sarah horner

Bio Summary

Expert in solutioning and delivering complex £multi-million digital transformation projects that ensure profitability, strong delivery and drive business value. Specialist in change management and improving operational efficiency in organisations so that more time can be spent on serving customers and winning new business. Key strengths include: setting up and leading successful digital change and transformation programmes; identifying problem areas and gaps in existing delivery programmes to provide and implement improvement recommendations; advising teams on scaling, so that they are well structured and have the capabilities to deliver the best outcome for the business; and establishing teams and governance to drive best-in-class delivery.

Employment History

Management Consultant

AND Digital

April 2021 - August 2022

Manchester, UK

Key achievements: • Nike (Product and Delivery Lead - 2 months) – needed support running their EMEA Privacy programme with commitments made for the end of ’22. Engaged to lead AND’s first engagement with Nike, identify the as-is, to-be states of delivery and where the gaps lie. Led an international team of 4 to clarify requirements and scope with Global HQ and commit to and resource a team to deliver the end of year commitments. • Government defence department (Transformation Consultant – 5 months) - committed to a ’25 reorganisation and growth strategy where little delivery progress had been made during ’20 and ‘21. Engaged to drive the delivery required to meet the ’25 goals whilst balancing an increasing level of staff attrition. Understood what work had been done already, the feelings and opinions of those affected by the change and who the key decision makers and agents for change were. Guided the SLT to take ownership and accountability, set up and ran the change network, created a delivery plan with key milestones and accountable owners, and ran and established the required governance. Improved staff satisfaction scores by 20% and their confidence in the transformation programme. • RS Components (Product and Delivery Lead - 6 months) - had established a small team to develop their first digital IoT product. Engaged to train the team on agile best practices, create a product roadmap for the next 3 years, advise on how to scale and grow the team to deliver the roadmap and improve existing operational inefficiencies. Led the team with newly developed capabilities to release the product to 5 customers in Nov’21 with excellent feedback leading to acquiring 2 more customers for the IoT product. • Department for Education (People Consultant - 3 months) - wanted to carry out capability assessments for their staff for the first time to help adjust performance and pay reviews to be more in line with the private sector. Created a tooling options analysis for capability assessments, enhanced the GDS capability framework to reflect the reorganisation of the department and ambitions of technology functions and created policies and processes for a new public/private sector hybrid for performance management.

Program Manager

IBM

July 2012 - April 2021

Manchester, UK

Tasked with growing IBM’s UK Healthcare and Lifesciences practice through building new client relationships, winning new work and creating, launching and managing the IBM Healthcare Cloud campaign. Key achievements: • Led a senior team of 11 SMEs to develop a NHS specific roadmap to cloud including application treatment options, cloud environment designs for each major cloud provider, delivery plan and resource profile. • Created content for and developed and executed a plan and CRM workflow for a healthcare focussed cloud marketing campaign leading the direct marketing with presenting the cloud strategy at internal and external national and international events at C-suite level, generating leads worth $100m for 2H’20. • Formed and built new relationships with multiple C-suite executives (CEOs, CIOs, CDIOs,) across 25+ trusts that IBM previously had no relationship with. • Managed and led a team of 26 resources to respond to Covid-19 requests from NHS organisations. Tasked with moving DWPs application hosting and operations in-house whilst transforming processes, underpinned by modern, high-performing technology driving a culture of performance improvement, collaboration and innovation. Key achievements: • Solutioned the $100m programme utilising my strong technical knowledge across: -IT infrastructure (on-premise and cloud), data migration and application modernisation -Digital transformation methodology incorporating people, process and technology • Managed a team of 60 direct/indirect reports across 7 teams, responsible for a budget of $30m • Developed the digital transformation and change management strategy for the client incorporating the e2e change process across people, processes and technology. • Rapidly re-engineered service management to reduce major incidents and meet SLAs reducing user hours lost per month by 200% in 4 months. • Extensive stakeholder management with senior client representatives to director level (C-suite) • Responsible for the commercials and finance of the programme and improved profit by 4 points for the lifecycle of the programme

Language Skills

English