St Cloud technology services: Better by experience

We are an independent consultancy, working in primarily the financial services and Telco sectors for clients including FTSE 100 businesses and smaller household names. Since we founded the business in 2013, our work has been ‘client side’, helping them to deliver lasting change, driving benefits and outcomes in a way that works with their operational performance reality.

I graduated with an MSc in Business Systems Analysis and design from City University in 1996, and after a summer of thesis writing I joined the graduate IT consulting programme at Unisys.

The following 4 years took me around the world, to Australia and America from Norwich and the City of London, consulting mostly in the financial services sector. I then joined PA consulting’s IT strategy and then Systems Integration practice for a while before having a final pre-children adventure to Uganda, where I ran a small 32 person IT consultancy for a year. A huge but satisfying challenge.

I returned to the UK and joined Detica where I spent a happy and varied 8 years consulting in first the financial services and later the Telco and media sectors. During this time I started to become more business and less IT focused and my projects took on less of an IT orientation. My proudest moment (well, 4 years) from that time was being part of the effort that built the systems and processes to support the newly created Openreach organisation, following the break up of BT.

When BAE Systems bought Detica I moved to NTT Data’s Telco practice for the following 3 years, which took me to Colt for pretty much my entire NTT employment, where I held a number of different ‘client side’ strategy, operational readiness, programme mobilisation, and programme leadership roles over the 3 years, and learned to enjoy working into the CXO level.

I joined my co-founder at St Cloud at the start of 2015, and since, I have been fortunate to be running a very interesting digital transformation programme for a FTSE 100 insurer.

…. while each consultancy, client and engagement has been very different, I’d like to think one of the strengths I bring to all of them is an ability to work well across a variety of different cultures while still "getting the job done" in a way that leaves people feeling good about what we have achieved together and the journey we’ve taken to get there. 

I studied Design at college, leaving in 1992 to start as a designer. After a year I realised that the world of design was not for me and I started my career in the then rapidly growing cable TV fibre industry.

In 1994 I joined Videotron as a fibre planner, which later became NTL (now Vodafone/C&W) and in this high growth environment was quickly offered the opportunity to move into project management. Over the next 6 years, I progressed through the grades from junior to senior project manager of for the most part deeply technical projects, involving what was at the time cutting edge technology without proven implementation techniques.

I became a formally qualified PM and this provided me the platform to move into mainstream IT project management, and I moved to an International project management opportunity at Colt (early morning flights to Germany stick in my mind!)

The projects I was being asked to lead became bigger, and I started managing large and complex IT programmes and portfolios. I gained experience at building large and cross shore (India and Europe) programme delivery teams, and was able to build on each experience to make each programme I delivered more efficient. 

I spent a varied 12 years at Colt, in 5 different project and programme leadership roles, before a change in strategy lead me to look for an environment where there was a greater volume of complex change.

Consultancy seemed an obvious answer, and since founding St Cloud in 2012, I haven’t regretted the move, and have been fortunate to lead some really interesting and complex technology programmes, including the 4G (LTE) rollout and FTTH programme for Jersey Telecom, and a key workstream on a smart metering portfolio for a FTSE 100 utility provider.