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Little Cottage Consultancy Ltd

Principal/Owner: Ali Gooding

  
contact details:
  Little Cottage Consultancy Ltd
15 Guillods
Graffham
Petworth
West Sussex   GU28 0NR
tel: 01798 867 176
fax: 01798 867 176
mobile: 07785 761 762
email: ali@littlecottage.net
website: www.littlecottage.net

 

Core Experience:
Project Management. Re-branding - business identity management processes. Business Strategy - Mission and Vision setting. Team building - motivation. Information management Communication strategy - internal and external. Customer service development - helpdesk, global support. Troubleshooter for software development, including rescue packages. International, inter-cultural relationships. Communications
and Marketing for NHS

Industry Sectors:
Global Non-profit organisations (Charities/Charity) Engineering (Railways and recruitment) Equine and Agricultural Holistic Health. NHS

Background:
Plan (IH) - IS&T Support Manager
Plan is a global child focused development organization that works in over 40 countries, with 15 donor countries. It is a decentralized company where communication and negotiation skills are considered invaluable to reach decisions that affect people of all nationalities and cultures. I worked in the administrative head-office and traveled extensively to many countries Plan works in gaining knowledge about the restrictions people have to work within to bring measurable changes to children's lives in the poorest of countries. During this role I was brought in to rescue a failing IT Helpdesk and define a Global Support Strategy. The role included building and managing a team providing both project and production support of IT and business related systems. Previously in the organization there was no IT project management resource and hence projects were managed in an adhoc way and generally failed to meet users' expectations. I implemented a flexible project management process that all corporate projects within Plan follow, and allowed the team of project co-ordinators to be able to consistently define and control large projects.
Main responsibilities included:
Implementing a support strategy that allowed offices placed around the world to have consistently high levels of support over a number of applications and infrastructure models.
Build a local and global network of technicians and facilitate knowledge sharing around the whole organization (over 60 countries)
Manage project co-ordinators working with third party suppliers and expert leads in both infrastructure and application development · Act as project management 'trouble shooter' and 'consultant' to projects that were either being set up or with delivery problems, this role was in both IT and non-IT related projects.
Managing the definition and implementation of IT management processes working within both ITIL and ISO guidelines.

  Plan (IH) - Project (ChildLink) Support Specialist
Working again at Plan's head-office I was brought in to support and then lead areas of a large software program development (development and implementation lasted over 5 years with a budget of over $17.1 million). My role changed over the three years from a co-ordination role to overseeing and being responsible for the implementation of the system to all Plan offices. This role required high levels of multi-tasking and communication to ensure that the tight deadlines set by the International Board were met within budget. This multi-layered role allowed me to gain the knowledge of many different project management styles which I used in my next role.
Main responsibilities included:
Managing the development of all the training materials, user manuals and technical documentation production including the translation into French and Spanish.
Developing the training of all end users and being a key member of the training team delivering this training around the world.
Managing the project to introduce the collection, transmission and production of digital images for over 1 million sponsored children.
Responsible for the business ownership of several modules that are now being used in the 'field' and their support and further development.
Manage the user acceptance testing of all new modules once they have been delivered by the software developers.
Business analyst role during the requirement gathering and development phases of new modules. · Key liaison point during development with software developers and other contractors.
Jointly responsible for a budget in excess of £1 million pounds per year.
Working for Adtranz on a long-term project for the resignalling of the main line railway from Surbiton to Woking as project co-ordinator/progress chaser.

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