Danny Barnett's Web Site

I lead a team of business analysts, user experience designers and testers who are responsible for requirements and customer interface on www.ibm.com/software.
We are responsible for enhancing and maintaining the IBM Software Group’s web marketing for products, solutions, services and driving revenue opportunities; the web site generates 25% of Software Group’s annual lead revenue and receives over 100 million visitors per year.

Achievements: During my time in this role, I have:

• Implemented a programme of improvements using Web 2.0 technologies (XML, syndication, social media marketing, jQuery, community spaces using Lotus Connections) across the software site. Worked with other brands in IBM to share best practices and resources.
• Defined the annual budget of $5m, business case and programme of activities to enhance the Software Group web site over the past three years.
• Led the business analysis effort to deploy IBM Software Group’s web site and supporting maintenance tools in 60 countries and 20 languages across the world.
• Proposed a solution for enhancing the online commerce experience for a new volume licensing program by introducing an online version of the marketing catalogue. I created the proposal, carried out technical feasibility studies, obtained business sponsorship for its content and acted as advocate for its implementation in support of a $70 million business.
• Deployed an e-learning solution for IBM’s business partners using IBM/Lotus Learning Space. This was an opportunity to show the product in action prior to general release and I worked closely with the product development team to incorporate feedback from the pilot.

Lotus had been acquired by IBM in 1995 but until 2001 operated pretty much autonomously. I was originally hired to manage the development of application systems used by the Customer Support department. However, my role quickly expanded and eventually encompassed all the business areas of the Europe, Middle East and Africa operations of Lotus. Reporting to the IT Director, I managed an applications development team of 70 based in Dublin, London, Paris and Munich looking after the entire business cycle: product development, marketing, sales, order management, manufacturing, finance, customer support and HR.

Achievements: I accomplished the following:

• Managed the transition to the euro for all of IBM Software’s systems worldwide. We managed this disruptive transition at significantly less cost to Software Group than other IBM divisions.
• Responsible for the applications integration of Lotus Development EMEA into IBM in 2001, saving Lotus EMEA roughly $5m annually. Despite this being a period of some upheaval and uncertainty for my team, we achieved this with zero attrition.
• Year 2000 project manager for Lotus EMEA encompassing business contingency as well as IT operations. As a result of my leadership in this area, I was honoured to receive the Lotus EMEA President’s Award in March 2000.
• I redesigned and directed the redevelopment of Lotus EMEA’s financial data warehouse. The resulting system was so successful that we deployed it in Australia, Singapore and Japan and eventually to the wider IBM EMEA community.

I had responsibility for a team of application programmers based in France and Britain developing applications running on the PC platform, written in either Visual Basic or Holos. These included Decision Support Systems, the Executive Information System and various statistical modelling applications. All our applications were entirely bilingual.

Achievements: Highlights of my career at Eurotunnel:

• Creation of Eurotunnel’s Executive Information System, covering all areas of operational and financial reporting. The system was written in Holos, reporting from a series of Oracle databases. I was also responsible for the routines that populated the underlying databases as well as the reporting applications themselves.
• A number of decision support systems supporting detailed technical models in timetabling, capacity planning, treasury management (managing assets of £2 billion) and electricity consumption (this last model saved Eurotunnel £5 million in annual energy expenditure).
• Definition of quality control processes and programming standards that we shared with and were adopted by many companies outside Eurotunnel.

Chairman, Holos User Group: I was a founding committee member from 1991 and served as its chairman from 1992 - 1993.

Part time Urdu teacher, London Borough of Croydon: I was employed as a part time teacher at Adult Education evening classes between 1990 and 1992.