Andrew Brown

Experience

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  Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd

  Jan 1990 - Nov 1996

  Senior System Analyst

  Having obtained a National Higher Diploma (T4, now referred to as BTech) in Electrical Engineering, Andrew commenced working for Eskom (South Africa’s Electricity Utility - Generation, Transmission and Distribution) Information Technology in 1990. He gained programming experience primarily in the Oracle development environment. Systems analysis was conducted according to SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology), making use of the EDM (Eskom Development Methodology) and IEW (Information Engineering Workshop). Oracle development was in a client-server environment, on OS/2, Netware and UNIX. In early client-server development Andrew performed all DBA functions as part of the development process.Later (1994-1995), Andrew gained extensive experience in the field of information architecture, data-analysis and relational database design in an integrated database environment. He completed a Diploma in Datametrics through UNISA in 1994.Andrew shifted focus towards IT management in November 1995 with the management of a mainframe and client-server software development and support team of +-20 people (employees and contractors). Show less

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  Old Mutual South Africa

  Dec 1996 - Sept 1997

  Professional Support Manager

  His experience was further enhanced after joining Old Mutual in a joint line manager and project manager role in December 1996. Here, Andrew successfully moulded into a team, a group of highly-skilled individuals of disparate technology backgrounds, covering numerous platforms. Once again, he was responsible for an end-to-end view of the software life-cycle of small- and medium-scale development projects.Project managed the development of a new Customer Servicing Workbench application used by all call center staff at Old Mutual. This C++ application was designed to host COM plugins for various Old Mutual products/applications. Show less

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  Training Connection

  Oct 1997 - Jun 1999

  Branch Manager

  An offer from a computer training company (Training Connection) in October 1997 provided Andrew with an opportunity to venture into another area of the IT industry where he was able to hone his overall commercial business acumen. Sound business sense, creative service offerings and a participative management style played a significant role in dramatically improving the turnover of the branch for which he was responsible.

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  CSC COMPUTER SCIENCES

  Jul 1999 - Jan 2008

  E-Technologies Manager

  In the knowledge that an outsourcing deal with CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) was imminent, Andrew re-joined Old Mutual’s central IT infrastructure division in July 1999. The outsourcing contract took effect from November 1999. Andrew successfully managed the Specialised Software Services team through transition, providing the basis of the new Application Services division of CSC SA. The section that Andrew managed was a multi-functional team of IT software development and support professionals responsible for bespoke application and integration software development and support across mainframe, UNIX and MS Windows platforms. His management responsibilities within the E-Technologies team were multi-disciplinary, including resource, finance, proposal formulation with new and existing clients, operations, workload management, process and business direction.From 2005 Andrew was also responsible for the creation of a Cognos Business Intelligence service capability. The Cognos team, under Andrew’s leadership, developed and supported various applications that were utilised across CSC’s EMEA geography by the Global Infrastructure Services (GIS) division for New Business Support.During his time with CSC, Andrew also jointly (with an external vendor) project managed the implementation of a new Payroll system for CSC South Africa.From July 2007 to January 2008, Andrew was the project manager for the implementation of two specialist application modules as part of a larger SAP Banking platform implementation for one of the “Big Four” banks in South Africa. This was the first implementation of SAP’s Banking platform in Africa. Apart from the complexity of the overall system environment, the CSC delivery that Andrew led involved a combination of foreign and local consultants, and CSC personnel and contractors. Show less

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  Itron, Inc.

  Feb 2008 - Apr 2016

  Andrew was invited to join Actaris (later bought out by Itron) as a Senior Software Development Project Manager in February 2008. He was tasked with creating a generic, configurable prepayment electricity system supporting meter management and vending for a broad cross-section of utility customers, with a multi-release delivery model. He succeeded in achieving the first customer production deployment within just 10 months followed by multiple customer production implementations within 18 months. The system continues to lead the prepayment market sector for electricity, gas and water. The team won the Itron Best Development Project Team Award in 2009. Andrew continued to manage the development of the application to include amongst other features and functionality, 2-way smart card prepayment for Gas and integration with SAP using multiple software development teams across Cape Town and the UK. Show less

  • Director of Professional Services

    May 2014 - Apr 2016

  • Delivery Portfolio Manager

    Sept 2011 - Apr 2014

  • Program Manager

    Jun 2010 - Aug 2011

  • Senior Software Development Project Manager

    Feb 2008 - May 2010
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  Ontec Systems (Pty) Ltd.

  May 2016 - Apr 2019

  Shared Services Manager

  In May 2016, local shareholders purchased Itron’s South African business, renaming the company to Ontec Systems. Andrew took up the position of Shared Services Manager for the new entity, playing a cohesive and constructive role in the organisational transition. His scope of accountability included IT, Application Support, PMO, Service Desk, Training Services, Contracts Review, Facilities Management and SHEQ (Safety, Health, Environment and Quality) portfolios. While in this role, he led the successful migration of Ontec’s hosted infrastructure and network environment to new service providers, adopting an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) hybrid cloud model. He was also the accountable senior manager in the organisation for the outsourcing of the systems implementation and support functions and team, as well as the outsourcing of the corporate IT function. Show less

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  IPay Services

  Jul 2020 - now

  General Manager