SUE CURRIE
Sue is a pragmatic and innovative change expert who has spent 30 years planning and delivering complex projects that have helped businesses of all sizes reduce costs and drive growth. She has managed large, international teams delivering multi-million dollar project portfolios at Global Fortune 50 companies as well as set up operations for start-ups from scratch. She has a broad range of skills, from strategic planning through to hands-on project delivery, and her experience spans multiple industry sectors.
Sue started out managing supply chain and operations teams at a manufacturing company before moving to Accenture where she scoped and delivered large-scale, complex change programmes for a number of multi-nationals. Managing transformation across multiple industries and business functions gave her an in-depth perspective on how P&L improvements can be achieved through implementation of the right IT tools aligned with process and organisation structure changes.
This knowledge, and the ability to translate between business and IT, led an international technology company to offer her the IT Director role at a new business unit, where she set up and ran IT for Scotland before moving to the European HQ to manage multi-million dollar IT projects. She was then asked to become the Operations Director for a software startup, where she learnt how to convert strategy into operational plans, setting up and running all aspects of operations and managing the P&L. She has supported several other start-ups as an independent consultant.
She returned to large corporate roles when she was recruited by a global bank to manage a team of 250 people running a $180m programme of over 80 projects to deliver annual savings of $100m across all aspects of IT. From this position, she was headhunted by BP to manage their $1bn p.a. global IT Investment portfolio. In this role she ensured that all IT investments, comprising more than 1000 projects, delivered the expected return. She was also responsible for the training and development of the global team of 650 IT project managers and implementation of state-of-the-art project management tools.
Brief Career Highlights
Sue, who is based in Edinburgh, has a BA and an MA in Physics from Cambridge University
She also has a Post Graduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Cambridge University
She has held the following roles:
Head of Investment Planning and of the Global Project Management group for IT at BP (7 years)
Programme Director at a global bank (3 years)
Strategic Consultant working with a number of startups (3 years)
Operations Director at a software startup (3 years)
IT Director at a Fortune 100 technology company (3 years)
Supply chain and logistics consultant at Accenture (3 years)
Supply chain and manufacturing operations roles at a manufacturing company (6 years)
Major Achievements and Other Roles
Increased the return on IT investments at BP by choosing the right projects for the $1BN p.a. investment and improving project delivery. As an example, just one change saved $9M
Delivered on-target savings of $18m in 10 months through a major change programme of over 80 projects
Set up and ran Development and Operations for two startups, helping them get from initial idea to successful external funding
Improved the productivity of a global team of 650 project managers by elevating their skill set and implementing the right project management tools
Set up an IT Support capability replacing a siege mentality with a customer-focused culture, while stabilising systems and increasing their availability from 80% to 99.4%
Member of the Knowledge Strategy Committee for the University of Edinburgh
Mentor for the Cambridge University mentoring program
Sue is a Six Sigma Black Belt
Specialist areas:
Large scale change management
Structuring and improving processes, organisations and systems
Delivery of multiple complex concurrent projects
Portfolio management of business investments
Converting strategy into realistic actionable plans
Delivering and managing IT as a business enabler