I have been working with large scale business systems for over 30 years, mostly helping business users cope with their software headaches. I have been an IT Manager for Greey Lightnin (no g) for over 20 years single handily managing an HP3000 Computer System, using MANMAN software, encompassing everything from the purchase of the equipment, installation, software, upgrades, security, networking, maintenance, training,  and telecommuting to a head office in the U.S.A. I also was responsible for purchasing, setting up and configuring over 40 Personal Computers into a in-house Network involving users from the Factory Floor to the President's office.

 

A lot of time was spent teaching and training users who had never used PC's before, to trust the systems they were given, and rely on a computer to help them do their jobs. Most people today are not trained properly on the software they have to use, so they struggle and take short cuts to get to the end, only to find out later....there is a better way, if only they had asked.

 

I sucessfully upgraded Greey Lightnin's manufacturing software 2 times, having to fly to Philadelphia spending an entire weekend running the upgrade process returning on Monday to spend another 10 hours to install. Both upgrades were painless to the company having the system down only 1 day and a half.

 

A training course was also custom created by me for my company working with one of the trainers over the phone and email to come up and teach about 100 employees only the "differences" and "new features" of the new release. This saved the company tens of thousands of dollars in sending people to the States for training.

 

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I was also a Manager of Business Systems for The Shopping Channel for 4 1/2 years and managed the ERP Ecometry software package there in a 24/7 operation that had over 400 users. I was involved in and responsible for 2 major upgrades to the software during my time there. Both upgrades were very successful and brought new features and added functionality to the software greatly improving productivity and processes.

 

Major testing over 6-8 months went into every new release and I worked the "kinks" out of the new software, working closely with the users and software vendor to make sure the system was "good to go". In doing all the front-end testing I became the "go to" guy for answers to problems and errors the users made. Corrections to those errors was one of my responsibilities that could only be done as a backend process which had to be audited in every case. I also handled a lot of data extraction processes and ad-hoc reporting on request from various department Managers and Executives.

 

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I belonged to the Happen Networking group (Canada's largest Networking Organization), that meets in 3 times a week in Mississauga,  Burlington and Toronto. I was a member with them for over 3 years. Guest speakers are invited in to speak on Job Search related topics from Resume Writing, Interview tips, career coaching. I have volunteered with them by helping to setup the room before and taking down the room after meetings for several weeks, as well as the delivery of all of the HAPPEN brochures across all the various outlets of Career Search offices in Southern Ontario. It's a fabulous organization which is over 8000 strong, and they help a lot of people that are "in between successes".