Business Change and Communications Manager

A 6-month period focusing on personal objectives including community volunteering (animal welfare), and additional professional certification

Career Break

Personal goal pursuit

As a result of an acquisition, thousands of new products and nearly 1,000 employees across 21 countries were added to the client's portfolio. As member of the transition project team:
•Planned and executed external communications to approximately 6,000 vendors, 3,000 customers, and affected internal functions, ensuring a smooth transition to Cargill's systems and business processes. Worked closely with process leads, SMEs, senior stakeholders and other internal teams e.g., Marketing
•Communication points incorporated outcomes of process and change impact assessments as well as business discussions and decisions, e.g., new legal entities, trade flow changes, product code and brand name changes, transition of processes and data, transition blackout period and resulting impacts on order and delivery timelines, and stabilization initiatives 
•Developed post go-live internal communications on behalf of senior leadership team during post go-live support

Major FMCG

Change Management Specialist: External Communication

Joining a project under immense pressure 3 months before go-live, led the OCM track for the deployment of SAP MDG across Europe and the UKI (circa 850 end users). Working closely with the client’s Project Managers, assessed current landscape of change management activities and identified the basic requirements and interventions feasible for go-live. Defined and executed communication and engagement plans, set up the change network (circa 70 Change Champions), and supported training efforts.

Retained by the client to remediate end user adoption issues post go-live. Over a period of 12 months the average workflow change request (CR) completion time for Finished Goods reduced from 96 days to 33.

Moved to OCM advisory role on an Agile project which aimed to improve the innovation process across Europe, UKI, Middle East, Asia and LATAM. Responsibilities included creation and alignment of the OCM approach with Agile methodology, definition of OCM strategy, approaches and plans (Stakeholder Management, Communication and Engagement, Change Network, Change Readiness, Organizational Readiness and Training). Coached and supported the business process leads in the execution of change activities.

Organizational Change Manager: Supply Chain Operations

Accountable for the programme level business engagement stream which included planning and management of the Change Network (including c290 Change Agents). Provided guidance to process owners on structured and effective stakeholder and colleague engagement. Defined approaches and monitored progress, highlighted issues and corrective actions.

In parallel, managed the planning and execution of Change Leadership activities for specific workstreams: Retail, Contract & Margin Management, Forecasting and Replenishment, and MDG.

Major Pharmaceutical

Organizational Change Lead: Retail, Supply Chain Operations

Led the programme business change and communication workstream.  
•At programme level, planned and managed the programme OCM activities across internal and vendor-led projects to ensure timely delivery, alignment and consistency in strategy and execution. Projects included CRM to Cloud for Customer (C4C) replacement, upgrade of the SAP estate from EHP0 to EHP8, upgrade of Enterprise Portal and four optimization projects to enhance the current system and business processes. Impacted 3.5k users 
•At project level, planned and executed all the business change and communication activities for the non-CRM projects

Utilities Client in Wales

Played a key role within the new Centre of Excellence to identify end user adoption issues carried over from the ERP implementation. Specific focus on the Procure to Pay process (SAP Ariba) process integration, data and business process roles and responsibilities, and user knowledge issues. Defined and executed change interventions e.g., workshops with key business stakeholders, engagement forums, re-launch of the super user network, targeted end user and supplier/customer communications.

Major Airport Group

SAP Centre of Excellence Change and Communications lead (interim)

Delivered business change activities during an SAP implementation at Exertis, a technology distribution company. Led change and communication activities for the roll-out in Supply Chain Operations (EWM, Transportation Management), and Finance (R2R, AP, AR).

Worked closely with the Supply Chain Operations Director and General Warehouse Manager to plan and deliver business and people change initiatives. In addition, identified and delivered additional requirements to de-risk go-live e.g.,
•Taking a holistic approach to impact of changes across SAP, Reflex automation and NDC move (separate projects), assessed, and highlighted key risks due to open change requests or incomplete integrated business processes, and facilitated the bi-weekly rundown-list discussions with senior stakeholders
•Developed the communications approach for the move to the NDC and provided the key communication messages to the business and Super Users to ensure alignment of all communication to the Supply Chain Operations teams

European Technology Distribution Company

Change and Communication Manager: Supply Chain Operations and Finance

Part of a team of 3 Change Managers, managed the business readiness and deployment of a multi-million SAP EAM, SAP IM, SAP Work Manager and Click solution, which impacted c2.5k end users and c220 roles. Project provided field staff with the ability to receive and create work via mobile phones, enabled work prioritisation through automated scheduling and defined scheduling exceptions in business processes for intervention by the newly created Scheduling team. Responsibilities at United Utilities included all aspects of business change / readiness for the northern Water and Wastewater treatment plants.

Major Utilities client

Business Change and Deployment Manager

Leading a portfolio of three initiatives within the Digital Transformation programme responsibilities included all aspects of customer and business readiness throughout the project lifecycles.

UK Bank

Digital Transformation Customer and Business Readiness Manager

At the time Group Technology was a global function with 32.5k people operating across 106 locations. Leading a team of three based in Manchester and London, owned the planning and development of technology and people strategies for the company wide Group Technology function.
•Within an exceptionally short timeframe, developed the Group Technology Strategy which was approved by the Board and presented to the Federal Reserve Bank (USA)
•Created a new transformational Global Technology Infrastructure Services (GTIS) technology strategy to reflect the changing nature of customer requirements from Infrastructure Technology and defined the relevant GTIS level 2015 key performance indicators (balanced scorecard) to ensure the successful implementation strategy and underpin the new ways of working. Implemented the organisational structure to align to the new strategy. This included organisational design principles (including spans and layers changes, right shoring)

Major International Bank

VP - Group Technology Strategy Lead

Provided advisory services in Human Capital & Business Change Management practice.  
Subject matter expert for Stakeholder Management, Communications and End User Adoption

Global Management Consulting company

Manager - Human Capital & Change Management

Set up a new global Business Change Management Capability to support global and local projects ($180m portfolio) in 20 countries with the aim of increasing user adoption of newly developed technologies. 

Responsibilities and achievements include:
• Organisational design and capability development
• Development of a global change management framework 
• Provision of  full range of business change and communication services 
• Managed the Exploration Business BAU training for IT and non-IT

Global Oil and Gas company

E&P IT Head of Business Change

Business Partner to a new Head of Group Procurement.  Responsibility for planning and delivering both transformational and divisional communications during the Bank-wide strategic change in July 2012 that led to strategic and organisational changes in Group Procurement

Head of Internal Communications, Group Procurement

Interim contract for a global HR organisation with 1500+ headcount, head quarters in the UK, and markets mainly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  Created the Global HR communications strategy, defined internal and external messaging strategies (including contributions to Annual report), conducted FY11 planning

Interim Head of Internal Communications, Group HR

At the time, the Emerging Markets division was a $6BN business with 2,000+ headcount, headquarters located in the UK and sales operations in Africa and the Levant, South America and the Middle East.  Responsibilities and achievements include:

• Development of Emerging Markets internal- and external communications strategic initiatives and performance measures
• Organisational design and resource planning for Emerging Africa
• Creation of a global sales force learning and development strategy for Emerging Africa sales force (account managers, executives and partner organisations)

International Telecommunications company

Senior Manager

Various positions and roles in South Africa and United Kingdom

Chantell Coetzee