James Venn

Experience

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  Lab Lateral

  Jul 2007 - Aug 2008

  Computer Engineer

  Joining after finishing college as a working gap year, my role at Lab Lateral provided extensive first-hand technical experience with end-user support, server configuration and telecommunication maintenance. Working in a team of two people, I was the primary contact for Lab Lateral's SaaS clients, which included call-outs to client sites as well as support via remote technologies.Primary responsibilities included:- Provide 1st and 2 line technical support to multiple UK based clients- Configure, manage and support multiple bespoke telecommunication systems- Maintain on and off-site Windows/Unix file servers, Asterix and VoIP servers- Configure DNS records on Lab Lateral hosted DNS servers- Record client support calls, steps to resolve and communication on SalesForce for KPI reviews Show less

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  JCDecaux

  May 2011 - Dec 2014

  Following my employment at JCDecaux as an IT Support Analyst, it was identified that my demonstrated analytical skills and knowledge of the business would be ideal for an IT Business Analyst role. Within this role I worked on multiple projects, with notable examples including:UK Airports Migration - I worked as the Project Manager and Business Analyst on this project which involved migration of the JCDecaux UK Airports division from legacy IT systems onto the current generation of applications used within the business. Within this project I managed development resources to ensure migration of legacy data, identified, documented and tested the changes required to the existing suite of applications in addition to documenting as-is and to-be business process to ensure smooth integration.SmartScreen - The SmartScreen project included the introduction of new systems and hardware to facilitate a time and share based method of selling advertising space on digital panels. I worked closely with the project stakeholders as the lead BA through the project lifecycle to scope and capture requirements as well as managing design/development resources to create applications that analyse availability (including a dynamic pricing model), create bookings, and provide a client facing portal to view campaign statuses. In addition I worked with JCDecaux Corporate to implement a new suite of systems that provided content scheduling capabilities and managed BI resources to ensure reporting capabilities were robust for internal quality checks.Corporate CRM Rollout - This project involved the roll out of a multi-layered global CRM solution originating from the UK. Within this project I demonstrated the deployed UK solution to multiple countries (i.e France, Dubai, Iran, Norway) and worked with the lead BA from JCDecaux France to amalgamate the FR/UK solutions into a future proof CRM 2015 package. Show less Joining JCDecaux after finishing my degree at the University of Kent, this role used my skill set gained from Lab Lateral as well as knowledge gained during my degree to further compound the technical understanding I had whilst providing substantial communication experience through supporting a UK wide network of +500 people across multiple locations. During this time I worked with my 4 IT Service Desk colleagues to conduct a Windows XP to Windows 7 migration and a full office move for JCDecaux's UK sales headquarters.Primary responsibilities included:- Provide 1st and 2nd line support for office and mobile users via telephone and remote access methods- Provide direct support for VIP and board directors throughout the UK- Administer JCDecaux ShoreTel telecommunication systems- Manage nationwide Ricoh and HP printing systems- Administer infrastructure NT Backup for all JCDecaux servers and system enviroments- Build and provision laptops, desktop and mobile devices via SCCM Show less

  • IT Business Analyst

    Nov 2012 - Dec 2014

  • IT Support Analyst

    May 2011 - Nov 2012
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  GroupM

  Dec 2014 - Nov 2017

  Key Achievements:- Product Owner for GroupM UK’s cross-media trading solution; providing the capability to manage £1.3Bn revenue and increase trading efficiency through deal management functions, capturing forecasted client advertising expenditure, spend optimisation facilities and reporting features to over 200 users across multiple agencies and business domains. - Lead BA in delivering, through multiple major releases, digital media planning capabilities within an existing TV planning application in conjunction with refined business processes to support application embedment. - Delivered dashboard-reporting capabilities for programmatic media through consumption of data from multiple external sources.- Employing a ‘repurpose and reuse’ tactic through identification of multiple business workflows that could be systematised within SharePoint at low setup and maintenance cost to the business whilst providing increased accountability and cross-team efficiencies.Responsibilities:- Capture requirements and prioritising backlog work items from multiple business stakeholders across different agencies and business domains to facilitate continuing product development in alignment with business strategy.- Engage with and host SCRUM meetings including sprint planning sessions, daily stand-ups and backlog refinement sessions to ensure project sprints deliver consistent value and quality.- Continually optimise trading processes throughout product development by documenting as-is and to-be business workflows. - Host UAT and parallel run sessions, capture all business outputs and review with project stakeholders, where required conduct analysis and create items within TFS backlogs for sprint or patch delivery Show less Key Achievements:- Lead BA and Product Owner on launching GroupM Entertainments new global TV content investment analysis system with multiple post go-live iterations and detailed business process optimisations.- Relaunched through multiple agile sprints GroupM’s cross-agency competitive reporting tool, CoRe2, seeing a user uptake increase of 45%.- Lead BA in analysing and defining requirements for replacing GroupM’s Trading analysis suite and TV deal management systems.- Lead BA in upgrading and launching Mindshare UK’s first CRM solution (Microsoft Dynamics 2011 to 2013) in lieu of the agencies Huddle 2015 event.Responsibilities:- Primary contact for project stakeholders and general users to gather business requirements with their associated priority across GroupM’s agency portfolio.- Market GroupM systems (primarily GroupM Entertainments Content Investment Analysis system and CoRe2) to both WPP, GroupM and staff within GroupM’s agencies.- Analyse business requirements and document in user story format with accompanying acceptance criteria within Team Foundation Server (2013).- Create level 1-3 business process maps including system-intensive and human-intensive processes to support system rollout and facilitate change management.- Where required, document test cases for work items within project iterations through Microsoft Test Manager.- Oversee offshore/onshore development and testing resources through multiple deployment cycles of project iterations.- Organise and conduct UAT sessions for each project sprint for up to seven concurrent projects.- Work with GroupM and agency based Trading Heads to identify adjustments in business logic to future-proof upcoming development work on rewriting the Trading analysis solutions. Show less

  • Business Partnering Business Analyst

    Feb 2016 - Nov 2017

  • Business Analyst

    Dec 2014 - Feb 2016
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  Clarksons Platou

  Nov 2017 - Mar 2018

  Business Analyst

  Key Achievements:- Delivery of a legal compliance system that integrated with Microsoft Dynamics to identify countries, organizations, vessels and individuals identified as being associated to malicious actors (through private or governmental declared sanctions) to ensure business was not initiated with red or amber flagged CRM leads.

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  GroupM

  Apr 2018 - Feb 2022

  Key Achievements:- Implementation of a range of operational cost reduction initiatives, including product refactoring to reduce PaaS/SaaS charges, project and support lean-focused process change and embedment of automated test-case frameworks, reducing overall cross-product opex by 57%.- Conceptualized and delivered portfolio wide personnel and product KPI insight tools, consolidating cross-product reporting efforts and providing global and market C-levels with visibility on system uptake and effectiveness through tracking +7,200 users across 87 markets.- Delivery of a multi-market investment optimization solution to markets in LATAM, EMEA and APAC, providing business decision makers with oversight of $170bn of GroupM and competitor media spend per year through establishment of a ‘big data’ program of work with 3rd party data science vendors.- Creation of a standardized trading solution for markets with no/low-tech systems, including definition of standardized business engagement and delivery practices that enabled quick to market product delivery and reduced capex. Show less Key Achievements:- Established a standardized global support process utilizing local 1st line and centralized 2nd/3rd line teams across ServiceNow and Azure DevOps collaboration tools that scaled from 1 to 5 products and supported 800 active users, including defined incident/change request logging procedures and DevOps practices.- Delivery of a global compliance focused investment management system across multiple business units, enabling projection of ROI to justify business investment decisions and providing legally required traceability to finance teams.- Managed from concept-to-launch a multi-market investment reporting solution, providing local teams with competitive analysis capabilities and global teams with visibility of cross-market media buying behaviours, helping to define and drive investment strategies through oversight of $80bn spend per year. Included a standardized approach to market onboarding and BAU support model, a transparent data transformation process using ADF and data management dashboards, and delivery of 2 insight generating tools to local and global users. Show less

  • Program Manager

    Sept 2020 - Feb 2022

  • Global Apps - Product Manager

    Apr 2018 - Sept 2020
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  Standard Media Index

  Mar 2022 - Dec 2022

  Director of Product Management
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  Guideline

  Jan 2023 - now

  • Senior Director of Product Management

    Apr 2024 - now

  • Director of Product Management

    Jan 2023 - Apr 2024