Lucas Gundry

Successful Growth wins have enabled us to invest significantly into the Technology function, tripling the size of the team to 35+ people in six - twelve months.

• Technology department now consists of BE & FE Software Development, DevOps, IT Operations, Business Intelligence and Product functions under my strategic leadership
• Team has successfully delivered new products to market, such as our award winning Risk Management Tool
• This has led to > 20% top line growth year on year in new and existing revenue lines
• Bottom line growth is strong, creating a healthy cash surplus despite the high levels of tech investment
• Our technology positions us uniquely in the market as a provider of bespoke security technology and security services in one solution

After a programme of successful digital transformation, we could now target significant contracts that were previously out of reach. To achieve this:

• I designed technology first solutions for the biggest contracts on the market, showcasing our innovative approach and setting us apart from our competition
• We were successful in winning 2 of the largest Mobile Security estates in the country with a Risk prototype and our Smart Security Platform, resulting in 40% overall revenue growth within 3 years
• We also won and delivered a unique, once in a lifetime project to provide the technology for a service that required visiting 15,000 unique locations a day, 7 days a week across the UK
• Timescales for this project were challenging (six weeks from award to launch) but is a great example of my determination to deliver; our team were able to create a new iOS App, integrate a scheduling tool (Routific), create data pipelines for custom Analytics, achieve Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation all in time for project start
• After 6 weeks the contract was delivering >99% attendance rates on a daily basis

When I joined TKC, they were 6 months away from launch of a company wide new operating platform called Chase. My brief was to have a successful launch, then ensure Chase achieved its projected ROI. To achieve this I:

• Setup an in house IT Support function to provide a stable support service and remove day to day distractions
• Created an in house BI function to produce the reporting we needed to assess the effective of teams before and after using Chase
• Implemented a more progressive culture and methodology for our development team to align more closely with the Agile methodology
• This enabled us to deliver to a stable 3 week release cycle and begin a steady stream of data driven transformation projects
• The data and transformation projects enabled our CEO to complete a successful business restructure, that delivered exceptional company performance, most notably an increase of 600% to EBITDA and 10% increase on gross profit margin
• On the front line, we went from a maximum of 500 jobs per day to >1500 jobs per day with the same delivery capacity, all through appropriate automation work

• Created a business case which was approved by the Senior Management Team to setup a new Agile development team in the heart of London (new location)
• Responsible for all aspects of technical delivery of services from London, plus budgeting, presales, forecasting, forward load and resource planning
• Additionally I played a key role in winning new business for our London location, including solution design and presenting a solution to the decision makers at the client
• Played an active role as senior member of leadership team, directly contributing to key business decisions and overall strategy

• Promoted into a QA Manager position to create the test strategy for all aspects of quality across the company
• Grew the Test department from a team of 2 to a team of 4 and expanded upon my proof of concept in automated testing for it to be included in all new development projects
• This includes the selection of an AT tool, an appropriate framework and the hiring of a full time AT engineer
• Introduced a number of new tools and templates to create our test artifacts and worked closely with the sales team to create test estimates in a presales capacity
• Took on responsibility of our ISO9001 accreditation to review Quality more holistically across Software Solved

• I joined Software Solved as a Test Analyst, part of a small team manually testing new systems created by our Development team
• A notable achievement in this role was creating a proof of concept for automated testing that went into full use