With a passion for understanding business strategy and customer needs gained from running an organisation wide customer experience programme, I bring clarity and simplicity to complex technical and business situations. I create, motivate and lead teams that deliver successful change and outstanding levels of service. My key skills are
- Transforming teams through leadership and coaching skills
- Extensive background in IT infrastructure support and implementation, operational service improvement, programme and applications delivery
- In depth technical, problem solving and service management skills
- Delivery of IT mergers, systems transformations and service improvement programmes
- Proven relationship building and stakeholder management skills with business colleagues and external IT partners including offshore experience in India
My achievements have been recognised by various industry awards for leadership and technology delivery including Computer Weekly Best Place to Work in IT three times. I also hold an ILM Level 7 Diploma in leadership mentoring and executive coaching.
Jan 2016 – present: Aldermore Bank
Head of Transformation (from April 2019)
To support our ammitious growth plans, I’m leading a substantial invesment in the IT Service Delivery capability for Aldemore. This includes building a new Service Delivery Team, implementing tools and processes, changing suppliers and building a new infrastructure platform for the next phase of the bank’s journey.
Head of IT – Mortgages and Savings (to March 2019)
Recruited to run the IT for the Mortgage Division, my role expanded to include Savings, all change delivery, process improvement and training. I built a new change team from scratch and spend my time shaping and understanding business strategy, creating teams to deliver the change required to support that. Achievements include strategic decisions on platforms, establishing a release factory to achieve certainty of change delivery, transforming business performance through process improvement and using my experience to drive improvements across the whole bank.
July – Dec 2015: Manchster University
Change Director
Initiated programme to transform the IT function. Working with the IT Leadership team I initiated and delivered a programme of transformation andimprovement across the IT function focused on improving service, customer satisfaction, efficiencyand preparing the organisation for widespread adoption of cloud technologies.
2013 – Jun 2015: The Open University
Assistant Director – IT Service Delivery
I delivered a complete refresh and standardisation of 7000 desktops, along with substantial improvements in staff and customer satisfaction and high levels of service availability. I also became an advocate for the great tools available to staff at the OU including Lync and VOIP running awareness sessions at all levels of the organisation.
At the same time I developed the use of social media and other communications channels to find new and innovative ways to engage within IT and across the OU which was key to achieving these levels of staff and customer satisfaction. My weekly blog was read by 5-10% of the 6000 OU staff covering a range of topics and leading to increased visibility and engagement with IT.
2009-2013: The Co-operative Banking Group
Apr 2012 – April 2013: Head of IT Service Management
Asked to improve service through a team of 50 delivering Business Engagement, Problem/Change Management, Capacity and Availability planning and Asset/Configuration Management for the Bank. I delivered significant increases in business satisfaction and team morale. I then ran a programme to improve service and cut costs across all IT functions in the wider Co-op Group.
2009 – 2012: Head of IT – Specialist Businesses
Selected for this role reporting to the Bank CIO post the CFS/Britannia Merger, I was accountable for all IT in specialist businesses. This included mortgage sales and processing (£11bn Mortgage book) and the critical Bank Treasury function where I re organised the 100 head team to implement a release based delivery approach. In addition, I worked the Lloyds branch bid (Verde), initiated a General Insurance IT strategy review, reorganised all infrastructure delivery for the banking platform replacement programme, and worked offshore with Infosys in India for 6 months. I also acted as trouble-shooter for major bank systems issues solving high-profile outages.
2001 – 2009: Britannia Building Society
2005-2009: Head of IT
Promoted to this role, I was accountable for all IT for 4500 colleagues and 3 million customers. I led a team of 250, with a revenue budget of £15m/annum and IT capital investment of £10m/annum. Delivered IT for Bristol and West Merger saving £9m a year run costs, won awards for technology and best place to work in IT and delivered a £12m data center move.
2004 – 2005: Programme Manager – Customer Experience
Seconded outside IT to understand and improve engagement with external customers that shaped business strategy and underpins, to this day, my customer centric approach to IT.
2001 – 2004: Head of Infrastructure, Operations and Service
Recruited to transform a legacy IT team and make it ready to deliver and support a £60m complete re-platforming of the organisations core systems. This team of 100 delivered IT application and infrastructure support for 3500 users and 2 million customers and also all infrastructure build for projects. Programme successfully delivered on time and budget, awarded BCS Project of Year and I was personally recognised as BCS Service Manager of the year 2004.
Previous Roles
1996-2001: Racal Telecom/Global Crossing
Held various roles, including Service Manager and acting CIO. I ran teams of up to 60 with £9m/annum budget supporting 2500 staff at this major managed voice and data service provider. Successfully delivered the IT merger between Racal Networks and British Rail Telecom. Organised all aspects of the data room for the successful £1bn sale of Racal Telecom to Global Crossing. Set up and ran the £3m/year outsourced IT services agreement.
1988-1996: Mars Electronics International
Worked for the Mars group in their manufacturing operation which provided the core of my early cultural, values and management development. Held various roles, culminating in promotion to European Systems Manager in 1994. Responsible for supporting all European commercial and engineering applications, infrastructure and networks with a team of 15 on multiple sites.
1984 – 1988: Tube Investments (TI)/British Alcan Aluminium
Following sponsorship through University, worked as a Senior Design Engineer in consultancy unit, and quickly moved onto supporting and implementing IT systems.
Mark Jacot 