Bruce Leigh

Strategic IT review setting out clear vision of IT development for the organisation; liaise with suppliers to ensure that changes are delivered cost efficiently and prioritised according to the needs of the organisation. Delivered a new support structure which benefitted all parties and increased flexibility allowing for further developments as outlined.

Information Security review to put in place necessary policies and conduct risk assessment for the organisation.

Key Achievements: • As Head of an IT system being used by London, New York and Guernsey, I identified that it would be necessary to use external “as a service” providers if we were going to provide the flexibility and cost efficiency that the business would demand. • As my infrastructure design was fully modular, I didn’t face any real architectural barriers, but I discovered that the service providers were more expensive than running things ourselves because what I had built was in fact a very efficient and flexible private cloud. • Carefully moved services to the cloud and once our requirements had shrunk to dispensed with running our private cloud and migrated what we still had to run into a private cloud from a service provider. • The directors asked me to participate in a project integrating my IT changes into the broader business change plan. • Re-architected the IT for our Guernsey office (which had always been treated separately) to be future ready, without disrupting any of their existing workflows. • Provided Guernsey with all needed facilities and mitigated major risks with their old software, whilst still allowed them to use it! • Worked extensively with the service provider in Guernsey to integrate the infrastructure with our services so that the new workflows and other business functionality was delivered. • Following a further strategic review in 2016 I determined that we should now move to a fully cloud infrastructure combined with outsourcing of the remaining IT support and management. • Managed outsourcing by identifying suppliers, analysing their offerings and eventually recommending the right company to support the organisation as I took a step back.

Key achievements: • Recruited a junior support person to allow me to fulfil my expanding role. • Worked with the New York office to setup the IT services they required and integrate them into the London (head office) services as those became capable. • Worked with other companies in the Hoegh group and supported the annual portfolio company leadership summits at venues across London which was run by the VC division in Hoegh Capital Partners. • In 2005 the company had a vision for the finance company in London to migrate to the same global IT infrastructure as the parent shipping company In Norway. I worked closely with the IT dept at the shipping company HQ in Oslo to conduct due diligence before the project was started. Discovering that some parts of the basic system would need to be changed for the business, but were absolutely fixed, was a complete roadblock. Fortunately, no real integration work had been started and neither business was left with any significant cost because of a failed project. • Following my identification of the problem the directors asked me to formulate an alternative approach which would fit our business. The result was a major project to create a new IT infrastructure for the business in London. This was fully delivered in 2007. • Delivered a new accounting system and managed the setup of a new London office within 2006. The new accounting system was delivered inline with the new infrastructure plan and worked seamlessly with the old and new. • Negotiated some special terms with the supplier as initially they weren’t prepared to let us operate it in this manner. The additional agreement negotiated allowed both parties to feel that they had a good deal and were protected from any risks and costs due to this setup. There was no additional cost because of this and neither party had any extra work to take on.