Pleasance House Consulting - Staff - Allan Wilkie

curriculum vitae

Personal Details

Age 50 years as of 02/08/2005 (DOB = 02/08/1955)

Height 6' 1" (1.84m)

Weight 16st 10lbs (234lbs/106kg)

Marital Status Married for twenty-one years to Dr. Stella Clark - (a consultant psychiatrist)

Children Fiona (age 16), Melissa (age 12)

Driving Licence Full, almost clean UK licence issued 08/01/1978 plus international driving experience in Spain, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mexico, Canada and the United States of America.

Nationality Scottish

Hobbies Cricket, golf

Brief Life History

School 1960 - 1967 Freuchie Primary School; 1967 - 1973 Bell-Baxter High School, Cupar, Fife.

College 1973 - 1978 Napier College of Science and Technology in Edinburgh.
BSc (Hons) in Science with Industrial Studies.

Research Work 1978 (April) - 1978 (September) A paid research position at Napier (now Napier University) pending a decision on whether my final year’s honours project would receive a grant to be extended to a PhD thesis. It did, but I had already decided to leave academia and was actively job-hunting for ‘real’ work.

Wm. Low 1978 - 1989 Joined the Methods Department originally and was promoted to manager of it within seven years. Moved from Methods into IT as Systems and Programming Manager, having had responsibility for designing and installing EPOS. Finished up as Business Systems Manager with responsibility for corporate systems development strategy.

MGB 1989 – 31/10/2000 Was recruited directly from Wm Low (a customer) to work on the first implementation of a new central merchandising system for multiple retailers.

Radius Retail Company name change after MGB joined the Radius Group. I continued working on design, development and world-wide implementations of the Retail Systems Architecture package. RSA was a relational database system providing the basis for extensive retail system management and powerful inventory control functionality. Originally developed using Ingres on Unix platforms, it was converted to database independence using GUI front-end, two and three-tier client-server technology. The latest version was re-engineered to run against Ingres, Oracle or SQL Server databases on any Unix or NT platform.

Transatlantic Until November 2000. Another corporate name-change as a result of a management buy-out. I worked in the Milton Keynes Head Office for two years, predominantly in sales and marketing, but still with some system design and customer support responsibilities.

Pleasance House Currently operating on a self-employed basis. Two main contracts completed to date - with Texstyle World in Shettleston, Glasgow and with Bowie Castlebank (Klick Photopoint) also in Glasgow. For Texstyle World I designed and built a Cognos management reporting system and selected and installed an integrated merchandise planning package. I sold the Pleasance House Management Information System to Bowie Castlebank and also implemented a central merchandising system for them.

Education

Secondary School

Bell-Baxter Senior High School
Westfield Road
Cupar
Fife

Period of study 1967 to 1973 inclusive

Qualifications Gained

Year	Qualification	Subject
1970	SCE 'O' Grade	Arithmetic
1970	SCE 'O' Grade	English
1970	SCE 'O' Grade	Chemistry
1970	SCE 'O' Grade	Physics
1970	SCE 'O' Grade	French
1970	SCE 'O' Grade	History
1971	SCE Higher	Mathematics
1971	SCE Higher	English
1971	SCE Higher	French
1971	SCE Higher	Physics
1971	SCE Higher	Chemistry
1971	SCE 'O' Grade	Economics
1972	SCE SYS	Mathematics (Paper 2)
1972	SCE SYS	Physics
1972	SCE Higher	Economics
1972	SCE 'O' Grade	Statistics

Summary Attended six years. Represented school at debating, cricket, soccer, rugby and athletics. School prefect for last two years and captain of school in final year.

Education (Cont.)

College Napier College of Science and Technology
(changed to Napier College of Commerce and Technology,
now Napier University)
Colinton Road
Edinburgh

Period of study 1973 to 1978 inclusive

Qualification Gained BSc. (Hons) in Science with Industrial Studies (A multi-disciplinary degree made up of the following subjects:-

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5
Physics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Chemistry	Yes	Yes
Biology	Yes
Mathematics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Statistics		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Computer Studies	Yes	Yes
Economics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
(Industrial) Sociology	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (Ind)	Yes (Ind)
Psychology	Yes	Yes	Yes
Industrial Relations			Yes	Yes	Yes

Summary The five-year course included two 6-month periods of industrial training.
These were done with EASAMS in Surrey and the Director of Highways in Lothian Regional Council, Edinburgh. The final qualification was not only awarded for successful examination results - the two periods of industrial training had to be completed satisfactorily. Also, four short theses contributed to a twelfth of the total work and the main honours project was assessed as one sixth of the entire course work in the last two years. My honours project was on the application of the mathematical model of hierarchies to industrial management structures. I used Ferranti in Edinburgh as my case study.

Work History

Wm Low & Co. PLC

1978 - 1984 Methods Executive

The Methods department operated like an internal consultancy. Projects were raised at the request of user departments, board directives or on the initiative of the department itself. It had scope across the full range of the company’s operations in Head Office, distribution and transport functions as well as the retail operations. On-going responsibilities included selection of equipment for all branch operations and central warehouses (from POS, weigh-scales, butchery equipment etc. to all materials handling equipment), and ownership of all corporate procedure manuals.

The major projects undertaken during my time in this role were:-

Warehouse Extension

The central distribution facility in Dundee was extended by about 50% to 174,000 square feet in area. My involvement was to arrange for the introduction of products from five major suppliers who had previously distributed directly to the branches. I had sole responsibility for planning the new layout of the warehouse and managing the changeover in terms of the impact on all corporate systems. I was also involved in planning initial orders from the new suppliers as well as re-scheduling distribution and transport functions.

Labour Cost Analysis

A ten-day study was carried out in each of four different branches using an activity-sampling technique. The data was then used as the basis for designing a new management structure. The results of this study were also put to use in a later labour scheduling exercise.

New Distribution Depot

Wm. Low took over Hotco – a small company that ran half a dozen frozen food outlets and a distribution depot in central Scotland. I was given line management responsibilities for the distribution function for the first four months. My remit was to set up all aspects of Wm. Low operating methods, extend the distribution to add the 17 Lowfreeze stores throughout Scotland and to recruit a new permanent manager to run the operation.

Order Balancing

The Methods department had responsibility for all routine stock reorder throughout the organisation. Several interesting small projects were over-shadowed by one which involved introducing variable reorder levels and an element of forecasting on packaged grocery items to help balance workloads in the stores, in the central warehouses and in the transport division.

Range Control

I helped conduct a total review of the grocery stocking range. The project was designed to increase sales, offering customers an improved selection by introducing genuine range extenders (particularly in the smaller stores) – and also to cut costs throughout the company’s operations by de-listing products that did not genuinely add anything to the selection.

Seasonal Sales Forecasting

I designed and managed a huge information gathering exercise one Christmas. Using the data collected, I devised an algorithm to forecast seasonal sales. This was used to generate the orders for all seasonal merchandise in subsequent years. It proved to be extremely successful.

EPOS Implementation

This project was initiated and driven by the Methods department and not IT. I had responsibility for the selection of equipment, system design and implementation. I devised new coding structures, organised source marking with all suppliers of own label products and set up the equipment and systems to handle variable weight (and item count) bar codes. I devised a new cash handling system, introducing individual operator accountability.

I wrote all the training manuals and project managed the entire implementation in the first store which had seventeen scanning lanes and seven additional terminals.

1985 - 1986 Methods Manager

Take-Over

In 1985 Wm. Low took over Laws Stores which was a company based in Gateshead. Part of the management restructuring which took place to cope with this was my promotion to manager of the Methods department. The year was mainly occupied with the introduction of Wm. Low operating methods into the new stores. My department organised a change-over in cash-handling systems and designed and implemented many improvements to labour scheduling and stock re-order mechanisms, including changes to hand-held data capture unit programs which were used in the process of replenishing stores from central warehouses. This also involved a complete corporate re-scheduling as some of the Laws stores were in Edinburgh and we switched supply to the Wm Low warehouse in Dundee, and some of the Wm Low branches were better served by the Laws warehouse in Gateshead.

EFTPOS

I set up Wm. Low’s first pilot site for EFTPOS using Royal Bank of Scotland Switch cards. It also accepted the more common credit cards.

Labour Scheduling

Using the data collected in a previous study, correct departmental staffing levels were specified for stores with different sizes, shapes and turnovers. Staff-scheduling mechanisms were generated to accurately schedule the total resource in the key service departments. Extensive training courses were organised and given.

Conferences

About this time I was invited to speak at conferences like Retail Solutions (EPOS/EFTPOS as it was then) and Retail Profitability. I was also given the opportunity to go to the United States on a study tour. This lasted over a week and involved visits to several different styles of food retailers in St. Louis and Kansas City in the mid-western United States.

1987 - 1988 Systems and Programming Manager

This was my first post in IT. It started with concentrated training courses on the ICL VME operating system, the IDMS database manager, data analysis and design using the ICL Quickbuild methodology and an introduction to programming techniques. Complete responsibility for the company’s in-store systems stayed with me through this move. My staff on the central system side were split into three teams based on functional areas to be supported. The primary objective at that time was to move the company’s systems over from TME to the new VME operating system.

As a first step towards changing the attitudes of a user community who had had everything developed specially for them, a Purchase Ledger package was selected (from MGB Computer Services) and installed by the Finance and Administration team. A new payroll was then selected and taken on board.

The major development was in the Buying and Merchandising area. A comprehensive database was designed for the control of the corporate stocking range, retail pricing and supplier management.

The work of the warehousing team at this time was fairly low-key with the emphasis on supporting existing systems. One small new sub-system was developed to track materials handling tools and a requirement specification for future corporate logistics was drafted.

1988 - 1989 Business Systems Manager

In this position I had responsibility for formulating the longer-term plans for corporate system development. I had to liaise with all user departments and know every aspect of the company’s business. Requirements for new systems were prioritised and their impact on other systems defined. I assisted system developers with high-level design for in-house developments and organized user groups for package selections.

One major project in this time was to automate the completely manual process of branch merchandising by selecting and implementing a space management package.

MGB / Radius Retail / Transatlantic Software Corporation

1989 - 1998 Systems Implementation Consultant

After Wm Low disappointingly failed in an attempt to take over Budgens, I joined MGB. I enjoyed the extra design challenges of a package development environment. A package has to be designed to cater for the needs of all types of retailers so much more extensive market knowledge is required. It is also challenging to ensure that all existing customers have an easy upgrade path when new versions are issued.

I was heavily involved with many customer accounts. I can best document my major projects chronologically, by customer.

AutoWindscreens

When I joined MGB this project had been limping along for some time. There was a proposal to supply POS hardware and software, which had been accepted by the customer. The central system proposal had been changed several times and was currently based on outdated, imported software. My first task was to fully document the user requirement. Once this was done, it became clear that RSA would be the best option for their central system.

AutoWindscreens agreed to the system design specifications I drew up. We supplied POS hardware and software, all communications equipment, a new UNIX central system, RSA with a complete bespoke customer account control module, a LAN to link in to their existing UNIX financial systems and a new package batch control module to manage the flow of data throughout the organisation.

Sock Shop

This was the first customer to make use of the Purchase Ordering and Warehousing modules of RSA. At that time they had a single central distribution centre in Camberley, Surrey which serviced shops throughout the UK, Eire, France and Denmark. They were the first customer to put RSA to the test in terms of international tax-handling, multi-lingual and multi-currency capabilities.

My involvement in this project started on the design side with some enhancements to the Company Structure Maintenance module and amendments to the Product Maintenance module. I oversaw the development in Edinburgh and then spent time on site setting up the overnight communications with RIVA tills. Sales data retrieved each night were immediately processed through the warehousing module to produce picklists in time for the early shift the following day. Branch orders were also auto-generated from the warehouse inventory management module, which used colour and size profiles to calculate initial allocations. The purchase-ordering module used similar devices to specify colour and size breakdowns of a given style once sales statistics were available for the items in the initial order.

Rex Trueform

Rex Trueform are a typical ‘manufacturer turned retailer’. They are based in Cape Town, and are best known for producing gents clothing. When their export business slowed down with sanctions being applied, they moved into retailing a complete range of ladies, mens and childrenswear in ‘factory’ style shops.

They bought POS equipment from ICL in South Africa and having seen RSA on a visit to the UK, they said it was their preferred central system. ICL signed up a dealership agreement and I went off to deliver RSA. In two weeks on site RSA was delivered to the dealer, installed on the customer site so they could start data take-on and I had a specification of requirements for the communications links to the POS.

With two staff from ICL Cape Town and two from the Radius office in Edinburgh, the necessary bespoke code was produced within budget and inside the necessary timescale.

Greatermans

My second sojourn to South Africa was to this Johannesburg-based department store group. I designed an implementation plan to give the client the best immediate and medium term benefits from the investment as well as providing a sound base for their longer-term strategy to be developed on. This project involved the Open-to-Buy and Target Planning modules for the first time.

Kmart Mexico

Kmart International signed up for RSA in Mexico, the Czech republic, and Canada. Mexico was the first one to go live and I was there from mid-September 1993 until the end of May 1994. The first phase was to generate the Functional Requirement Specification in conjunction with our state-side partners Ernst and Young. Some System Design Specification work was followed immediately by on-site support as the first two stores opened at the end of April 1994 and the system was installed and live before Christmas 1993 to capture purchase order information. Deliveries were recorded from January onwards. RSA was also their main back-office system, handling all local ordering, inventory control, EPOS support etc. The main access to in-store RSA was by RF hand-held terminals.

Although there were only two stores and no central distribution facility initially, all the systems were designed with this in mind as part of their business plan involved a move to central distribution once enough stores were open to justify it. I designed all the mechanisms necessary for them to easily set up new store systems so they could get through their intended aggressive store opening plan. Unfortunately the Mexican peso fell on hard times and the routines were only used three or four times before Kmart itself also fell on hard times and the whole international operation was sold off.

Kmart Canada

From July 1994 to September 1995 I was project manager on the first phase of RSA implementation into Kmart’s long-established Canadian operation. They had 130 stores in Canada. Phase 1 introduced RSA as a single point of entry for all master file information used in the business. RSA supplied all vendor, product and price information to their existing systems. The retail pricing module was significantly enhanced to provide competitive zone pricing facilities, future price downloads and improved price change management.

Canadian Tire

The full month of March 1995 was spent setting up and running a conference room pilot for the marketing group within Canadian Tire. This ran concurrently with another pilot that was being set up and run for the logistics group.

A second exercise involved setting up data and performing benchmark tests on the RSA program, which allocates stock from central distribution centres to stores. This involved one week in Toronto and two at the Hewlett Packard performance centre near Boston in July 1995.

J Sainsbury

I did the initial set-up of the Radius Retail part of a pre-sales project run by Olivetti to provide an American POS system (Compris) in the restaurant side of Sainsbury’s business with RSA sitting centrally to support it. This involved high-level design work in certain areas to cope with functionality required in hospitality systems - not a market sector that had been targeted originally.

Nobody beats the WIZ

In early 1996 I handed over the J Sainsbury project to someone else and headed for Newark, New Jersey where Nobody beats the WIZ were based. They ran about fifty outlets in the north-eastern United States retailing electronics (audio, TV, video and computers) plus music, software and games. As part of a small project team on site, I helped finalise the Functional Requirement Specification and started the design phase.

Boymans

Back to Johannesburg for a system implementation in a company that ran four or five department store and menswear fascias throughout the country. This didn’t involve a lot of time on site as the fact-finding and system design part of the mission was simple. I supervised the production of the bespoke code in the Edinburgh office and supported the subsequent implementation remotely from there.

Scotts

Another subsidiary of the South African Breweries conglomerate, Scotts were based in Durban and ran a couple of different ladieswear/footwear fascias in four or five different countries in the southern part of Africa. This was the first NT and Oracle implementation and did involve a fair amount of work on site.

Others

I have had involvement with many other retailers, much of it extending beyond any usual half-day pre-sales exercise.

In the UK I have played a major role in compiling system study reports paid for by customers like the Marshall Group (CTNs) and Budgens (Supermarkets).

I spent a full week speaking to Clicks in Cape Town (an equivalent of Boots the chemist) to analyse their requirements and set up and deliver a demonstration of the system.

I have been to Troy, Michigan to set up and demonstrate the in-store, hand-held systems to Kmart US.

I have worked a couple of days on the Eatons (department stores) customer site in Toronto providing retail pricing system design consultancy.

I was also called in to other projects in the UK and abroad to provide a general "health check" and give some additional direction to the management of the project. This included a week at Kmart Prague and a few days at NORWEB in Manchester.

Chargeable work on "mini-projects" was also done for customers like Stylo Barratt and The Body Shop, where my particular skill set or knowledge was specifically asked for to deal with certain problems that these clients had.

1999 – 2000 Retail Systems Consultant

As part of a major restructuring I moved to the Milton Keynes Head Office to the Sales Department. A week-long course on "Big Ticket" Selling and Presentation Techniques was attended. In the first year I was in the "team" myself as the previous members had all gone. Contracts were signed with AG Stanley (FADS Homestyle), Lillywhites and Rank Holidays (Oasis, Butlins, Haven Holiday Camps and Warner Hotels). Only one sale was made in the second year, to GlynWebb a regional DIY chain. Despite three "successful" sales campaigns, no other contracts were signed, so the whole team was made redundant on 31^st October 2000.

My duties included standard sales department work like chasing leads, producing collateral, responding to Requests For Information and Invitations To Tender etc. In addition I was responsible for all demonstration systems, particularly the new Data Warehouse module which is held in a separate database and is built using the Microstrategy toolset. I attended a formal training course at Microstrategy’s offices in Slough.

I was also the account manager for half of the customer base. The most important parts of this role were to work closely with client senior management, defining and documenting their systems development strategies; feeding their requirements into the development cycle; making them aware of opportunities available in new releases and generally managing their expectations.

2001 – now Retail Systems Consultant

After being made redundant I set up on my own, operating as Pleasance House Consulting. My first major contract was with Texstyle World based in Shettleston, Glasgow.

I assisted them through the selection of a merchandise planning system - Buyers Toolbox from ANT USA. An early part of this project was the provision of some retail consultancy and technical support, allowing the Texstyle World merchandisers to completely re-define the product hierarchy they were using to manage their business. I designed and built an intermediate SQL Server database system to extract transactional data from the legacy AS400 systems, massage it, produce the initial planning database and provide it with the weekly updates it required.

The other major task in this contract was to provide a new Management Reporting System. This was done using Cognos. Several multi-dimensional analysis cubes were built each day to meet different reporting needs. My intermediate SQL-Server database was the main data source as it collected all relevant transactional and structural data from legacy systems, spreadsheets etc. Powerplay Transformer was used to control all Cognos builds, being run automatically to generate cubes with up to 100,000 categories containing over 50 million records. Data could be drilled down to item (style/colour/size) by store by week. Information available included stock, sales (including refunds and promotional sales), deliveries, returns to suppliers, forward commitment, mark-downs, other stock losses and adjustments, store transfers, model stocks and allocated stocks. There were more than three year's history of all these transaction types for 60,000+ products in over eighty stores and three warehouses.

I used Cognos Powerplay to generate a standard set of reports which were run automatically using macros to either print reports or publish them as html for auto e-mailing. Remote users were sent complete compressed reports, but local users got the necessary URLs to let them see the reports on the server. I devised and ran several training courses on Powerplay to teach Texstyle World staff how to do their own ad hoc reporting, realising the greatest possible benefits from the mass of data available to them.

Finally, I provided an extra feed back from the planning system to the Cognos cubes so that "Performance against Plan" reports were available.

After the Texstyle World project finished, I spent some time generalising the management information system so that I could market it as a package. To make this as attractive as possible to potential customers, I spend a couple of days (free of charge) investigating their current systems and producing a fixed-price quotation for the implementation.

The second major project undertaken as Pleasance House Consulting started with the first sale of the Management Information System package. This was to Bowie Castlebank (Klick Photopoint) in Glasgow – an extremely dynamic organisation undergoing immense change because of the global switch to digital photography. It was delivered within the estimated time-scales for the agreed fixed price, payments being based on the schedule that was agreed in the initial terms of reference. I reported directly to the Managing Director while running this project. It incorporated many new features specifically built to cope with the unusual problems faced by this client in its industry sector.

I was retained to lead a connected project to select and implement a replacement merchandising system. I worked very closely with the head merchandiser on this, leading her through the process of defining requirements, identifying likely packages, setting up demonstrations, selecting a system and negotiating the contract. I provided consultancy to the distribution function, making radical changes to warehouse layout, operating procedures and distribution schedules. I set up a technical team to manage the implementation and code some bespoke enhancements to handle business peculiarities like customer special orders.

This project finished recently and I currently have some time available for another retail systems project, although I do spend some time acting as an agent selling a central merchandising system.

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