Looking backwards and forwards

So February 2023 is here, and that date has been in my diary for many years.

Ever since my father died aged 59 in 1990, I have sworn that I would retire at the earliest opportunity, and now that time has come.

Looking back over the last 34 years, it seems strange for a lad who grew up in a post-war, timber, pre-fab house and went to one of the worst-performing secondary schools in Scotland (6th from bottom last year), to be considering the highs and lows of that career.

I was the first person in my immediate family to go to university and it has to be said in retrospect, that I was a long way away from being ready for that at the time. Over the intervening years, I have come to conclude that schools with low attainment levels need more support to help their students transition into higher education. We need to give more kids the knowledge and role models to enable them to see the potential futures for them, and seize those opportunities. This is something I hope to become more involved with over the next few years.

As a result, I wasn't a great student, but when I left Edinburgh in 1989, I was determined to work hard and be as successful as I could be. My first stint as a programmer at the Scottish Office Computer Service (now part of the Scottish Government), was followed up by working for Conoco in Aberdeen, and it was there in 1991 that I discovered SAP, thanks mainly to Julie Cook . I'll always be thankful to Julie who, after 30 years, I still rank as one of the best managers I've ever worked for.

That SAP project was a blast. We implemented R/2 5.0B (at a time everyone said that you never implement a B version), we worked hard, with lots of all-nighters but we did eventually get that over the line at the beginning of 1993. It's also where I first met Steve Kingston , Dr Anthoula Madden , Ian Wright , Peter Lewyckyj , David Dutt , Chris Moore and Clare Campbell-Smith along with many other folk who kept cropping up over the years. The world of SAP is very incestuous.

After a brief stint supporting the Conoco system, I jumped ship to PriceWaterhouse to join a fledgling SAP practice run by richard jones . There, I got involved in various projects meeting along the way people such as Steve Holland , Jon Cassidy , Ian Kelsey , Jane Peock , and a very young Dan McNamara , Tim Kyle and Anthony Aughterson !

The PW UK SAP practice at the time I joined was only about 25 people and so it was a case of doing whatever needed done next. That practice grew rapidly in the late 90s due to the stewardship of David Duray and then John Blackburn .

I worked across many industries including a Media company, where we did the first UK implementation of SAP PS working for Colin Franklin and Wolfgang Marx and then at a multinational Consumer Goods Company which was the first Pan-European roll-out of R/3 implemented by PW, working with Alan Hirst, Pete Down , Jenny Kehoe and Gordon Ellen for Philip Marsden . It was from that project that I wrote one of PW's first R/3 global deployment methodologies in 1996.

After that I have to say I got into drugs. Specifically global roll-outs of R/3 for pharmaceutical companies (I've worked at six majors over the years, and several smaller LS companies). The first of these projects was working with Keith Blair and he gave me a single piece of advice at the end of a difficult engagement which I've relied on ever since. "The first five minutes with a client is when your role for that client is decided". It's less of a problem at the end of a career, but early on it was key to succeeding in the roles I took on from that point forward.

In the early 2000s I worked with David Ellis and Garth Impey to deliver SAP in a shared services environment at an industrial products company where I had the pleasure of having Ian Stuart as my right hand man. We got that project over the line through sheer determination.

At the end of 2002, PwC consulting, as it was by that time, was acquired by IBM. This was a difficult time as it wasn't sure what my role was going to be post-acquisition and I did have the opportunity to take a package. After a few discussions, I ended up working for John Blackburn as part of what was to become the SAP Tiger Team with Julien Mazaudier , Jean-Bernard Dumont and latterly Koushik Ray and Nick Dagg .

We did some great stuff in the Tiger Team, ably abetted by rolando neiger and people like Dr. Chris N?kkentved , Thomas Rosinski , Rudolf Niehus and the late John Leffler. We had some cracking sales as well as a few hospital passes from the Corporation - thankfully Robert Miller was always on hand to sort these out for me.

The Tiger Team did a lot to expand the use of nearshore and offshore resources in the IBM SAP practice as well as developing approaches to widen the sales footprint such as the Full Economy Model, which won a SAP Pinnacle award in 2005. It was a rubbish name, but it was a great door opener.

After eight years in the Tiger Team, I have to say I was quite burnt out. We had been going at 100 miles per hour for some years and for me I needed a new challenge. That is when I reconnected with Chris Moore in the Solutions Team at HCL AXON. It was smaller sales versus what I'd been doing at IBM, but we had some good wins along the way. I ended up spending a lot of time at one particular Pharma client where I worked closely with Jonathan Davis , Gurpreet Dulay , Guy Rideal , Chris Campton , Mark Gammons , Bill Noon and Antony Davies .

In 2016 after HCL downsized its SAP Practice, I worked briefly at KPMG with Cliff Fitzpatrick , Chris Lamy , Wei-Han Lim and Amanda Tyler ; and then Tenthpin (more drugs!) with Jürgen Bauer , Keith Moss , Michael Schmidt and Eckhard Draeger , before linking back up with the former HCL AXON team and former PwC colleagues at Keytree. It's here where I also met and worked with Joe Campbell on a couple of key opportunities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Keytree became part of Deloitte, allowing me to reconnect with former colleagues such as Conrad Troy , Ed Demirciler and Steve Hibberd , and it's here now where I have taken the decision to step back from the full-time world of consulting. 34 years in IT, 31.5 of those working on SAP projects and sales and just shy of 30 years in consulting organisations including 3 of the big 4.

There are so many other people whom I have met along the way (Linkedin has 800+ connections) and I'm sorry if I haven't called you out on the lists above, but that doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed working with you - I most certainly have.

So what does the future hold? I suspect I will still do the occasional bit of short-term consulting where someone values my thoughts on setting up their large-scale SAP project or how to run a global deployment, but I also hope to get involved in a local project to support disadvantaged kids get into STEM careers. I will of course spend as much time as I can wandering the Scottish hills on my bike and taking lots of landscape photos ( https://www.eotphotography.co.uk/ ).

But most of all I'm looking forward to spending a lot more time with Claire.