Craig Gardner is an experienced interim IT professional specializing in IT transformation, service delivery, digital marketing, and leadership. He has held interim head of IT roles at several large UK companies, including Whitbread, the Metropolitan Police, Value Retail, LateRooms Group, MoneySupermarket, Arqiva, Trinity Expert Systems, Punch Taverns, and Caudwell Group/Phones 4U. In these roles, he delivered results such as cost savings, improved service levels, recovery of failing programs, and organizational improvements.

1. 1
CRAIG GARDNER
Craig-Gardner00@hotmail.co.uk
Jacobs Cottage
Halmonds Frome
Worcester
Worcestershire
WR6 5AX
Mobile: 07766 226662
_____________________________________________________________________
I am a tough and very experienced board level interim IT professional with extensive
knowledge across all market sectors. My primary focus is towards IT Transformation, service
delivery and operations, ecommerce and digital marketing and I pride myself on bringing
leadership, clarity of message and consistency of direction to every team and business I am
fortunate enough to work with. I possess excellent leadership, commercial and
communications skills and have a huge passion for both my professional and personal lives.
TRACK RECORD
Whitbread PLC
May 2015 to February 2016.
Whitbread is the name behind many popular and successful high street brands. With 2500
Costa Coffee, 705 Premier Inns and 425 stand lone restaurants the business has a combined
turnover of £2.6 Billion and enjoys profits of £450 Million.
Head of Service Delivery (Interim reporting to Head of Technical Services)
 Responsible for operational trading capability of the Whitbread estate.
 Management of 200 disparate suppliers including £15 Million outsource agreements.
 Renegotiated key supplier agreements delivering reduced costs and significantly
improved SLA’s for group wide Wi-Fi and O2 services to over 1000 hotels / restaurants.
 Orchestrated new hotel opening process to improve delivery reduce lead-time by 40%.
 Resurrected a stalled high profile programme and obtained full board funding.
Metropolitan Police
September 2014 to April 2015
After New York the “Met” is the worlds second largest police force with over 35,000 warranted
officers and 10,000 civilian support staff protecting over 8.5 million people within London and
safeguarding the capital city.
Head of Infrastructure Services (Interim reporting to Services Director)
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Responsible for all infrastructure and associated networks across 450 locations.
 Managed £80 Million plus outsource including extensive offshore support via Cap Gemini,
ATOS etc.
 Delivered £7 Million financial year budgetary cost savings in 6 months.
 Recovered stalled and flawed business critical SEG technology migration programme.
 Senior sponsor for new SIAM sourcing model breaking up 3 year prime partner led
triumvirate outsource agreement of Cap Gemini, Unisys and BT.
 Senior sponsor for CRE (Corporate real estate) migration programme for NSY (New
Scotland Yard) technology migration post sale of location.
Value Retail PLC
January 2014 to July 2014

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Value Retail creates and operates luxury retail villages across Europe and China. Running
ten separate locations populated exclusively with premium brands it delivers a luxury outlet
shopping experience unrivalled anywhere else. The villages are must visit international
shopping destination for European and Global visitors.
Head of Service Delivery (Interim reporting to CTO)
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Reduced business critical outages to offer SLA’s and high levels of availability.
 Managed extensive outsource agreement via Zensar Technologies both on and offshore
resulting in cost reductions of 18%.
 Introduced automated tool sets such as Caspar, SCCM, SNOW etc.
 Created a centralised IT Risk Register and gained board awareness and sponsorship.
 Created a Service Improvement Programme to address risks for a total of £3 Million.
 IT Exec Sponsor for Office365 migration and full LYNC collaborative programme.
 IT Exec Sponsor to choose a Cloud platform partner for business transformation.
 Implemented a new ServiceNow platform with all requisite ITIL processes.
LateRooms Group
June 2013 to December 2013
LateRooms was the first to market hotel availability and comparison website and now
combines its UK operation with high volume growth brands including AsiaRooms and
Malapronta. As with all ecommerce organisations the emphasis is on continuous innovation
and a sublime customer experience.
Service Delivery Director (Interim) reporting to CTO / MD
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Brought stability and control to an influx team post failed technology projects.
 Negotiated a £2 Million cash rebate on a newly signed offshore outsource contract (26%).
 Removed 20% FTE costs and created a new leadership team from internal candidates.
 Created a technology programme stability plan and 10 FTE Tiger Team to resolve 85
outstanding high priority incidents impacting trading platform availability.
 Introduced service availability KPI’s and improved them by 18% throughout tenure.
 Introduced NFR’s (none functional requirements) to reduce page load time / tagging etc.
Michael Page
December 2012 to May 2013
Michael Page is Europe’s largest recruitment organisation which covers all market sectors
and industries and is operational in 40 countries globally. It provides the benchmark by which
all other recruitment businesses are measured.
Service Delivery Director (Interim) reporting to the CTO
 Stabilised and reorganised a team of 70 delivering services to EMEA region raising key
performance measures by 28%.
 Delivered new service management and systems administration functions with no
additional headcount growth.
 Introduced critical ITIL process management against a global framework.
 Delivered a Master Services Agreement for outsource alignment of £35 Million PA for 5
years contract.
MoneySupermarket
December 2010 to December 2012

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Built on true business and technological innovation, MSM is an ambitious growth orientated
company which operates in 'internet time' and was the UK’s first on line aggregator and works
to deliver a great deal across 54 commercial channels to the UK public.
Digital Programme Director (Interim) reporting to the CEO
June 2012 to December 2012
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Assigned personally to work for the CEO to recover a failing digital technology change
programme.
 Re-platformed PPC (Pay per Click) provider for first time in 10 years managing £30
million of revenue.
 Led a team of IT subject matter experts to choose world class vendors for:
(DMP) Data Management, (DSP) Demand Side and (AMP) Attribution Management
Platforms.
 Delivered the new technology stack 20% under budget for operating year.
 Implemented essential revenue and profit protection measures.
Head of Service Delivery (Interim) reporting to the Chief Technology Officer
December 2010 to May 2012
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Improved key service indicators by 40% across provide and assure.
 Reduced operating costs by 19% (800K) by consolidating and re negotiating agreements.
 Reorganised and re-energised Service Delivery to provide additional staff capability.
 Introduced key ITIL processes for Change, Incident, Problem, Capacity and Demand.
 Created business case for MS EA Agreement and full hardware refresh Windows 7.
 Led and developed management team through mentoring and 360 feedback process.
Arqiva
January 2010 to December 2010
FTSE 100 organisation responsible for the broadcast of TV and radio services to the UK
population via their extensive national transmission infrastructure. Sole partner engaged by
National Government to deliver the Digital Switch Online programme for Digital Britain.
Head of Business Support (Interim) reporting to Operations Director
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Deputy for Operations Director for leave managing 650 staff.
 Introduced Key Performance Indicators for 450 field operations staff.
 Major Incident Process chair for Operations for business continuity / high risk failures.
 Responsible for all share holder monthly reporting and presentation content.
 Chaired continuous improvement programmes for TV and radio technologies.
 Owned key snagging processes for DSO initiated site transformation.
Trinity Expert Systems
July 2008 to December 2009
Windsor Life is owned by SwissRe the world’s largest reinsurance organisation and manages
life insurance policies on behalf of 20 million people in the United Kingdom across multi-site
locations.
Services Director (Interim) reporting to Chief Executive Officer
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Recovered account from 90 day severance notice given by the client.
 Budgetary responsibility of £15 million and headcount of circa 150.
 Implemented PMO for new Business Projects revenue stream.

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 Running UK’s largest closed book life policy data migration programme for Aviva UK.
 Created ITIL Compliant new Production Services Department for 4000 users.
 Implemented new Governance Compliance and Audit department.
 Delivered new Tier 4 Data Centre from Greenfield site build for 99.995% availability.
Punch Taverns PLC
May 2006-February 2008
United Kingdom’s largest licensed premises retailer with over 8500 public houses,
restaurants, leisure centres and hotels.
Head of Service Delivery (Interim) reporting to Chief Information Officer
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Responsible for all aspects of IT Service Delivery including all applications, databases,
VoIP telephony, contact centres and all networks connectivity.
 Reduced Priority 1 & Priority 2 faults by 1000% & reduced operational downtime by 95%
through appropriate controls & investments.
 Managed separate “in-sourced” & outsourced contracts for leased and managed
businesses.
 “Accidental” Infrastructure architecture gained from numerous acquisitions from Dell,
Compaq, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sun etc.
 Applications such as Oracle PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes,
Payroll, HR, SalesTalk, internets, intranets etc.
 Responsible for all telecoms connectivity to retailers and external network links from
vendors such as Cisco, Nortel, 3Com, Lucent etc.
 Created disaster recovery plans, processes and business continuity groups including full
off site disaster recovery rehearsals with established business SLA /OLA’s.
Caudwell Group / Phones 4U
2002 – March 2006
United Kingdom’s second largest mobile phone retailer with over 450 retail outlets.
Named as retailer of the year for 2000, 2001, and 2002.
Service Delivery Director reporting to Group Finance Officer
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Managed retail estate as a full outsource contract for IT estate strategy support and
direction, property, staffing levels, security, reporting etc.
 Introduced Cash back redemption scheme through outsource fulfilment partner.
 Full commercial ownership for negotiation and operational integrity of delivery from UK’s
6 network operators.
 Team management of 150+ staff and budgetary responsibility of £14M CAPEX and
OPEX.
 Construction of centralised business contact centre tasked with all aspects of service
delivery and stores ability to trade.
 Re-engineering of Customer Services providing industry leading service and new Customer
Excellence initiatives.
Ntl: Business
1999-2002
Providers of outsource service management for all enterprise managed service clients
utilising products and services currently available within the ntl: telecommunications and
information technology portfolio.
Senior Service Delivery Manager reporting to Networks Director
Responsibilities / Achievements
 Service ownership of outsource revenues in excess of £50M for EMEA Retail sector.
 Personal ownership of EDS ExCeL Centre contract valued at £18M per annum.

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 Multinational contract's for Deutsche Bank, Crédit Suisse, Barclays etc.
 Group controller of SLAs / OLA’s and adherence to contractual obligations.
 Responsible for itSMF / ITIL / BSI15000 early adoption participation.
EARLIER CAREER
1993-1999
 Orange plc.
 Cable and Wireless Communications.
 Phoenix IT Services.
EDUCATION
1987 - 9 O'Levels, 8 CSE's - Kings Norton Boys School.
PERSONAL
 Date of Birth: 16/05/70.
 Married & father of two.
 Health: Excellent.
 Full Driving Licence.
HOBBIES & INTERESTS
 Extensive Reserve and regular Armed Forces Service.
 Physical team / adventure challenges.
 Marathon running, endurance sports.
 Long distance swimming.
 Rugby coaching.