Live Services Director
Responsible for Sage’s European online product portfolio, the on-boarding of domestic products and the successful delivery of Sage’s Vision through a diverse DevOps team
Building on the Live Services Manager role, my portfolio has expanded to include 65 customer facing services. My role divides into distinct key areas:
People: I lead a team of DevOps specialists who are dedicated to providing the best customer experience possible through innovation and continuous improvement. We invest in their future by investing in their development, which in turn, provides myriad benefits to Sage and our customers.
Partnerships: I am responsible for the key partnerships such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and LinkByNet (France). I drive the contract negotiations to provide the best deal for Sage and am fortunate to enjoy outstanding working relationships with each business.
Technology: My team collaboratively build the solution design for our online products and using modern techniques (Infrastructure as Code and Continuous Deployment pipelines), implement those designs. Once live, we monitor the service 24x7 through automation and Customer Service escalations. We have a continuous improvement backlog for each service to drive improvements for our customers
Processes: I run Change Management and Incident Management processes for all services. I have a strong interest in streamlining these processes as we take full advantage of Continuous Deployment approaches and self-healing services.
Strategy: I, like everyone at Sage, have a personal responsibility to deliver the Vision. I sit on the strategic boards for the products and in-country leadership teams to influence the direction of the services.
Finance: I am responsible for preparing and managing the £25m Live Services budget. I perform this on behalf of the entire Live Services organisation due to my deep understanding of budgeting IT & hosting spend.
Compliance: Part of my role is working with our internal and external auditors on a programme of audits. Adhering to our policies is key to minimising the operational risk, so most recently, I have been working on an Incident Management audit and security controls audit. In addition, we are working to become ISO27001 accredited on key services in addition to GDPR compliant on all services.
On-boarding: Sage has grown through acquisition and maintained a decentralised model until relatively recently. This has included a large number of services that are run by domestic IT teams with little or no process embedded. My accountability is the migration of these services into my area, assessing them for quality, migration of personnel, and embedding our processes. The goal is to provide the best possible experience for our customers.