Graham Conroy Harris

Experience

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  Royal Navy

  Jan 1978 - Sept 1984

  Seaman Officer

  I was an Executive officer in the Royal Navy, leaving as a full Lieutenant (equivalent to Captain in the Army). I was a Bridge Watchkeeping Officer and Divisional Officer (man manager) for the Strategic Communications branch, with responsibility for long-range (HF and satellite) radio communications, cryptography and intelligence gathering of the fleet flagship. I led the Ship's Diving team, responsible for operational diving capability for underwater maintenance and defence against underwater attack. After the Falklands war I had postings in Stanley, Falkland Islands as officer in charge of the (Mine) Clearance Diving Team and Assistant Queens Harbourmaster. Show less

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  SoftKlone

  Jan 1987 - Jan 1998

  Director

  SoftKlone UK was a software development and marketing company, developing and selling a range of applications- principally communications and hypertext software and client/server reporting.SoftKlone Development (US) was sued in the first case on software copyright on look and feel to make it to court. The judgement we achieved there set the scene for many developments since.

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  Equinus

  Jan 1998 - Jan 2001

  Partner

  Equinus is an IT consultancy servicing the Travel, Transport & Leisure business. I provided consultancy particularly around Internet and Call Centres.In one engagement, I used technology to enable a client to double turnover from their existing marketing spend. A year later, they asked me back to manage telephony aspects of their move into larger premises to to capitalise on that new business.

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  NCC Group

  Jan 2001 - Jan 2004

  Senior Consultant

  NCC (previously part of the National Computing Centre) is a large national Consultancy Service.I delivered IT Strategy and business change assignments (long and short) for a wide range of customers, both Public and Private sector. I specialised in applications of Telephony, IT infrastructure and Networks, and managed projects to procure strategic applications and large scale implementions.

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  Oxygen for Business

  May 2004 - Dec 2005

  Project Manager

  I was recruited from UK into Oxygen to support their thrust to win large IT infrastructure outsourcing work. Oxygen was then a division of Carter Holt Harvey, one of Australasia's largest enterprises. Within a few days of migrating to New Zealand, I was representing Oxygen in corporate clients. CHH sold Oxygen but retained me to lead their Project Management team.

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  Carter Holt Harvey (Rank Group)

  Jan 2006 - Aug 2009

  PMO Manager, Project Managers Team Leader

  One of Australasia's largest companies, CHH manufactures and sells a wide range of wood and paper/packaging products. I led the team of Project Managers who managed all IT projects in the organisation. I recruited and led a mixture of permanent and contract Project Managers, and mentored people working towards project management roles. CHH's owner Rank Group made me personally responsible for many international and Group-level projects, such as replacing phone systems and virtualising their corporate IT infrastructures across Australia and New Zealand. Rank Group bought CHH and gave us 3 months to split it into two separate divisions, anticipating a trade sale. I ran the project to reverse the many years of determined integration of IT infrastructures and systems across the group. The innovative technical approach was developed by Krassi Modkov. Our team achieved the split on time without significant business disruption, and we earned substantial bonuses. I managed the programme of SAP projects we outsourced to Oxygen as well as running a mixture of software development and infrastructure projects myself. I led projects on most core infrastructure, plus time-clocks, payroll, manufacturing and accounting systems including two changes of Fiscal year across several companies. I led several very sensitive acquisitions, divestments and I 'divested' CHH of customers CHH could no longer afford to service. CHH considered me a safe pair of hands. Show less

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  Spark New Zealand

  Feb 2011 - Jan 2017

  Investment Manager

  I work on cost-effective mitigation of business risk; particularly risk around future benefits and technology risk. I have evolved ways to capture the range of views of a crowd of stakeholders, then use Monte Carlo simulation to aggregate all the stakeholders' inputs transparently into a robust overall view. Representing these views as dollars, I can compare growth options vs risk mitigations on a level playing field. I help negotiate our major software license, support and maintenance commitments with vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, VMware, Citrix, Microfocus and others. I have achieved several multi-million dollar savings, by resolving ambiguity in the licences and actual usage and by getting vendors to go beyond their published licensing and support policies. I have helped resist vendors' claims and reduced them dramatically. I have progressively widened responsibility for long range planning (out to 3 years horizon) and managing the capital spend on infrastructure including real estate, desktop, databases, virtualization, internal voice and data networks, security, Identity management, Single Sign On. At times I have also managed enterprise integration, BSS Business Support Systems, OSS Operational Support Systems, Fulfill, Assure and Bill, data management and BI Business Intelligence. I work to reduce our cost to serve through simplification. Using academic research to demonstrate benefits, I have proved business cases to spend capital to simplify, where previous attempts have stalled on lack of precisely identified payback. Show less

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  AcuteIP

  Jan 2017 - now

  Better information to guide investment

  I work with organisations to make excellent choices on where to spend effort and money to either evolve to a better business place or mitigate downside risks.I use techniques which uncover hidden sources of information, including methods that allow estimates to be turned into first class data alongside measurements. These reliable methods result in clear evaluation and communication of all the options. My approach allows proposals to mitigate risks to be evaluated directly alongside business development proposals, on a shared and objective scale. Show less

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  The University of Auckland

  Sept 2021 - now

  I lead the team of Project Managers and some Programme Managers at the University Strategic Programme Office.I facilitate rolling prioritisation of initiatives within and across the University's five Strategic Themes (Education and Student Experience, People and Culture, Strategic Partnerships and Engagement, Research and Innovation, Enabling Environments) and three cross-cutting perspectives (Maori, Pacific and Equity). The University is driven by mission rather than profit, so prioritisation cannot be reduced to dollars. I use instead methods that capture the range of opinions across a wide range of leaders and use all that diversity, experience and wisdom to inform prioritisation. The main constraint at the University is its people resource, so setting strict priority for projects allows our people to focus on the most important work and block out for now less significant claims on their attention. This both improves individual productivity and allows the highest priority projects to start delivering their benefits sooner. Show less

  • Project Management Practice Manager

    May 2022 - now

  • Benefits and Portfolio

    Sept 2021 - May 2022