About me

I was employed by Littlewoods Shop Direct in Liverpool for 17 years,
all of this time was spent in mid-senior management positions.

I was first approached by Littlewoods Shop Direct in 1991 to join the
business as a pre-press consultant to create, develop and implement the
new electronic pre-press department for paper-based catalogue
production.

Whilst employed as the pre-press consultant I had to project manage and
deliver both hardware and software solutions to the business as well as
delivery of production strategies to include third party stakeholders
and internal trading departments.

During my two-year consultancy I was also involved in driving forward
the in-house business to include all Extra Catalogue Activity,
Leaflets, Brochures and POS for the High Street channels.

In 1993, I was approached by the business and offered the position
of Pre-Press Production Team Manager, the purpose of this position was
to be a specialist within the Pre-Press Production Team. This meant
maintaining a hands-on role as a Production Team Manager, whilst
liaising closely with internal trading departments on the critical line
to ensure delivery of catalogue assets to both the internal production
unit and external agencies.

The Production Team Manager had to take a proactive approach to enable
him to manage and develop relationships with stakeholders across the
internal chain, external agency stakeholders and other third parties,
whilst ensuring that best value and quality delivery of assets adhered
to the business' agreed Key Performance Indicators and Service
Level Agreements.

Whilst in this position, I also had to contribute at a high level to
future business strategy concerning workflow, production processes and
working with trading departments. These strategies had to straddle
pre-press requirements as well as delivery of the overall business
plan, whilst contributing to the ever changing and developing needs of
the business through liaison with design managers, systems managers and
trading managers.

During this time, I had to engage with European litho and gravure
printers in Germany, Spain and Italy. On numerous occasions I had to
fly out to approve on press, this was brought about by late changes to
the print run, normally price changes on the fifth black or to ensure
strict quality assurance to colour corrections had been achieved in
line with business expectations.

You had to have complete production awareness at all times of the
production process and communicating schedules and deadlines was
paramount to the successful delivery of the catalogue. Ensuring
accuracy and consistency of the offer was a critical part of the
production controllers responsibility, this meant maintaining a
constant overview of the copywriters, reading staff, production staff
and creative department whilst maintaining records for future training
purposes.

In 1998, I was approached by our Catalogue Production Director to
set-up and establish Littlewoods E-Commerce Department.

This meant taking up various roles within the business which included
Project Manager, Production Team Manager and Content Manager. I was
firstly challenged in setting up all Business Practices and Working
Procedures between 2nd and 3rd party stakeholders both internally and
externally, this meant getting involved with setting up the back end
and front end systems for the on-line business. This was a particular
challenge as we did not have the relevant skill set in-house at the
time. This meant many weeks and months in organising strategies and
planning the delivery of the internet sites whilst maintaining high
standards of delivery, this was measured against the Service Level
Agreements and Key Performance Indicators that the board
required.

Looking at strategies and policies from a lateral perspective were
paramount at this stage, as no other company the size of Littlewoods
had ever took on a development of this size and stature before, this
meant looking at the way we both shoot photography and refining the
design process for the paper based studio, this was a very challenging
time which required hard work and dedication.

During the last 10 years I have been responsible for the management of
all on-line production for all Littlewoods web-sites, together with
responsibility of looking at the development of systems and systems
support ensuring high quality delivery of the asset content, creative
solutions and documentation of production processes.

Obviously, with the business leaning more towards an e-tailing
platform, we had to look at the off-line principle production processes
as their process took too long to get to the on-line production
department, this meant addressing lean principles to ensure that the
production processes in place were relevant to what we were attempting
to achieve.

One example of introducing LEAN principles in the production process
came about when I was charged with looking at keeping the department
operating at optimum levels through driving efficiency improvements.
With having an off-line business as well as having an on-line business,
we used to produce all the selling information assets twice -
once in the off-line main frame and once in the on-line main frame.
This was obviously duplicating effort and after analyzing the
situation, I raise the issue with regard to a fix with our systems
department, we came up with a fix to the problem and implemented a main
frame change, this meant that both on-line and off-line departments
where operating on one single data base, thus reducing time, reducing
effort and more importantly saving money.

Part of my role was to look at improving procedures and I have touched
on that in the above paragraph. I was responsible for looking at and
reviewing both business and team KPI's and SLA's. Any
issues with KPI's and SLA's were obviously brought up
immediately, but were also reviewed at the twice yearly performance
review of personnel in the team.

As a qualified trainer for the business, I had to monitor and arrange
training requirements as and when I seen fit. This meant both keeping a
close eye on any changes in on-line and off-line operations, but also
monitoring performance through change programmes. This would
undoubtedly lean towards retraining our personnel to keep abreast with
the ever changing environment of the on-line world.

I had to deal with many departments in running the E-Commerce on-line
offer, this meant weekly and sometimes daily briefings with Buying
Departments, Trading, Warehousing, Shipping, Systems Development,
Systems Maintenance, On-line Marketing Managers, Off-line Production
Management and the On-line E-Commerce Team. This meant you had to have
the ability to build positive working relationships both internally and
with 3rd party stakeholders, whilst remaining professional and focussed
to the job in hand.

I am extremely commercially focussed and have a very keen eye for
detail. Working within a large company meant you had to have the
ability to communicate at all levels, both within the organisation and
with external suppliers.

Having been in the world of both off-line and on-line print management
for 30 years, I have clear and well developed skills in working as a
team member, but also being able to work on my own and deliver what is
required on a regular basis. In the 10 years that I was managing the
E-Commerce business for Littlewoods Shop Direct, we never went over
budget and we always delivered the web-site on time, this is an
achievement that I feel very proud of indeed and knowing that we
contributed over £650 million to the business per annum, meant
that we were delivering on all our KPI's and SLA's to the
business.