Financial Services
In 2009, a friend and I had an idea. We thought people might want a hand understanding how all this new legislation from the Financial Conduct Authority was going to affect them. We read all the details, talked to lots of people, and got to know how firms in this sector needed to change the things they do, to keep the best interests of the sector and the customer at the heart of their business. As it turned out, it was the right thing for us to do. Lots of firms needed our help, its not the easiest of stuff to understand, and has a wide impact on the people in a firm, as well as what they do. So much so, that in the worst case, not complying can mean firms get hefty fines, and individuals with prison sentences. If you’d like to know more please contact me.
Retail, E-Commerce, Digital and Mobile
Also in 2009, I had a conversation with a friend, who was working with a large retailer. He, and they, were having no end of problems in getting their programmes of work to run smoothly and they were a bit hard-pressed to find good project and programme managers. Given that I seemed to be talking about the same issues they were facing, when asked what I thought might be wrong, I shouldn’t have been too surprised when invited the following week to help out. A short contract turned into 18 months and I quite enjoyed myself, and they had some new retail awards for the new services we’d launched.
Another retailer got wind of my achievements, seemed to like what I said and what I’d done before, and given they were planning similar activities, I applied what I’d learnt to the FMCG retail market. Made all the nicer by them being such a lovely organisation to work with.