Peter Harrall CV

Peter Harrall CV

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  Peter Harrall 96 WiltshireCrescent, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG22 5FE Mobile : 07720426062 Email : [email protected] Personal Statement • Highly evolved problem solver with the ability to apply creative solutions • Extensive network of IT contacts in the retail industry • Work in any sized team also self motivated and can work independently • Enjoy travelling and meeting new people • Excellent communication and IT skills Customer Facing • Create and present technical information to Retailer, Business Partners and colleagues • Consult for retailer management and IT staff to offer advice and guidance • Prepare and present reports to clients of performance in delivery • Perform problem management and issue resolution on client sites • Provide telephone support outside normal office hours Sales support • Twelve years working with the Retail Store Solutions sales team in IBM • Created configurations and solutions for the sales team and for resellers • Raised product issues with the development and manufacturing teams • Engaged in complex hardware and software integration projects • Prepared and delivered upgrade advice and solutions • Extensive hardware, software and service delivery expertise • Built great relationships with sales team, business partners and retailers • Developed contacts and processes to support configuration and pricing system issues
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  Technical Abilities • Developedan extensive knowledge of Retail POS systems • Ability to rapidly absorb and understand technical detail, identify and challenge gaps in information • Prepare and deliver education for products from base technical detail • Analyse complex solutions and gain an understanding of their operation • Knowledge of hardware products in the retail stores industry • Knowledge of software applications in the retail stores industry • Extensive knowledge and experience of IBM/Toshiba 4690 system • Specialist knowledge and experience of Microsoft Windows embedded for POS • Considerable experience with Microsoft Windows OS’s and Enterprise solutions • Active Directory and Domains, Group Policy, SMS/Systems Centre, SQL Project Experience New Product Release My role was to liaise with USA development engineers to obtain product briefing and pre-release documentation for specialised Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) products including a cutting edge product, an all in one epos system with a projected capacitance touch screen. The objective was to enable business partners and customers to participate in early involvement projects and to market, promote and build confidence in the new product to get orders placed for the release date. These projects have a lot of activities to coordinate to ensure the system integrator is trained for software migration and installation, the service engineers were available to support the new product and that any issues with the product and drivers are raised and resolved urgently. Post announcement I continued in the role of product champion to manage the distribution of loan systems across business partners and customers with full support to them to introduce the new hardware and driver stack. I also did similar new product announcement projects for the system unit releases, the network adapter for the POS printer and the latest range of touch displays released by Toshiba GCS. Dunnes System Upgrade Project A two year project to upgrade the EPOS hardware and software at Dunnes Stores in Dublin Ireland. My role was to provide subject matter expertise for the operating system and to add offline functionality. This extended to responsibility for the application upgrade and developing a file refresh subsystem for 24 hour trading. I managed the development, testing and production systems and developed the remote software upgrade. This used the IBM 4690 operating system and 4690 Supermarket Application. The project was wholly managed by IBM. Marks and Spencer iPOS project This was a multi year project to replace the EPOS application with PCMS Beanstore. I joined the project 18 months into the plan. My responsibilities were to provide POS
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  terminal subject matterexpertise (SME) to homologate all the software applications for the POS terminal, develop a remote installation package for multiple hardware systems from Fujitsu and Wincor Nixdorf and raise, manage and resolve issues along the way. The key skills involved working in a large scale, complex project environment, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows embedded, MS Systems Management Server operations, including creating and deploying software packages, MS Active Directory, the terminal and software had to be completely compatible with the complex multi-forest environment at the client, Altiris/Symantec Wise packager, a software tool to create silent, remote installation packages compatible with MS SMS, Windows Host Shell script which was utilised extensively. Also I was given the System security ‘White List’ project to setup and deploy. This required MS Windows server, MS SQL server and Active Directory integration as well as expertise on how best to implement the chosen Whitelisting product. DECA Supermarket Stores Rollout This project required flexible skills and adaptability. US military bases have a variety of retail stores onsite and IBM was engaged to replace the hardware and software in the on base grocery worldwide. My role was to work with the team supporting Japan, Italy and the UK. As well as ensuring all the hardware had arrived and liaise with the store manager, furniture installation, the electricians and the training team to ensure we were all coordinated. The time scales were tight as the store had to remain open during the conversion and switch over to the new systems, The software had to be installed, configured and updated, communications had to be setup and problems managed with the US help desk. Software development and deployment This required marketing and selling using sales consultancy techniques. These were upgrades and new functionality to the EPOS systems and required bespoke software to be developed, packaged and tested plus pilot stage support services. EPOS systems are critical business components with no tolerance for down time, therefore a very high quality of work is required and complex risk avoidance strategies developed to match the customers’ environment. A number of these were carried out for Tier one retailers. Personal Hobbies and Activities • Dinghy sailing, single or double handed • Power boating • RNLI supporter and customer • Watching Films, exploring genres and stories behind the movie, special effects techniques and camera technique • National Trust supporter and visitor Employment History
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  • 2016 (Augustto present) Prince 2 project management training and other skill updates. Setting up part time business to sell ecologically friendly outboard engines, boats and spares as an online business. • 2012 to August 2016 at Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions as a Pre-sales Technical Consultant – transferred automatically when the IBM RSS division was sold to Toshiba • 2000 to 2012 at IBM UK’s Retail Store Solutions sales team as a Pre-sales Technical Support Engineer • 1989 to 2000 at IBM UK’s Post sales Support Centre as a Help Desk services and delivery consultant and team leader • 1982 to 1989 at IBM UK’s hardware service delivery division as a field service engineer Education • Prince 2 Project Management to Practioner level with the Knowledge Academy certificated by the BCS • Lynda.com (via LinkedIn) various technology updates for example HTML 5, CSS & Javascript, MS Windows 10 OS business deployment, database technologies and Agile methodologies. • 1982 to present various personal and technical development courses at IBM • 1979 to 1982 Southampton University Electrical Engineering Degree • 1977 to 1979 Highdown Comprehensive Sixth Form College • 1972 to 1977 Highdown Comprehensive School