Our Consultants
Andrew Smith
Andy was IT Manager for NatWest Group Vehicle Services from its inception in 1992 through until 2000 when he managed the IT integration during the merger with British Car Contracts to form Lombard Vehicle Management Services. He managed the implementation of the systems developed to support his IT strategy; systems included an online vehicle ordering and disposal product for Lombard.
Since then, Andy’s held a number of IT management positions with US-based Capital One Bank at their UK headquarters in Nottingham. He implemented Capital One’s instalment-lending platform and established a resource planning department within IT and selected and managed off- and on-shore IT resource suppliers.
Robert Ashley
Robert was in the Royal Navy Sonar Operations Team from 1973 until 1979. He then worked for the National Freight Consortium for four years before joining Royal Mail where he managed air, road and rail network operations in the East Midlands and local and national logistical arrangements for the Birmingham area. He then became Regional Distribution Manager, covering three Regional Distribution Centres in the Midlands, and successfully merged three centres into one, delivering significant cost savings and efficiency targets.
He then moved to the role of Head of Customer Operations for the Royal Mail, managing relationships with large spend customers and delivering a £2m revenue recovery in his first year in post.
Michael George
Michael was IT Operations Manager for the NEC Group in Birmingham for five years where he was responsible for the technical development and service delivery of support and infrastructure management functions. He successfully led staff through significant operational and cultural change and transformed the IT services business unit from a significant loss p.a. to profitability within 18 months.
In 2005, he took up the position of Head of IT at Computeach International where he designed and implemented a business aligned IT strategy and transformation plan. He successfully re-engineered legacy business processes and replaced bespoke solutions and paper based sales, customer service and administrative processes with document management and MS SharePoint based workflow solutions, fully integrated into MS Dynamics CRM. Michael improved performance reducing IT costs by 20%.
Michael was interim Deputy Director of IT for ESSA between 2008 and early 2010 where he led the service delivery and operational transformation of IT services within one of the largest public sector IT shared services agencies in the UK. He reviewed existing service delivery operations and created and implemented turnaround plan that delivered cost reduction of £0.6m against baseline costs of £5.9m. Michael successfully restructured management and operations teams, simplified reporting lines; reduced layers of management; created leaner, collaborative and flexible working practices.
Since joining Blueline, Michael has led the design and implementation of a service delivery model and associated service management processes for a managed services provider. The successful delivery of this project ensured the end client approval and negated the imminent imposition of substantial penalties for non-performance for our client
Kaye Burnett
Kaye has over 20 years experience providing communications and change management solutions through senior in-house and consultancy roles. An internal and external communications specialist, she has worked with a range of clients in the public, private sectors and not for profit sectors. In a previous role as director of Communications and Public Relations for a large police force, she showed she is not afraid of a challenge. Prior to this she was head of Media and Communications for a large acute hospital. She has designed and managed major change programmes, with diverse clients including NHS Trusts, County Councils, national charities, and international companies.
She operated at a national level advising on policy development. She has also undertakening a number of international assignments supporting major change programmes within large complex organisations in central Europe and Asia.
Kaye is a non executive director of East Midlands Strategic Health Authority and has a masters degree in Human Resources Development. She also lectures in Strategic Communications at Sheffield Hallam University.
Philip Ward
Phil joined Accenture in 1996 as part of a client outsource of activities and was responsible for Accenture Units at Bedford , Dublin & Kettering providing clients with outsourced finance, accounting & administration services to 2003. He then became Vice President Operations– Strategic Delivery Centres for Accenture Finance Solutions.
He provided project leadership on several F & A shared service centre improvement projects and led the AFS Strategic Delivery Centres in Bangalore , Prague , Manila , Shanghai , Mauritius & Dalian.
Phil has held several Senior Finance Dept roles, including Director of Accounting & Control for Exel UK and FD of Exel’s Temperature Controlled Services business.
His skills and experience cover:
- Financial planning and business analysis
- Finance systems and business process design and implementation
- Shared service centre design, implementation & operation
- Management of large complex finance & accounting shared service centres
- Design and implementation of service management processes
- Project Leadership
Carole Appleby
Carole Appleby is an accredited coach and communications specialist with over 13 years experience in change management, employee communications, reputation management and coaching and development
Having held a number of senior in-house positions during her 29 years in the NHS, working for a variety of organisations, Carole’s wide experience includes developing and implementing communications strategies to achieve culture change and continuous improvement; corporate identity management and internal /external communications management in complex, multi-site public sector environments.
Carole was Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs for a national quasi-commercial environment where she was the strategic lead on all aspects of communications policy, strategy and implementation. This role involved marketing and the development of effective means of communicating with all stakeholders, including specialist media.
Steve Greenaway
Steve has over 25 years experience in information technology and has an proven track record of delivering scalable cost-effective solutions across various platforms to time, cost and quality, satisfying both customer requirements and any group strategies that may be in place.
He has worked closely with technical teams, directors, third-party suppliers and business users and as such has excellent communication and interpersonal and decision-making skills.
Steve is also a TOGAF 8 Certified Practitioner and an experienced technical architect with particular focus on:
- enterprise architecture and solutions
- web technologies and architectures
- design of tTechnical infrastructures and application architectures
- portal design and implementation
- intranet and internet infrastructure and solution design
- evaluation of infrastructure and capability
Andrew Dominic
Andrew joined Blueline after 20 years with CNN/Experian where he progressed from Analyst Programmer to Technical Team Lead for web technologies in Business Services.
During his time with Experian, he worked on many successful software development projects and has been developing web solutions for over 11 years. Andrew has experience of an impressive range of technologies and markets
Andrew is Blueline’s Senior Web Developer and enjoys going to work for the challenge of producing good quality software and learning something new.
Patrick Stapleton
Patrick has occupied many senior IT roles in the healthcare arena and has extensive knowledge of customer centricity and process improvement, particularly in the financial services sector and in HR and payroll systems.
During his career with US-based Capital One Bank’s UK headquarters in Nottingham, Patrick was Capacity Planning Manager (where he planned, executed and delivered a service delivery framework for the entire organisation) and Process Manager for IT Support (when he managed all the ITIL processes owned by systems support, developed service improvement plans and established the prioritisation and identification of problems to form part of a standard release programme).
Patrick then became the European IT Service Desk Manager for Capital One, where he restructured and improved the service desk function following a major IT reorganisation and moved quality and performance metrics from poor to excellent on all standard measures including a 95%+ customer satisfaction, month on month.
Patrick provides our consultancy around IT service management and ITIL adoption and optimization.
Ann Grimsley
Ann originally trained as a teacher and spent several years in colleges of further education as a lecturer in English, Communication Skills and Drama. For 20 years she has worked exclusively in the not-for-profit sector in a variety of roles : administrator, fundraiser, volunteer and adviser. Ann has a good understanding of the needs and challenges encountered by voluntary organisations. For the past 4 years she has been a trainer with a national charity where she developed and implemented training programmes.
Ann’s background is full of surprises. She has run her own business in holistic health and has also successfully fundraised and project managed a nation-wide UK tour by a Native Canadian environmentalist. She has planned and delivered her own workshops in personal development and co-ordinated similar workshop events for others. She is a published author of 3 books and has also written and copy edited in-house newsletters for several organisations. Ann is able to motivate, enthuse and inspire. Her particular interest is in developing programmes that fully engage the individual and connect with their deepest values, so that they may realise their full potential.
William Smith
Bill worked for Rolls-Royce in Derby for 35 years before taking retirement in 1995 to undertake consultancy work and extend his involvement with magisterial work.
Bill‘s work with Rolls-Royce was in the main personnel-related and included job evaluation and design, organisation design and industrial relations. He designed and oversaw the implementation of professional growth systems and designed incremental pay structures to replace outdated age-related scales.
He was also Personnel Consultant for Rolls-Royce International Support Services Ltd where he facilitated and organised a 15-month review of the administrative procedures used for employees deployed overseas or with subsidiary companies.
Bill was a magistrate from 1975 to 2006 and has served as Chairman of the Chairmanship Appraisal Committee, Chairman of the Bench Training and Development Committee, and as a member of the Derby and South Derbyshire Advisory Committee that selects individuals for the Lord Chancellor to appoint as new magistrates. Bill personally devised and introduced the standardised questions and pattern technique now used at initial interview.