PAST JOBS |
You can continue to use the tabs above to dive deeper into the various sections of my résumé if you wish. This section deals with my past roles in more detail.
As you'll see from the 2-page version of my resumé, I have spent the last seven years or so working at Ovum, starting as an entry-level "Research Analyst" and working my way up to my current position as a VP in Ovum's US operation. In this section I'll explain a little more about each of these roles and how I progressed from one to the next.
Missionary work, south-east Asia, 1998-2000
Before I get onto that, though, it's important to note that there was a three-year gap between when I finished university in the summer of 1997 to when I started at Ovum as a full-time employee in September 2000. I spent the bulk of this time as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in south-east Asia, spending the bulk of that time in Sri Lanka, but also spending a few months each in Singapore and Malaysia.
This was something I did as a volunteer effort, paying (rather than being paid) to undertake two years of service. While expected of most young men who grow up in the Church, I had become a member during my time at University (rather swimming against the flow compared with the normal college experience) and had to decide whether to do this or not. I decided that I would and filed an application form which stated that I was willing to go wherever I was sent in the world for two years, during which time I would not see friends or family, read newspapers or go to the movies, and that I would get up at 6:30 or earlier and go to bed at 10:30 at night every day for those two years.
I found the experience to be very challenging but also immensely rewarding. I had to learn the lessons we were to teach to those interested in learning more about our faith, and when I reached Sri Lanka also had to learn the local language, Sinhalese, from some of the local members of the Church. I worked in pairs with around 20 other missionaries during the course of the two years I spent as a missionary, and learned how to get along with many different types of people (these "companions" came from the UK, the US, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and Pakistan), and how to work productively together even when there were fundamental differences in temperament and tastes. I also had several leadership roles, and was responsible for the last few months of my mission for all the missionaries in Sri Lanka as well as for finding a building for worship when the Church wanted to start offering services and preaching the gospel in a new town.
The experience gave me self-confidence, helped me learn how to teach and communicate effectively with others, how to understand different cultures and put myself in another's shoes, and how to respect and admire differences in the way others see the world.
There's a little more information on the program on the Church's official website here.
Research Analyst, Interconnect@Ovum, 2000 to 2001
Having worked at Ovum as a temp before and after my missionary service, I had come to enjoy the working environment and culture of a small but growing company owned by current and former employees. I also knew that I didn't want to be a temp for the rest of my life, and had been searching for the right job opportunity for some time without much success. I eventually found an available position and applied for it, and started in September of 2000 as an entry-level research analyst working in Ovum's regulatory team, and focused on interconnection (specifically, the rules governing the interconnection of telecom networks, a fairly arcane subject).
Research Analysts were typically hired right out of college and I quickly found that my additional experience gave me an edge in terms of my work ethic, my communication skills and my ability to work with others. The topic of interconnection itself was (and remains) pretty dry. Essentially, the advisory service I worked for covered the rates charged and the applicable regulation for the way telecom networks connect to each other when markets are first opened up to competition, as was then the case in most of Europe. This required a good head for legalese, numbers and analysis, all of which I either had or developed during my time on the service.
While working on the service I was also invited to join a team of analysts working on what were then the standard Ovum reports - huge 200-300 page tomes which would become the bible on the topic they covered. The team I joined was to write a report on the next wave of DSL services beyond ADSL - specifically, SDSL and VDSL. I worked with the team for nine months or so, setting up and conducting interviews and learning a lot about how video services in particular but also voice might be delivered over these connections, who was rolling out the services and how, and what the business models looked like. This was my first significant exposure to consumer telecom services as an analyst and I enjoyed it greatly, while continuing with my work on the Interconnect service, where I did desk and phone research, produced reports and spreadsheets and advised clients.
Analyst and Service Manager, Interconnect@Ovum, 2001-2003
After I had been there for about a year, Ovum started to be affected by the aftermath of the dot-com and telecom downturns which had begun a few months earlier. It became clear that many of our clients were not going to be spending at the levels they previously had and also that our business model needed a radical overhaul. During this time Ovum made its first layoffs and through several subsequent rounds the team of three that I had been a junior member of was reduced to just me, leaving me as the only candidate for the service manager position, which I was then awarded.
This was a big step up in responsibility, going from being a junior analyst working under an experienced service manager to having to take on topic planning, cost and revenue responsibility and ultimately having to ensure that the service was successful, signing up new clients, growing revenues and profitability. The service's revenues had stalled at around £400,000 per year with a headcount of three people, and I succeeded in returning the service to growth and achieving over £500,000 in revenue while cutting the costs to a fraction of what they had been, making the service easily Ovum's most profitable while continuing to sign up new customers and grow revenues. It continues to grow and continues to be Ovum's most profitable service over four years later.
During this time, I also continued my work on DSL, as lead author on a report on DSL business models, and also continued to write for and produce benchmarks and other data for the Interconnect@Ovum advisory service. I also worked more closely with the sales team in signing up new clients for the service and ensuring that revenue growth continued.
Senior Analyst and Service Manager, WirelineStrategy@Ovum, 2003-2004
Having managed the Interconnect advisory service for a little over a year I found that I needed a new challenge and looked around both internally and externally for new roles. In the end I found what I was looking for in a move to a bigger service with a team of five analysts at Ovum.
The service then covered a very broad range of topics under the heading of CompetitiveCommunications@Ovum, and one of our first tasks was to narrow down the focus to something that would be more meaningful to clients and fit with their own focus, which resulted in a name change to WirelineStrategy@Ovum. We began producing the content for the service more efficiently, allowing the members of the team to spend more time on other projects internally and reducing the costs for the service while we also increased the number of clients from around 40 to around 60. This paved the way for a return to revenue growth in this service which had also stalled in recent years. It subsequently broke the £1 million pound mark for the first time, which produced dramatically higher profitability when combined with the cost reductions we had achieved.
During this time my topic focus broadened considerably, as I added wireline strategy, strategies for providers of services to multinationals and fixed mobile convergence to my existing expertise in regulation and broadband services. I also increased the amount of time I spent with clients, both in a sales capacity and in presenting Ovum's research and advice to them. People management was also a key part of my role and I had to deal with the addition to my team of several new analysts with a history of difficulties at Ovum, and we eventually found long-term solutions which were best for everyone concerned.
Research Director, Telecom, North America, 2004-2005
In 2004, after leading Ovum's WirelineStrategy service for some time I found that I again needed a new challenge. Having married a US citizen in 2002, I was also keen to find opportunities to spend some time in the US, and so enquired about a role in Ovum's Boston office. While no current role existed, I worked with Ovum's management team to create and define a role producing research on the US market while also contributing significantly to the US sales effort.
This role involved taking on responsibility for all Ovum's wireline telecom research in North America while also acting as the senior analyst responsible for our relationships with key clients such as AT&T, Verizon and Cisco, working closely with the account managers and customer relationship managers at Ovum for those accounts. This led to significant growth with each of these accounts during a period of significant turbulence in the US telecoms market and major mergers at both of the major service providers we worked with.
After a year and a half or so in this role, I decided to narrow the focus of my topic coverage to enterprise telecom services, and also took on management responsibility for the Boston office, in my current role.
VP, US Enterprise Practice, 2005-2008
Following my stint as a Research Director with a fairly broad topic remit, I was promoted in September 2005 to VP level, the most senior level for an analyst at Ovum, with responsibility for covering the US Enterprise market, meaning (in this case) business telecom services. I was responsible for covering what I like to think of as the three points of the enterprise telecom triangle - enterprises (businesses) themselves, service providers and equipment vendors. I followed each of these three and wrote research designed to inform each of the three stakeholders about their competitors, suppliers and customers.
On a day to day basis, this meant I did some combination of the following:
- speaking with these three stakeholders, whether being briefed by or interviewing equipment vendors or service providers, or talking with end users
- doing or reviewing Ovum's primary research with enterprises, both small and medium-sized businesses and large multinationals
- writing or editing research for publication
- advising clients, whether through written material, in-person presentations or strategy sessions or over the phone. Among Ovum's clients in this area are service providers such as Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, Sprint, Global Crossing and T-Mobile; equipment vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Mitel/Inter-Tel, Ericsson, Siemens and others; and enterprise users
- working collaboratively with others either to produce research, to advise clients or to sell our capabilities to clients. I spent a lot of time working with the sales team at Ovum in growing our existing accounts and signing up new clients.
This role gave me valuable insights into business telecom services (both wireline and wireless), good working relationships with the service providers and equipment vendors serving this space, skills in writing for Ovum's clients, selling advisory and professional services, presentation skills and client relationship skills.
In addition to the research elements of my role, I was responsible for running Ovum's Boston office, with pastoral responsibility for a team of twelve and direct management responsibility for the Operations Manager and Marketing Manager for the US business. This gave me valuable additional people management and business management experience while allowing me to apply the expertise previously gained in other roles.
Practice Leader, Wireline, Wholesale and Regulation, 2008-2010
Following some time as a pure analyst, I moved back into a line management role in 2008. In this role, I oversaw three of Ovum's advisory services, focusing on the following areas:
- Wireline Strategy - this is the team I ran from 2003 to 2004, and it focuses on service provider strategies for wireline carriers around the world. As such, it looks at the world from a step above Ovum's Consumer and Enterprise Practices and sees things from the perspective of the carriers' strategy directors. The focus is on profiling the world's most important carriers, and advising them on the strategies they need to deal with the changing marketplace.
- Wholesale - Ovum's research on the market for telecoms services sold between suppliers, for example from one operator to another, or from operators to MVNOs, systems integrators, ISPs and others, who in turn provide services to end users. This service grew out of Ovum's research around eight years ago on the bandwidth boom and bust, but has since diversified considerably to cover all forms of wholesale telecoms services, including a large emphasis on mobile wholesale.
- Regulation - this is the team I previously ran from 2001 to 2003. At the time I ran it, it focused primarily on the regulated interconnection between carriers, but it has also since broadened to include many other telecom regulatory topics, including spectrum regulation and IP interconnection.