Richard Perry

Elexon, London  (contract)                                                   April 2024 – December 2024

Data Pipeline, Analysis & Reporting Specialist

Elexon are leading the government’s Market Wide Half-Hourly changes to permit more dynamic use of smart meters across the power industry. As the programme Data Specialist, the role has been to build Data Processing, Data Analysis & BI Reporting processes and technical artefacts to support the gathering and monitoring of the preparation for the change, during the transition itself and post-implementation to determine the success of the strategy.

• Build data pipelines in MS SQL Server & Power BI
• Design data capture templates for manually input data
• Work with in-house data processing team to optimise programme data usage
• Collaborate to minimise effort across the organisation, utilising existing resources where possible

VolkerWessels, London  (contract)                                          March 2022 – March 2024

Lead Data Migration Consultant

Implementing a new ERP system (based on Microsoft Business Central, D365, with Azure & Databricks storage) and two major complementary systems (one built in MS Power Apps with Dataverse), across four UK businesses in the group created a challenging environment to move the data handling from a world in which everything happened on individual spreadsheets to a more coordinated centralised environment.

One of the key tasks was to bring together a team of business and data analysts to work on migrating different individual company’s data in parallel whilst maintaining a common approach and utilising an innovative cloud data processing platform for the collation, transformation, cleansing and delivery of the data. Utilising MS Power BI to monitor & escalate data cleanliness.

Responsible for the complete design of the automated cloud based ETL system to be used across all four companies which produced significant benefits over the previous manual migration methodology. This embraced the hierarchical nature of the data object model to effectively ensure only clean data was available for migration, whilst dirty data was reported to the business leads for cleansing.

• Lead a remote team of three business data analysts and one azure technical specialist
• Design, manage & deliver an overlapping multi-threaded migration strategy with associated reporting
• Design the ETL processes to be delivered by the data platform providers with an in-house Azure expert
• Assist in building up the group’s data governance capability where none had existed previously
• Collaborate with multiple third-party suppliers ensuring data migration is rational and efficient given the competing demands of the target systems

Ecclesiastical Insurance, Gloucester  (contract)                      March 2018 – March 2022

Data Migration Technical Lead

Ecclesiastical underwent a major programme for the replacement of its core insurance system. One of the key workstreams was Data Migration and as the Technical Lead the requirement was to architect, manage and deliver the complete four-year migration process and immediate ETL platform between the existing DB2 system and the new third party system. An additional requirement being the incorporation of a daily self-service reporting solution in both MS Excel & Power BI.

The ETL & reporting platform we created included a number of key innovations, both in the componentisation of data processing and the flexible extensibility to enable the system to cope with many diverse types of insurance products without requiring redesign. These innovations were then incorporated into other in-house developed IT systems.

• Lead a mixed on-shore/off-shore team of 4 Business Analysts, 2 Developers, 2 Test Specialists & 6 SMEs
• Design, manage & deliver a phased migration strategy & project plan
• Architect, design and manage all ETL & reporting processes
• Create data architecture, data governance and master data management standards
• Encapsulate business solution design decisions into a series of process and data rules
• Supply logical data models from the DB2 system for other workstreams to provide a sound basis for design decisions

Viridor, Taunton  (contract)                                             September 2017 – March 2018

Lead Business, System & Data Analyst – Business Intelligence

In Summer 2017 Viridor established the Heritage programme to update a significant number of IT applications and their associated data & business processes to D365. Corporate BI was one of the largest projects in the programme.

As the lead data analyst, the responsibility was to architect, design & deliver the Corporate Data Platform (CDP), an Azure Data Lake & Data Warehouse, drawing data from the six biggest systems in the organisation, re-processing & aggregating this into usable information that provided the foundation for the BI implementation.

As the lead systems analyst, the role was to design the required Microsoft PowerBI dashboards and reformatted Excel workbooks, then manage the development team in their creation and implementation.

As the lead business analyst, the requirement was to manage & deliver a redesign of the processes around the delivery of the CDP and PowerBI dashboards to derive the greatest business benefit from the newly presented information.

• Corporate-wide BI data architecture
• Identification of suitable business areas for delivery of Corporate BI
• Drawing out data requirements, analysing existing data structures & designing data extraction processes
• Designing Microsoft PowerBI dashboards and artifacts
• Directing offshore development team supplied by an external consultancy

Sabbatical                                                                                June 2017 – August 2017

Arval BNP Paribas, Manchester  (contract)                              January 2017 – June 2017

Data & Application Architect; Lead Systems Analyst

With the technical services agreement for a legacy system expiring in May 2017, Arval required a replacement data processing and reporting application that would require the minimum of support and work across multiple sites and teams.

As the application architect working within an agile development framework with two specialist Business Analysts and six SMEs, the system had to be designed & delivered within very tight time constraints to allow the in-house developers time to implement the designed solution. 

One of the key aspects of the role was the prioritisation & planning of the requirements, to ensure that all use cases could be satisfied whilst keeping within scope, timescales and budget. Guiding the stakeholders through effective communication ensured the project stayed on track.

Despite numerous hurdles presented by the data & architecture of the legacy system, the replacement was presented within the necessary timeframe and provided a higher quality of data processing, reporting and user experience than the much more expensive system it replaced.

• Analysis & reverse engineering of calculation logic from legacy application
• Data analysis of all existing data objects, modelling future data requirements and specification of new streamlined database schema
• Redesigned reporting to ensure simpler and more cost-effective standard and ad-hoc reporting tools
• Co-ordination of all requirements gathering, analysis, development and testing workstreams
• High-quality documentation and presentation to ongoing support teams to facilitate smooth hand-over

Arval BNP Paribas, Swindon  (contract)                        September 2016 – January 2017

Senior Business Systems Analyst - Data

Arval required the integration of the systems of a former rival finance company after their recent acquisition. Part of this process was the removal of MS Access, resulting in the migration of over sixty MS Access databases into their existing enterprise system.

The role was to map & analyse the data structures, inputs, business processes and reporting requirements contained in the legacy applications, prioritising remedial work, ensuring all functionality is transferred where necessary, and mitigated where not. Redesign of data structures and realignment to provide the simplest migration path. As the applications had evolved over an extended period, a high degree of user interaction was required and a significant amount of parallel design to identify the relevance and currency of data and functionality. Investigating & proposing alternative solutions where business continuity was a requirement and presenting clear evidence-based rationales to senior stakeholders for the decommission of applications that were no longer required.

• Investigation & alignment of customer and management reporting from tactical to enterprise systems
• Mapping the business processes dependent on the MS Access apps to QA the suitability of the system
• Analysis of data objects to ensure a smooth translation during migration

OVO Energy, Bristol  (contract)                                        March 2016 – September 2016

Senior Business & Data Analyst

Working alongside the permanent Lead Process Analyst, taking a key role in the change management & planning team of a fast-growing business. The company operates in an extremely agile and fast-paced manner to achieve ambitious growth targets while strengthening business processes to provide more assurance to regulatory authorities, management, investors and customers.

The core project was the migration of Pay-As-You-Go customers onto a new purpose-built platform for Smart Metering. Agile development was fully embraced to provide custom components. A significant part of the role was to deliver a new data model of the large, complex and uniquely structured backend database platform. This aspect grew significantly as the specialist supplier’s technical staff were transitioned off.

• Complex data analysis to ensure financial stability
• Creation of technical design documents for agile development
• Establishing documentation, data reporting & data governance standards
• Designing new business processes for a diverse range of workstreams
• Assisting business teams to understand and embrace business & systems change
• Expert guidance on application definition, data structures, systems integration and user interaction
• Highly skilled data modelling of large, complex and uniquely structured database

Reducing Reoffending Partnership, London & Midlands  (contract)       January 2015 – March 2016

Senior Business Data Analyst

As part of the government’s Transforming Rehabilitation strategy for reforming probation services, RRP secured the contract for delivering these services in the Midlands. As part of this, the entire IT infrastructure and software was being replaced. The main ERP system covered nearly all aspects of the business and was a greenfield development.

The ERP Design Team comprised two business process analysts, two business data analysts and four business information specialists. Despite the job title, the role was architecting the definition of the new system specification. This meant running workshops at over ten locations across the Midlands and coordinating requirements spanning multiple management and workforce tiers. The distilled analysis, design & data specifications were then presented to the daily scrum meetings followed by the management of the development teams to ensure the sprint deliverables met the specifications.

As a data specialist, the role included a position on the Ministry of Justice data steering group consisting of representatives of all supply companies and government data architects to define common data standards, data governance and exchange methodologies.

As the senior member of the design team, working alongside the Business Integration Manager, responsibilities included –

• Leading scope definition & prioritisation of 43 major work packages
• Working in both agile and waterfall environments
• Establishing data & documentation standards
• Designing integration protocols and data exchange standards for different technologies
• Definition of the main data model
• Responsible for day-to-day work assignments of other team members
• Providing the link between business, external management consultancy and the development teams

RWE Generation UK, Swindon  (contract)                            May 2012 – December 2014

Senior Business Systems Analyst and Applications Architect

RWE Generation UK, Swindon  (contract)                                 August 2009 – May 2012

Senior Business Systems Analyst, Information Engineering Team

RWE IT UK, Swindon  (contract)                                         February 2008 – August 2009

Business Systems Analyst, MS Solutions Team

RWE Npower Cogen, Solihull  (contract)                             March 2006 – February 2008

Applications & Data Analyst, Information Processing Team

RWE Npower, Swindon  (contract)                                   December 2003 – March 2006

Lead Analyst Developer, Projects Npower Team

RWE Innogy, Swindon  (contract)                                     March 2003 – December 2003

Senior Analyst Programmer, Business Systems Team

Innogy, Swindon  (contract)                                                        June 2002 – March 2003

Team Leader, Application Migration Team

Innogy, Swindon  (contract)                                                September 2000 – May 2002

Senior Analyst Programmer, Application Development Team

Stitch Stuff, Redditch  (contract)                                      March 2000 – September 2000

Web Analyst & Designer

Ecctis 2000, Cheltenham  (contract)                                September 1999 – March 2000

Database Application Analyst & Developer

Xerox Languages Services, Slough  (contract)                 March 1999 – September 1999

Translation Application Analyst & Developer

BSc Computer Science, Reading University