Tell us a little about yourself and your new role.
My role at Cowry is Head of Delivery. This role has several different aspects. One part of the role will be to deal with project management and project delivery. This isn’t always straight forward as many aspects of a project can change during an implementation. Another part of my role will be managing our consultants and support team to deliver the projects and develop their skills in different areas of IT.
What were you doing before you joined Cowry Solutions?
Before joining Cowry Solutions, I was a Systems Project Manager for an educational organisation that had many different branches. There were 37 schools, two global educational charities, several teaching programs and, of course, the head office. The program I focused on had to deal with streamlining their internal financial processes and comprised of implementing a new expense and purchasing system as well as a finance system implementation for all the entities mentioned above. Before that I have worked as a project manager and consultant within ERP implementation with several different products and in different industries in both the UK and the Netherlands since 2000.
Why did you choose to join Cowry?
I like the idea of being part of an ambitious, fast growing company where I can use my knowledge of ERP projects to build a new approach to implementing ERP. Taking some of the hassle out of the implementation by offering packages instead of going through a completely bespoke project scope every single time.
What are you looking forward to?
Being part of a team with a focus of growing the business, coaching my colleagues as they grow into new roles in the delivery team and being responsible for the completion of implementations that are hopefully on time and budget. Also, I like the idea that I am not involved with the day-to-day consultancy and support, moving more into management as the company grows.
Tell us a little about what you like to do away from work.
To keep myself healthy I am running and do yoga exercises a couple of times a week.
The rest of my time away from work really depends on what season it is. During the autumn and winter months in a normal year you will find me on the hockey pitch coaching 6- and 7-year old’s how to play the game or watching my son play. Apart from hockey, I love reading books and am a volunteer at our local community library so I can pick out new donations the moment they come in. When the weather starts to warm, I like to go for long walks, taking a picnic with me, or get the canoe out on the Thames for a couple of hours on the water. I also love to go to one of the many outdoor theatre productions that used to be around Oxford during the summer months. I’m hopeful that some of those productions are going ahead this summer and we can enjoy both Oxfordshire and great theatre again.