David Forsyth

Experience

• 

  Sun Bank

  Jun 1989 - Jun 1995

  Technical Support Specialist
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  Citibank

  Jul 1995 - Jul 1996

  Technical Support Specialist

  Supporting all aspects of the environment including desktop hardware and configuration, server hardware and configurations, LAN, WAN, Email, File & Print

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  Santander Private Bank

  Jul 1996 - Aug 2006

  Infrastructure Manager

  Accountabilities• Management of Infrastructure and Service Delivery including Solutions Deployment• Management of vendors for outsourcing and partnership agreements• Management of £1.7 million budget excluding staff and project costs• Management of a motivated team of 12 across geographically remote offices• Compliance with internal and external audit recommendations including Sarbanes Oxley (SOX)• Deputise for the Head of ITSelected achievements• Achieved cost savings of £100,000 per annum by replacing traditional telephony with Voice over IP technology for all the staff and the Call Centre.• Introduction of an Internet Banking capability through the implementation of an in- house fully resilient and load balanced web hosting infrastructure.• Increased system availability by implementing a fully resilient LAN and WAN infrastructure spanning over 6 offices in 3 geographically remote jurisdictions, which had unreliable communication providers.• Selected by senior management to plan, manage and deliver the technology response and the fit-out of a new building, to consolidate staff following company acquisition.• Reduced staffing costs by 5 FTE with a departmental restructure and by the centralisation of operational tasks.• Achieved budget cost savings of £300,000 per annum through contract renegotiations. Show less

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  ASB Bank

  Sept 2006 - Jan 2014

  Accountabilities• Accountable for delivery of operational excellence through capacity, availability, and performance management of key infrastructural services. Specifically, these are enterprise storage and backup solutions, data centre management and compute platforms for both server and desktop virtualisation.• Define and implement a strategic roadmap.• Proactively identify, plan and implement initiatives to ensure ongoing capacity, availability and performance of key infrastructural services.• Management of risk and compliance.• Financial management.• People managementSelected achievements• Implemented new management, monitoring and standard operating procedures which improved availability for all infrastructural services and enabled Service Level Agreements (SLA) to be continually met.• Implemented new standard procedures for the team to follow to increase the success rate for change control to 100%. • Reduction in lead time for storage request provisioning from 12 weeks to 5 days following the replacement of the Tier 1 mission critical enterprise storage platform. This was achieved by negotiating with the Finance department to purchase the hardware on an OPEX model rather than the traditional CAPEX. • Championed and persuaded senior management to replace the virtual platform hardware, supporting 3,000+ servers and 4,800+ desktops, with new ‘non-company standard’ Cisco UCS hardware. This implementation improved the cost/performance ratio per server and introduced budget cost savings in excess of $500,000 per annum through reduced software licence costs.• Selected by senior management to manage a virtual team collating and delivering the technology response to the building of a new Head Office, the staff relocation and the introduction of “Activity Based Working” (hot desking). My role ensured that all 5 project managers competing for the same resource had aligned plans and the overall program of work met the scheduled delivery date. Show less

  • Manager, Infrastructure Services

    Jul 2010 - Jan 2014

  • Manager, eCommerce Services

    Mar 2008 - Jul 2010

  • Manager, Business Services

    Sept 2006 - Mar 2008
• 

  Global Sabbatical

  Jan 2014 - Feb 2015

  World Explorer

  A break from the corporate world; and a chance to explore, photograph and experience the local culture in Latin America from the Mayan temples in Mexico to the "End of the World" in Ushuaia, Patagonia.

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  Independent Technology Advisor

  Mar 2015 - Apr 2016

  Independent Technology Advisor

  • Short term assignments while studying for PADI Dive Master qualification.

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  ASB Bank

  Apr 2016 - Dec 2021

  Manager, Core Operations

  Accountabilities • Day-to-day workforce management and optimisation of Contact Centre systems, applications and reporting• Intra-day management of Contact Centre performance• Build and maintain strong productive relationships with internal / external stakeholders across technology and the business• Proactively identify, plan and implement initiatives to improve and simplify procedures and processes Manage the communication and minimise the impact to customers during service outages• Leadership and people managementSelected achievements• Working closely with Technology, enabled Contact Centre’s first remote agent capability as part of the COVID-19 response. Subsequently increased the Work from Anywhere capability for 90% of staff allowing for flexible working and improved BCP.• Introduced the expansion of call routing outside traditional centres and into branches utilising additional available resource.• Used data and analytics to better determine how to improve customer experience and drive productivity gains.• Managed the upgrade of Genesys Contact Centre platform for all users across the bank including Workforce Management, Monitoring and Reporting. • Staff succession planning; mentoring and progression of team members to new roles whilst maintaining productivity levels expected by stakeholders.• Managed the migration of Contact Centre productivity data to new platforms allowing Technology to deliver on their own risk mitigation and the bank’s cost saving initiatives.• Leading Contact Centre’s WorkSmart and Silver Accreditation journey, taking a team from sceptics to role models that were recognised by senior management and the bank’s Worksmart team.• Selected by senior management to join ASB’s Flex-Able steering committee and leading the introduction of flexible working in Contact Centre for both operational and front-line staff. Show less

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  2degrees

  Dec 2021 - now

  Workforce Planning Manager

  Accountabilities • Day-to-day workforce management and optimisation of Contact Centre systems, applications and reporting• Intra-day management of Contact Centre performance• Build and maintain strong productive relationships with internal / external stakeholders across technology and the business• Proactively identify, plan and implement initiatives to improve and simplify procedures and processes Manage the communication and minimise the impact to customers during service outages• Leadership and people management Show less