PENNY COTTON CURRICULUM VITAE

Learning 365 Online Certified Scrum Master, Project Management Professional (Certificates of Completion) ITIL CoursesITIL Fundamentals V3, Operational Support & Analysis and Release, Control and Validation. Six Sigma Methodology Completion of theoretical portion in the first level of Six Sigma methodology

Software, Database and Application Experience JIRA, CMS Vantive, Service Now, M Smart, HSPM, HPSC, MS Office, AS 400 System, AS 400 System, Tourplan, CTE, Clarify, GOSP, Scants, SDNM, Panorama, BORIS, FRMS, SMART & SOT, Vantive

Optus Technical Training Programs Sydney, AustraliaSept 2004 - Oct 2005

• Optus total technical picture, Optus ATM fundamentals, Optus Frame Relay Fundamentals, Optus internet and TCP IP overview. New Horizons Computer Learning Centre Auckland, New ZealandCertificates of Completion May 1998 - Feb 2000

• Beginning & Intermediate MS Access, FrontPage, Windows 95• Beginning, Intermediate & Advanced MS Word and Excel Toastmasters To improve my presentation and public speaking skills Tr

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Hyde Park High School Johannesburg, South AfricaMatriculation with University Entrance Dec 1987 Technikon Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South AfricaNational Diploma in Personnel Management Jan 1988 - Dec 1991

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Air New Zealand Auckland, New ZealandChange and Release Analyst (Contract Role) - Change Jan 2016 – November 2016

Responsible for Implementing, maintaining & supporting the processes & procedures to manage changes including: • Implementing the change management process by ensuring the correct data entered in the tool permitting analysis, assessment of business impact, risk and the appropriate change control procedure • Access the risk and impact of changes to the group and negotiate scheduling and approval with the business and digital representatives • Negotiating with the platform teams and vendor community to ensure risk of high impact change is mitigated through effective change management• Managing and minimising the impact of changes in a complex digital environment, whilst undergoing the migration to a Dev Ops model and the migration of the change tool from Vantive to Service Now • Providing a responsive and precise coordination service during a period of significant a

change by formulating a robust understanding of the integration touch points and interdependencies of a complex system environment

Expe

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e:"I have over 15 years experience within the IT/Telecommunications Industry, predominantly in staff and customer relationship management within technical complex environments for large corporate companies.”

Air New Zealand Auckland, New ZealandChange and Release Analyst (Contract Role) - Release Jan 2016 – November 2016

The Test Environment Manager is responsible for leading the coordination of the provision, utilisation, and booking of multiple test environments for Projects and BAU teams including: • Liaise with PM’s, Architects, Testers and BAU Leads to understand their test environment requirements, provision new environments• Identify and communicate cross-portfolio dependencies and risks across all IT projects moving through shared test environments.• Negotiating Co-ordination with the suppliers of infrastructure and networks to ensure appropriate environments are established and operating effectively• Run regular Release Management meetings for various strategic highly- changeable

development areas at which key plans are made for code branching, merging and deployments.• Liaise with multiple external support teams to ensure smooth patching, deployments and configuration changes• Manage Test Environment project mapping across test environments.• Liaise with the Test Manager and Test Tools/Regression leads and testers to reduce

Test Environment down-time as much as possible.• Approve all changes for the Test Environments, liaising with technical support teams, testers, change team, developers, PMs as necessary.

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Fonterra Auckland, New ZealandIS Change Manager and Release Manager May 2012 – October 2015 Protection of the live IS environment and its services using an ITIL aligned methodology to govern projects, programmes and changes from a number of different service providers, covering infrastructure and application changes • Governance of release milestones and the associated projects, programs and change• Planning and communicating the rollout of software and infrastructure changes - Release Calendars and scheduling major changes• Furthering the rollout and adoption of Release Management processes and assisting with continuous improvement• Controlling the delivery of changes and managing Release implementations• Managing change delivery and relationships with a wide range of co-located and offshore, outsource partners• Ensuring compliance to Service Transition processes, a with a view to continuously improving these processesEx

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"I have over 15 years experience within the IT/Telecommunications Industry, predominantly in staff and customer relationship management within technical complex environments for large corporate companies.”

Fonterra Auckland, New ZealandIS Change Manager and Release Manager May 2012 – October 2015(continued)

• Release manager for two major infrastructure and software projects including QTAR (timeclock application) and JDE Asia hardware and software upgrades. I devised and planned the release strategy and facilitated the creation of the technical implementation plans in collaboration with our primary vendors (HP, Spark Digital, Datacom, HCL) and other secondary vendors, as appropriate

•Release manager on project EPIC, an SAP related software change that involved server builds as an infrastructure part of the solution. This project was initiated to install automated invoice scanning and payment to our suppliers and involved considerable engagement with SAP release managers and assistance in scheduling the SAP major release.

•Review all infrastructure and application changes scheduled by HP, SPARK digital, HCL and other software vendors and provided advise to the business around both the business and technical impact of these changes on our production environment and ensured that adequate testing had been conducted in our non production environment to mitigate risk

•Conducted weekly CAB meetings each week and assisted the service delivery managers to make informed and appropriate decisions around the acceptance or refusal of implementation of changes.

•The last approval point protecting our production environment from any negative or unplanned impact Expe

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Fonterra Auckland, New ZealandProject Manager Oct 2010 to May 2012 • Project Managed small to medium sized projects (under 100,000 and/or technically

complicated or requiring tasks to be undertaken by more than one vendor) by ensuring that the appropriate day to day management of project management processes and procedures • Facilitate the effective and efficient assignment, management and completion of project requests with nominated vendor's, within the Fonterra environment• Implementing service delivery quality improvement through Fonterra’s internal and external service provider groups• Introduction and creation of an Access Database to reduce repetitive administration tasks for the Fonterra Non Standard Request team, resulting in a significant reduction in end to end cycle time for project delivery • Efficient implementation of customer impacting changes, including updating BSC forms to include achievable lead time and conducting lunch box sessions with the Service Delivery teams • Engagement with all of the Service Owner resources to ensure that all quotes received are in line with agreed project financial agreements• On-going relationship building with our stakeholders, vendors, and internal Fonterra customers to foster understanding and the desire to work towards the same customer outcomes • Examples of these projects include a 150 seat site move in Singapore and an IOS upgrade of all Cisco routers in our environment

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Telecom New Zealand Auckland, New ZealandService Support Manager August 2007 to June 2010

• Managing a large team of direct and indirect reports, to a total of 34 people.• Internal and external Stakeholder management of Gen-I, Wholesale, TNZI,

Chorus, Datacraft & ISP’s• Leadership of customer incident resolution for the assure process, including the implementation and on-going management of improvement plans • Staff work allocation planning, quality and productivity Delivery against SLA’s for customer incident queues• Identifying staff development requirements within the Assure Team and proving the relevant coaching or facilitating the appropriate technical training.• People leadership across Tier Two senior technical staff, with a focus on staff development and performance management• Develop the strategy and approach for managing both operational relationships with customer facing teams and developing and implementing specific approaches to improving customer satisfaction in collaboration with internal stakeholders• Build staff engagement by demonstrating effective leadership behaviour while continuing to select, develop, motivate, reward and retain

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TelstraClear New Zealand Auckland, New ZealandProject Co-Ordinator (Contractor Position) June 2007 - August 2007 • Co-ordination of implementation of network monitoring software project, in conjunction with internal and external stakeholders,• Assistance to project resources manager, engaging contractor resources and assisting Head of Projects with support functions as prescribed

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Datacom Services Auckland, New ZealandTeam Manger - Microsoft Services Nov 2005 to June 2007

• Encourage all members of the team to maximize their potential through continual growth and development• Conduct ‘One on Ones’ with direct reports, provide immediate feedback on all performance metrics as specified by the Microsoft statement of work• Introduce new information or campaign activity to the team, within the framework

of current resources and financial feasibility• Act Processing of staff wages and make suggestions for salary reviews and ensuring

effective management of the team• Involvement and attendance to disciplinary process meetings and creation of formal documentation• Creation of employment documentation and respond to enquiries in regards to employment contracts or working conditions• Ad hoc meetings with agents to ensure that any issues experienced by an agent are

dealt with appropriately• Escalate any tools or process issues to the appropriate parties for resolution; provide suggestions on possible solutions, if applicable• Analyse daily call statistics and manage solutions to ensure future rectification on any missed metrics• Maintain appropriate staffing levels to achieve prescribed tasks and phone volumes• Queue Management and monthly client reporting and invoicing, resolve any billing

enquires for the client with communication with the accounts team

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Datacom Services Auckland, New ZealandTeam Manager - Microsoft Services Nov 2005 - June 2007

(continued)

• Ensure clients statement of work requirements are attained• Resolve customer escalations, either directly with the client or through the response management process• Manage and ensure completion of emails sent through to email aliases within the allocated KPI time frames• Manage and ensure completion sufficient call monitoring sessions are completed by

the end of each week• Organize and present at monthly company meeting, attendance to weekly management meeting, ANZ team managers meeting• Follow up and resolve any Telephony, IT or warehousing issues with internal staff • Project lead from a stakeholder perspective on the migration from SDG Vantive to HP Service Manager and HP Service Centre across the wider assure team, this included training, testing,

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Singtel/Optus Sydney, AustraliaGlobal Services Delivery Engineer Sept 2004 - Oct 2005 • Act as an interface between Optus and the rest of the Singtel Group in order to achieve a consistently high standard of service delivery• Proactively monitor delivery milestones, ensuring that delays in delivery are escalated if deemed necessary• Allocate technical network parameters for ATM, Frame Relay, ILC and IP• Act as a central point of co-ordination of new Australian local loop implementation,

including all international circuits for customers• Interface with local network operations/sales and service providers for circuits both

into and out of New Zealand.• Continually maintain a high level of global product knowledge and understand the

technical delays, to the extent of being able to provide effective solutions in avoiding or resolving the issues causing the delay• Co-ordinate between domestic and global operations organisations to provide on time end to end circuit connectivity to customers • Recognise delays before they occur and intervene with a solution to bypass risk• Accurately record all technical information for on going customer support once the

service has been provisioned• Manage complex delivery operational issues by interpreting options and negotiate

a resolution• Refine and shorten delivery times via process review• Build and maintain strong relationships with Optus sales, service delivery and GSDT• Build technical knowledge to fully understand all issues that may cause delay in deliveryEx

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United Medical Protection Sydney, AustraliaPortfolio Services Officer Nov 2003 - Sept 2004 United Medical Protection Sydney, AustraliaCall Centre Operator (Contract Position) July 2003 - Nov 2003

TelstraClear Auckland, New ZealandCustomer Relationship Manager July 2001 - July 2003Customer Support Co-Ordinator

• Responsible for all fault and MAC (Moves, Adds or Changes) escalations, in regards to our allocated corporate clients• Drive and implement necessary process alterations, to ensure adherence to the service level agreements between the company and the client• Maintain and enhance customer relationships ensuring that complex service issues

are effectively resolved• Ensuring adherence by contracted third parties to ensure that Standard lead times are adhered to• Assist the faults team with any queries that they may have in regards to specific communications solutions in order to facilitate fault resolution• Establishing and maintaining an effective relationship with corporate clients by ensuring their needs are met while managing their expectations.• Facilitate and manage the implementation of • Customer services, ensuring that they receive a premium service experience from the company

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TelstraClear Auckland, New ZealandCustomer Relationship Manager July 2001 - July 2003Customer Support Co-Ordinator

(continued)

• Support the sales and account management processes by providing advice and assistance• Ensuring delivery of customer solutions and the resolution of any service or technical issues that may arise• Responsible for the presentation of accurate and complete customer bills, while supporting and resolving any billing issues that may arise• Active involvement in pre – implementation planning and implementation of the customer’s products, including but not limited to voice, data, Internet, IP or mobile• Providing proactive and reactive support to customers, by ensuring that they receive premier service in regards to queries, faults, bill analysis and product features

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WorldXchange Communications Auckland, New ZealandCustomer Care Co-Ordinator October 1999 - July 2001 • Administration and reporting for Customer Care call centre including creation and organisation of roster and ensure that associated customer care tasks are completed within required timeframes.• Problem solving and troubleshooting to ensure that team members have the necessary equipment and processes to complete their assigned tasks.• Staff training as deemed necessary.• Solving and evaluating customer complaints.• Assistance to sales staff in resolving Issues with carriers and system based queries.• Reporting sales and usage reports for external agents.• Assistant and 2nd in charge to Call Centre Manager.

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