nurturing a culture of collaboration, empowerment and meritocracy
- Managed technology resources within department budgets, including monthly forecasting and accruals
- Established and operated an architecture guild, a cloud centre of excellence and technical design authority that provided thought leadership, reduced shadow-IT, aligned business and technology activities, and drove transparent decision making
- Established a research & development function to lead blue-sky thinking, and source new and emerging technologies to optimise information services
- Defined and implemented processes, standards, blueprints and designs to ensure efficient, sustainable delivery of high-quality products and services from data and digital transformation to business excellence and regulatory compliance
- Integrated partnered capabilities to accelerate speed to market for the digital proposition, enhance the user-experience, and de-risk the core D365 CRM offering
IT Operations Director (contract)
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
07.2021 - 05.2022
- Improved the effectiveness and efficiency of digital and legacy systems and procedures, empowering world class learning and research for 8,000 staff and 28,000 students
- Led and co-ordinated a technology function of 90 staff and third party suppliers, seamlessly delivering effective, value for money solutions, including; £1.5M IT Service Management overhaul, 10Y, £48M network outsource with TUPE, and £10M cloud transition that improved educational and research outcomes
- Maintained system compliance with legal requirements and university security standards, GDPR and Cyber-Essentials Plus (CE+)
- Accountable for an annual budget of £38M, forecasting and accruals
- Modernised IT service desk practices to streamline incident diagnosis and resolution, enhancing system performance and minimising downtime, with PowerBI based service insight reporting
- Assessed and articulated data assurance and technology obsolescence risks to university leadership, securing and executing a £9M risk remediation programme
- Delivered complete business continuity and disaster recovery plans to maintain data protection and critical services in event of natural disaster or long-term outage
Chief Architect (contract)
MASS Ltd
Bristol
01.2021 - 06.2021
- Delivered a £75M Nuclear Enterprise Information Architecture (NEIA) IT convergence programme for the MOD, driving greater collaboration at SECRET for the Submarine Delivery Agency and Industry Partners
- Stood-up and operated as technical design authority (TDA) and project management office (PMO) for SDA and Industry Partners, and delivered all NEIA contractual obligations on-time and in-budget
- Strategically managed architectural activities of staff members, guaranteeing exceptional workmanship and design practices
- Regularly reviewed goals and objectives with SDA leadership, design teams, and Industry Partners, adapting design and roadmaps to manage changing needs and facilitate continued project progress
- Solved operational problems between disciplines and Industry Partners, and implemented creative resolutions
Bereavement Break
N/A
07.2020 - 12.2020
- 6 months off to support my wife after death of her parents and sister.
Programme Director (contract)
McDonalds Restaurants
London, Greater London
01.2020 - 06.2020
- Secured £66M funding for a digital programme of seven workstreams, ensuring successful achievement of company deliverables targets to 1.4K restaurants in UK and Ireland.
- Designed and implemented an innovative digital change programme of seven workstreams for 1.4K restaurants, securing £66M funding and delivering tangible outcomes in line with KPIs
- Managed and negotiated with key stakeholders, ensuring their investment and support on present and future technology projects
- Resolved programme issues and initiated appropriate corrective action, maintaining programme integrity and quality
- Slashed restaurant deployment costs by 55% (US$4.2M) and closures by 80%, streamlining IT and construction activities and partnering six 3rd party suppliers to achieve aggressive timelines
- Took control of a £31M in-flight but failing SD-WAN network refresh project, and steered to success
- Increased sales by 10% (£27M), integrating Just Eat as an additional 3rd party delivery operator
- Built and released a new My McDonalds mobile app for Android & iOS that improved the customer experience, enabled in-app campaigns and removed GDPR, and campaign discount exposure
- Digitised the daily product checklist, improved food safety, reduced annual operating costs by 1,438 FTEs and 1.5M sheets of paper
Programme Director (contract)
Mastercard
London
01.2018 - 12.2019
- Mobilised and led the strategic delivery of a $130M global real-time payment programme, leveraging newly acquired Vocalink to expand the company's presence into new markets and grow revenue
- Rapidly grew a global, high-performing team and matrix managed 200+ global staff, attracting and retaining top talent to achieve aggressive financial and operational goals
- Reduced IT costs by $15M, through effective shared technologies
- Designed and implemented PCI compliant, cloud-native real-time payment platforms in Latin America & Caribbean, and Asia Pacific, partnering with AWS for public cloud, data centre, infrastructure and WAN providers in USA, Peru, Singapore and Thailand, delivering tangible outcomes in line with KPIs
- Stood up operations for real-time payment services, ensuring 24x7 customer support and SLA uptime of 99.9%
- Initially on-boarded and enabled 24/7 clearing and settlement of electronic payments and cheques for national interbank clients in Peru (CCE) and Philippines (BancNet)
Chief Technology Officer (contract)
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, Oxfordshire
05.2017 - 01.2018
- Worked with business leadership to understand, represent and evangelize the digital goals and aspirations of the university
- Provided thought leadership and operated as the trusted IT partner, driving step change in approach to consuming digital platforms and services to build a better Brookes for students and staff alike
- Inspired and motivated a team of 45 technology staff, nurturing a culture of collaboration and empowerment
- Partnered university estate and facilities management to ensure enabling IT technologies were built into campus and estate construction by default
- Defined and implemented processes and standards to ensure efficient, sustainable delivery of high-quality products and services
- Established a £20M, 3-year technology strategy to improve services for 18K students and 1.9K staff, remove technology obsolescence and technical debt
- Oversaw network architecture and security, developing and defining policies and procedures for successful and secure operations
- Laid out complete business continuity plan to maintain data protection in event of natural disaster or long-term outage.
Managed Services Director (contract)
Logicalis
Slough, West Berkshire
08.2015 - 04.2017
- Inspired and led a high-performing team of 60+ staff, delivering fully managed cloud and data centre services to 40 clients, within a culture of empowerment and meritocracy
- Owned a £35M P&L and increased managed service revenue to £13M (14% GM) and cloud revenue to £2.2M (15% GM), improving focus on client satisfaction and increased client retention
- Stabilised data centre P&L, performing a strategic 5 year prior/future P&L review of the existing data centre service offering, and identifying opportunities to quickly recover the position and maintain profitability
- Ran the cyber security agenda, protecting client information assets through the development and implementation of appropriate information security policies and technology standards
- Led the redesign, delivery and alignment of private and public cloud offerings to maximise revenue, gross margin and EBITDA, sweating older generation private cloud assets, remediating client risks, and leveraging public cloud service offerings for new business
Global Head of Technology
Computershare Limited
Bristol, UK
11.2013 - 08.2015
- Coordinated third-party vendors and internal IT teams to seamlessly deliver effective technology solutions as the group grew its global business 400%, returning to the UK after long-term assignment in USA and maintaining dual role of Chief Infrastructure Architect.
- Developed and implemented a cloud-first, global technology strategy and roadmap, retiring 23 owned data centres, and enhancing outcomes for 15,000 employees across 120+ group businesses in 21 countries
- Translated cloud-first technology strategy into robust, executable plans to increase speed to market, and reduce total cost of ownership for IT by 25%
- Stood up an enterprise architecture function, chairing a global technology council to improve governance and assurance, and ensure transparent decision making
- Empowered the business through 100+ innovative technology and infrastructure projects around the world that improved speed to market, reduced operating cost and complexity, and removed technology obsolescence and technical debt
- Briefed Board level executives on technology risks and suggested ways to alleviate concerns
Regional VP of IT, North America
Computershare Limited
Boston, USA
02.2005 - 10.2013
- Promoted to Regional VP of IT for North America, relocating to Boston, USA on long term assignment to restructure and consolidate IT operations across Canada/USA.
- Owned a £58M budget and all 3rd party vendor and supplier relations, adopting emergent technologies and practices to increase competitive advantage and reduce the cost to serve
- Overhauled the IT function, new global operating model, rationalised the team from 200+ to ~120 existing and acquired technology staff, fostering a culture of empowerment and meritocracy
- Delivered $150M worth of synergies from 10 complex M&A technology integrations, encompassing 9,000 staff, TUPE and TSA across USA, Canada, UK, South Africa and Germany, as the group grew its global business, and it's North American share of the stock transfer market from 5% to 70%
- Delivered plan-build-run for 23 data centres in nine countries, 800 line of business applications, 9K servers and 14.5K databases
- Transitioned 10K desktops to improve workforce mobility and collaborated on the creation of a global cyber-security strategy
- Built a 700+ agent global call centre with follow the sun operations
- Radically improved global network stability and consistency for critical applications, refreshing the legacy LAN and outsourcing the global WAN to AT&T for 90+ data centre and office locations
- Ensured sound risk management and adherence to UK and US security frameworks including NIST, CIS, PCI, ISO27001, SEC 17a-4, SAS-70, SSAE-16/18, SOC2 Type II and HIPAA UK
Regional Head of Infrastructure & Operations, EMEA
Computershare Limited
Bristol, UK
09.2000 - 01.2005
- Nurtured a 45 member infrastructure, operations, project and procurement team across seven offices in UK, Europe, South African and Hong Kong
- Led the plan-build-run of all regional data centres, IT infrastructure and associated operations
- Managed a $3.5M budget and supported entry into the US market, building two US data centres and transitioning the $85M acquisition onto corporate platforms
- Scheduled upgrades and configuration of mainframe, mid-range and x86 platforms to align management information systems
- Implemented IT support procedures and techniques to achieve maximum quality and continuous service improvement
- Conducted $1.4M technology refresh project, delivering a 350% increase in processing, cutting total cost of ownership by 16%
- Increased processing capacity 350% whilst reducing total cost of ownership by 16%, reduced live processing and reconciliation times by 16%, backup & recovery times by 30% and maintenance costs by 60% in addition to delivering disaster tolerant platforms
- Settled 16.5 million UK Crest share transactions per year with an average daily transaction value of £250 billion
Additional Experience
Various
06.1985 - 08.2000
- Head of IT, APAK Systems Ltd., Bristol, Jun 1997-Aug 2000
- Head of IT, EDS Ltd, Mitcheldean, May 1995-Jun 1997
- Head of IT, Banca Di Roma, London, Apr 1993-May 1995
- Technical Consultant (contract), GCS Ltd, Bracknell, Oct 1992-Apr 1993
- IT Manager (contract), Taylor Maxwell, Bristol, Oct 1991-Sep 1992
- Systems Manager (contract), Euroserve, Bristol, Jun 1990-Sep 1991
- Systems Manager, DRG Plc, Bristol, Jun 1985 to Aug 1989
Education
Diploma - Information Technology
Soundwell Technical College
Bristol 09.1984 - 06.1985
City & Guilds - Motor Vehicle Craft Studies
Soundwell Technical College
Bristol 09.1983 - 06.1984
8 O Level & CSE - Maths, English, Physics, Biology, Geography, History, Woodwork, Metalwork
Chase School for Boys
Bristol 09.1978 - 06.1983
Skills
- Enterprise Strategic Planning
- Business & IT Transformation
- Budgets $130M P&L £35M
- Team Leadership (200)
- M&A Integration TUPE TSA
- CRM ERP Platforms
- Stakeholder Relations
- Vendor Supplier Management
- Cyber-Security Cyber Essentials Plus
- FCA GDPR SEC SOX Compliance
- IT Architecture Design
- Cloud SaaS Solutions
- Data Centre Builds Rationalisation
- Infrastructure Plan Build Run
- IT Operations Support ITIL
- Business Continuity
- Disaster Recovery
- Product Strategy
- Solutions Design
- Software Engineering DevOps
- Risk Management
- Agile Waterfall Methodologies
- Six Sigma Lean Principles
- TOGAF NIST PCI JSP604
- UK SC & NATO SC Cleared
Timeline
Head of Enterprise Architecture
The Openwork Partnership
06.2022 - Current
IT Operations Director (contract)
University of Bristol
07.2021 - 05.2022
Chief Architect (contract)
MASS Ltd
01.2021 - 06.2021
Bereavement Break
N/A
07.2020 - 12.2020
Programme Director (contract)
McDonalds Restaurants
01.2020 - 06.2020
Programme Director (contract)
Mastercard
01.2018 - 12.2019
Chief Technology Officer (contract)
Oxford Brookes University
05.2017 - 01.2018
Managed Services Director (contract)
Logicalis
08.2015 - 04.2017
Global Head of Technology
Computershare Limited
11.2013 - 08.2015
Regional VP of IT, North America
Computershare Limited
02.2005 - 10.2013
Regional Head of Infrastructure & Operations, EMEA
Computershare Limited
09.2000 - 01.2005
Additional Experience
Various
06.1985 - 08.2000
Diploma - Information Technology
Soundwell Technical College
09.1984 - 06.1985
City & Guilds - Motor Vehicle Craft Studies
Soundwell Technical College
09.1983 - 06.1984
8 O Level & CSE - Maths, English, Physics, Biology, Geography, History, Woodwork, Metalwork
Chase School for Boys
09.1978 - 06.1983
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