Updated April 2006

Personal Development

Family History

Word version of CV

2004 to date             Norwich Union                  Norwich, Norfolk

Strategic Marketing Manager,  Business Development

·     Founder member of the Norwich Union virtual Data Company team.  Leading the proposition development for the commercialisation of Norwich Union’s data assets.

·     Developed a ‘Proposition Development Framework’ to ensure new opportunities undergo the appropriate assessment and rigour of business planning.

·     Responsible for the development of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system supporting the NU DataCo.  I have recruited the staff and overseen the process development.  We capture all customer contact and all DataCo staff understand the benefits of using the salesforce.com application.

·     Responsible for the flood rating propositions to other insurers through concept and business case, to operations, sales and delivery over the past 18 months.  I am working to deliver on stretching revenue targets in these new markets.

·     Development of propositions from the emerging telematics data being created by Norwich Union.  Evaluating how this data, potentially aggregated with other sources, can provide new propositions to sell to business and government.

·     Part of the proposition development involves bringing the product to market and paving the way for the sales team with appropriate marketing.  I develop the marketing launch plans covering everything from the creation of opted in marketing lists to the creatives for B2B direct marketing.

Insights Profile

2003 – 2004            Norwich Union Insurance             Norwich, Norfolk

Customer Propositions Manager,  IDS Programme

·     Leadership and management of the Customer Propositions team.

·     Delivering customers tailored propositions and levels of service as they underwent the transition from the intermediary channel to the direct channel. This involved undertaking a detailed analysis of a brokers portfolio and looking for significant groupings of customers to match existing propositions.

·     Success of my team was gauged on the customer retention rate; both immediately after we acquired the portfolio from the broker, and also after the first insurance renewal, sometimes almost twelve months later.  This target ensured we had to continue to offer good service and deliver perceived value for money to the customer throughout that time. 

·     Maximising retention was achieved by adopting a test and learn approach. I applied my database marketing skills to the broker acquisition activity – each acquisition being treated as a separate campaign and opportunity to learn and find the optimal approaches that worked with customers.

·     Price was the key differentiator to customers.  With colleagues from the actuarial team I was responsible for development of a pricing model which ensured that customers premium changes were smoothed over a three year cycle.  We found that sharp decreases in premium were just as likely to cause a customer to shop around and Norwich Union more likely to lose their business than keeping the premium the same of slightly increasing.

·     Ensuring that the operational teams were properly briefed on the different requirements of specific customer groups.

·     I was a key member of the team responsible for agreeing the overall bid Norwich Union were prepared to make for a brokers’ business. This role required good insight into all aspects of the brokers business in order to ensure the bids made were appropriate and profitable.

I instigated the programme of customer listening – actually sending senior managers from the programme and the supporting operational teams to visit real customers and understand from them what they thought of the communications, products and services they received.  This proved an invaluable tool for improving the success of the programme.

·     Management of project management resource needed by the Customer Development Centre.

2001 – 2002     Norwich Union Wealth Management   Norwich, Norfolk

Customer Management , CRM Development

Norwich Union Wealth Management (NUWM) was an online business which was invested in significantly prior to the ‘dotcom bubble’ bursting.  When customer response did not match the forecast demand many technology programmes requiring further investment were put on hold.  This provided the eCRM team the opportunity to focus on two other key elements of successful CRM – processes and people.

·     Establishment of business-wide processes to support multi-channel direct marketing campaigns and eCRM for NUWM.  The eCRM data-store was to hold a complete contact history irrespective of channel.

·     Delivery of email marketing campaigns in support of the product marketing teams.  Best practice campaign management disciplines were encouraged by my team – ensuring marketers thought about the returns they were delivering.  This became a challenging task when response waned; many marketers appeared to be in denial of the downturn.

·     Initiating the first trigger-based marketing campaigns based on data collected from the web infrastructure and customer usage.

·     I designed the infrastructure to allow the new NUWM business to exploit the existing database of Norwich Union customers ensuring that online and offline teams could identify the different customer groups.  This innovation removed the need for £2m of investment that had been planned by the PwC team charged with delivering the CRM technology; and I was given an award by the CEO for my creativity.

I was a guest speaker at a CRM conference in Florida where I spoke on the value of strong campaign management disciplines for Protagona Inc, the campaign management toolset provider.

1998 – 2001            Norwich Union                            Norwich, Norfolk

Database Marketing Consultancy

·     Delivery of direct marketing campaigns from Norwich Union's marketing database (MIDAS) covering three business units and four brands, including e-campaigns though the norwichunion.com business. 

·     Demonstrating to marketers the power of database marketing and intelligent use of the customer data held.  I was battling against marketers that wanted higher mailing volumes rather than more complex personalisation and testing strategies. Initially the best way was to deliver the campaign as they designed and then subsequently to prove how ineffective certain cells performed.

·     I worked very closely with the team of SAS analysts to exploit propensity modelling capability to further improve targeting of campaigns.

Initial development and subsequent management of a customer focused set of business rules of marketing engagement, and a contact strategy which optimised the overall marketing effectiveness to the whole business.

1996 – 1998      Norwich Union Direct Operations Norwich, Norfolk

Business Project Manager (MIDAS)

·     Support to Project Director in preparation of Business Case for MIDAS (Single Customer View) project.

·     Organisation and facilitation of business solution design workshops.

·     Delivery of business processes used by marketing teams covering campaign management and data selection.

·     Responsible to Project Director for overall planning and reporting, including management of the project budget (>£6.0million)

Management & delivery of a training & communication programme covering use of new software tools as well as 'cultural change/customer' training.

I am studying towards an MBA with the Open University Business School, this takes a considerable chunk of my time. In my other free time I take an active role in Norfolk Freemasonry and enjoy cooking and eating out. I enjoy holidays walking and exploring various cultures - I have visited Egypt and India in recent years and my fiancé and I plan our honeymoon in Peru in 2005.

1999 - 2004            Open University Business School   Milton Keynes

Professional Certificate in Management

Professional Diploma in Management

I qualified for the Certificate in 2001 and continued studied the Diploma passing the exams for the Diploma with a Merit in 2004.  After 5 years I have decided to take a break from studying and enjoy more of my time in other activities.  I have the option to restart study and progress to the MBA course at a later date.

1981 - 1987                Thorpe St. Andrew School                  Norwich, Norfolk

GCE 'Ordinary' Level:

·     English (Language), English (Literature), Mathematics, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Technology, Metalwork, General Studies.

GCE 'Advanced' Level:

Chemistry, Biology, Physics.

Norwich Union plc

Human Resources

PO Box 4

Surrey Street

NORWICH

NR1 3NG

Bill Savage  (Amersham Partnership)

Address available on request

Project Director for the Norwich Union MIDAS Project

(has confirmed he will act as a personal referee)