Bensons for Beds

Responsible for the  end-to-end digital business at Bensons for Beds including platform development, UX, digital trading, digital marketing, CRM and social. 

Assumed responsibility for the channel mid-way through FY22 where I led the following activity / improvement:

Revenue growth of 35% vs. Pre-Covid in FY22 and in FY23 grew the digital business +22% LFL

Increased channel participation by 5%

Define and agreed the future digital and omni-channel strategy with the Executive Board, securing funding to invest in a new customer data platform and digital platform

Delivered the new customer data platform in less than 12 weeks which included the migration and deployment of new customer comms plan and data acquisition. As a result our marketable database is now 350k and growing vs. 35k in Mar 2021 and our % of revenue for email has grown 5.5ppts. This is now branded as Bensons Bedheads and gives us a vehicle to communicate to our customers.

Procured and selected a digital agency to partner on the re-platform of the bensonsforbeds.co.uk

Championed and rolled out Bensons Live which in a 12 month period now delivers a 7 figure revenue stream with a customer satisfaction score of 4.7/5.

Key member of the evesleep acquisition:
- From notification to mobilisation we brought the site back online in 2 weeks
- Migrated the site to the group customer data platform in 3 weeks
- Delivered a positive EBITDA contribution for FY23

Director of Digital and Omni Channel

Sofology

Head Of Business Development

ao.com

In my role as Head of Delivery I am responsible for the delivery of projects across the AO Group. Managing a team of 26 (split between BA/PM) I have coverage across IT, Retail, Logistics and Recycling.  

My main responsibilities:
- Developing and executing the Group Delivery Plan
- Communicating with key senior stakeholders including CEO/CFO
- Striving to improve the team and the operational project/delivery process
- Supporting my team in becoming autonomous and in charge of there own destiny. 

Highlights from the last 12 months include:
- Launching 9 new categories across both the UK, German and Dutch divisions
- Formalising and launching our AO Business proposition
- Supporting the fit-out of our new Manchester HQ from an IT perspective
- Migrating our E-Commerce platform to the cloud
- Improving the process efficiency within our main distribution centre and recycling plant
- Launching on Amazon market place in both UK and Germany

In addition to my involvement with projects I have been an active member of the IT Senior team, and AO Management team. I report directly into the Group IT Director.

Head of Planning and Delivery

A brief summary of my responsibilities is as follows:

- Responsible for a team of 7 Business Analysts within the Strategic Delivery Department.
- Work on "ahead of the curve" projects where shaping and scoping activities are required.
- A member of the Delivery Senior team who help define and drive the department forward.
- Work with other departments to foster best practice and improve ways of working.
 
During my time at AO World I have also taken on the responsibility of forming a Language Service Team with the goal of centralising translation across the group. This involved establishing a service line from scratch, introducing a CAT tool and introducing the relevant process into the business.

Some key projects I have been involved in include:

- Managing a delivery team for our Germany rollout
- Working on the introduction of AV and SDA as new categories
- Leading the migration of our email platform
- Leading the migration to our new UK finance system
- Introducing premium services to AO

I have also spoken recently at a Agile Manchester on managing change.

Senior Business Analyst

Betfred

Working on multiple projects to enhance the Betfred mobile gaming product offering. Responsible for:

- Gathering requirements
- Senior stakeholder management

Business Analyst (Contract)

Big Group

Working as a Business Analyst on a rewrite of MasterCards Priceless Cities platform 

- Requirements gathering
- Agile
- User story definition
- Worked with US development team

Betfair

Business Analyst and Product Owner for the award winning iPhone native application. Awards include:

Mobile Entertainment Awards 2011:
Best Gambling company of the year (winner)

EGR Awards 2011:
Mobile Operator of the year (winner)

Sunday Times (22 January 2012)
Recommended iPhone apps

ICE Totally Gaming awards 2012:
Best Mobile Gaming Product of the Year (winner)

Delivery achieved through SCRUM framework with involvement throughout the lifecycle from ideation to roll out.

Successfully delivered 3 major updates (R1: Updated IA including carousel navigation and focus on in-play events. R2: Updated brand to align with other channels. R3: Introduction of cash out) in last 6 months each having a significant impact on the usage patterns of our users and subsequently revenue.

Day-to-day responsible for defining user stories and related artefacts through engaging with various internal stakeholders including senior management.

On-going responsibility for managing and prioritising the product backlog ensuring alignment with other product channels. 

Support daily stand-ups, run sprint planning and retrospective sessions fortnightly and hold bi-weekly backlog grooming sessions to ensure that 6 weeks playable backlog is always in place.

Point of contact for in-house development team and work extremely closely with our internal UI/UX department to ensure that all assets are available on time.

Other responsibilities include managing the 3rd party development of existing iPad native application.

Business Analyst

Avanade

Business Analyst joined as a Consultant in the A&I team to work primarily on SharePoint 2007 and 2010 solutions.

Team member of the first SharePoint 2010 and FAST project undertaken within Avanade UK. 

Acted as Lead BA when rolling out a Knowledge Management System (KMS) as part of a global transformation project. 

Involved in internal process improvement within Avanade specifically being a beta-adopter on the Global Fuels project of the latest Avanade Delivery Model (ADM) template.

My current role involves working for a Global Fuels Company implementing a Knowledge Management Solution to underpins their project management process.

Consultant Business Analyst, A&I

Concentra Consulting

I have worked for Concentra since 2007. My original role at Concentra was combined BA and PM. Due to an organisational change at Concentra I moved into a role where I specialised in designing and running SharePoint projects. During my time working SharePoint I have led over 15 projects including designing the Intranet of Europes largest property management company and the Commonwealth Secretariat. In addition I have designed and led numerous SharePoint projects in both the public sector (particularly healthcare) and the private sector. My last project I achieved the highest ever CSAT score for a SharePoint project in Concentra's history. A recent development in my career has led to becoming more involved in designing custom applications. The most recent being a redesign of a charities database for monitoring and evaluation. This project was delivered 10k under budget and is on track to exceed my CSAT score within the IWS team

In addition to my work in both IWS and CDS, I have been a consistant high achiever consistantly achievinig high scores in the 6 monthly performance reviews.

Business Analyst / Solution Designer

Backbone IT Group

Employed as a business analyst / project manager for the software team.

Responsible for running projects with the Chinese development team.

Project manager / development co-ordinator

Driven, dedicated and always looking for opportunities to improve. Love a challenge and enjoy watching/helping teams mature and evolve!

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