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Paul Thornton ( Available )
Greenville, South Carolina - 29651 USA
Expertise :Technology Management, Data Center Consult and Build, Prepress and Newspaper background
Status :Citizen
Job Type :
All - W2,1099
Position :Management Occupations, Business and Financial Operations

Resume
 
Summary


Relocation expenses negotiable
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE
Dual citizen : United States and United Kingdom - willing to relocate - US, LATAM or EMEA


Paul is a problem-solver and team-builder with a experience in Infrastructure, Operations, Datacenters and Workflows. He is a dedicated and self-motivated Information Technology Senior Executive with more than 20 years experience in leading and driving both strategic and tactical implementations. Paul has extensive experience in gathering, analyzing and interpreting technical and operational requirements to support Enterprise-wide strategic board level decision-making. He is an innovative leader with a track record of assessing and capitalizing on opportunities to improve efficiency, productivity and profitability in a variety of operational business roles. His diverse experience in deadline-driven, high-availability Tier-3 datacenter environments - - both domestic and international arenas - - enables Paul to manage teams directly whilst working across cultures to motivate others to achieve common goals. Envision the future, make it happen
Strategic Analysis and Planning
Senior Management
Datacenter Operations
Marketing and Business Development
Project Management
Tactical Implementation
Budgeting and Cost Control
Intermediate Spanish
Basic French or Portuguese
Personnel Development
Vendor Negotiations
International Business
Professional Experience and Selected Accomplishments



Employment

2009 -  Present
Consultant

I.T.
Providing consulting services to a vendor of Carts and Grills for a datacenter build-out. In-process of setting up all environmental, power, cabling and space requirements and create a formal company Business Continuity or Disaster Preparedness plan. This is an empty-room build-out that is a Tier-2 datacenter when complete.


2007 -  2009

Carts and Grills Inc Greer , SC
Manufacturer and supplier of ice cream carts, barbeque grills and portable sinks for the mobile catering industry.
Design and develop innovative product line for startup company, creation of the manufacturing process, implementation of a marketing strategy, initiate sales channels and define logistics. Set up Company server with custom Access database for direct marketing and tracking sales leads and Company accounting system Quickbooks. Designed a completely unique battery-powered system - first-to-market in the industry - which is currently under consideration for a patent application. Set up all Search Engine Optimization SEO for Company website to ensure search placement on the first page of results on all major engines.
Fulfilled initial agreement by creating the startup exiting and turning over the Company to a silent partner.


2003 -  2006
Systems Support Manager

Jostens Inc Burnsville , MN

An $850M provider of products, programs and services that help people celebrate important moments, recognize achievements and build affiliations. The Yearbook Printing Division produces over 3 million pages per year on both offset and digital presses.
Reporting to the Director of R and D, a dual-role position that provided leadership and managed the Graphics Systems Support Group 6 direct reports for projects transitioning from an R and D environment to a production environment and team-member researching new products for release and implementation. The GSS group were the SMEs for the entire Printing Plant, covering all datacenter networking, storage, server administration and production application support across 5 Plants nationwide and 1 in Canada. Responsible to the VP Printing for the business direction of all 5 of the Plant Managers from a tactical and strategic perspective - covering organic growth, capacity planning, business continuity and maintenance/service contract requirements. Managed an annual combined budget of $4.6M.
Requested to participate in the Operations Strategic Planning session 6 member team creating a $60M+, 5 - year business growth and implementation plan for the Company.

Received the Legend Award in May 2006 the Company's highest honor for my contributions on this team.
Assessed all new infrastructure equipment needs, obtained capital and purchased equipment servers, desktops, digital presses and network gear for relocating a printing business. Managed and coached staff during installation of the Plant's new production datacenter empty-room build-out and achieved the goal of full production in 6 weeks.
Tasked with reducing cost of the IT service contracts by $200K Secured a new contract with an equal level of coverage without adding to the business risk. Realized a savings of $259k over the life of the new contract.

Challenged with creating a disaster recovery plan for all 5 Plant datacenters around the country since an effective 1 wasn't in existence. Developed and implemented division-wide disaster preparedness plan using cutting-edge replication, backup and restore technology on both disk and tape. Implemented standard workflows to allow the Company to balance Plant workloads across the country at peak production by transferring work data over the WAN OC-3 - improving Business Continuity and recovery options.
Worked directly with an on-staff color scientist to develop and implement standard color management and ink weights for all ICC-compliant devices IGen, Indigo, Xerox proofers, Komori presses and Prinergy workflow in all 5 of the Printing Plants. This ensured pages printed in California would match pages printed in Pennsylvania - and allowed for workload balancing in peak periods by FTP'ing pages to alternate sites. Remote proofing was used by Customer Service Representatives to ensure correctness of transferred pages.
Created an intranet site where all critical documentation technical policies/procedures, workflow standards etc. could be accessed by stakeholders from anywhere in the company.

Inherited a dysfunctional team that had major communication problems. Utilizing a personality assessment tool, assessed individual and team issues, implemented a series of group team-building sessions. Through coaching and team building created a department delivering superior performance by improving their communication skills.

In anticipation of new market penetration, collaborated with Marketing and Operations to research, recommend and purchase Digital Presses. Created a structured implementation plan for a 2 - year period, adding new print workflows and additional presses based analysis and projections to support business growth.
Due to changing business needs, researched and recommended new proofing devices used as part of the core production workflow. Negotiated pricing $420k and implementation schedule to fit business requirements. Improved efficiencies by 20% and realized savings of $500K in 2 years.

As a member of the R and D team, conceptualized and developed an entirely new manufacturing/production workflow in the Printing Plants using both LEAN and six-sigma principles resulting from several strategic planning sessions. Work had begun on this multi-year, multi-million dollar project before my departure.
Led a team on implementation and migration strategy for the Prinergy workflow system, storage system over 210Tb on FC and SATA disk and core server strategy SGI as part of a major $5M upgrade to the Company's infrastructure. Realized increased efficiencies by 15% and cost savings of $180K


1997 -  2003
Technical Operations Manager

Sun Sentinel Newspaper Deerfield Beach , Fl
A newspaper owned by Tribune Publishing with a daily circulation of approximately 260000 serving the South Florida Tri-County area of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
Reporting directly to the VPIS/CTO, provided leadership to Technical Operations Department - the Tier-3 DataCenter over 220 servers on EMC SAN, Sun, Cisco, IBM, Wintel and Avaya and support staff of 14 direct reports and 5 indirect. Responsible for the daily Datacenter operations, depot-level repair of monitors, PC's/laptops and printers and system administration of both the output management core workflow for all film and proofing and human resources personnel records and resume tracking systems. Managed annual budget of $2M

Created a Clarify-based Help Desk by re-training 14 Computer Operators from the Datacenter. Re-wrote job descriptions, constructed cross- training plan with metrics to determine progress. Successfully launched in 3 months with only 2 personnel replacements required to build an effective team. Worked with Telecom administrators to set up ACD's, Hunt Groups etc.
Team-member selected to analyze future business needs and determine best PBX solution to replace the Siemens currently in use. Planned datacenter implementation for migration to new switch Avaya Eclips combined with transitions from 66 - block to 110 block. Assisted in implementation plan for remote shelves in 12 Distribution Centers.
Responsible for the system administrators tasked with supporting the entire print production output workflow Autologic's OMan, proofing and imagesetters. This included technicians supporting imagesetter calibration and consistency to allow page registration and color accuracy across any of the 5 Aii 3850 devices in use for the core newspaper and 2 devices Dolev for the New York Times production.
Tasked with upgrading the voice and data cabling systems in 2 locations with zero downtime. Led the implementation team of 36 people to deliver to deadline and under budget an entirely new cabling infrastructure in collaboration with a network hardware infrastructure upgrade over 2 year period.
Evaluated and selected a potential successor from a pool of staff who had been under-recognized. Coached and mentored an individual to be ready for promotion upon leaving company. Time frame by coincidence was 6 months ; this individual exceeded expectations and 1 year was ready for more responsibility.
Created a structured documentation and change management program to improve communication, document changes to systems and reduce downtime due to human error by 25%. Customer satisfaction grew because users stakeholders became involved in the change management process and understood what changes were being made on Datacenter systems and servers that could impact their business.

Negotiated free Windows training classes for an entire department from the local Community College, saving the company over $70k.


1994 -  1997

Color Technology , Inc Miramar , Fl
Provided consulting services by way of business/workflow analysis and recommendations to customers in Latin America. Import and Export primarily from Europe to Latin America electronic Pre-Press Equipment ; provision of parts in a rapid-response environment to minimize downtime.
Analyzed client's core business production workflows for efficiency, productivity and cost-savings. in a week's timeframe, made recommendations regarding new workflows and software/hardware to fit both their business and budgetary needs. Combining consulting services with equipment sales and support realized new revenue streams for the business.




Education

* MBA Technology Management , University of Phoenix

* BSc Business Management , University of Phoenix .
* Intermediate Spanish ; basic Portuguese and French .
TECHNICAL
Network analysis and design Cisco , Server hardware Sun , SGI , Dell , HP , Atex , EMC/Dell Storage Area Networks SAN , tape backup systems Storagetek , Creo Prinergy workflows , Autologic OMan workflows , CCI page and advertising creation , color and font management , various imagesetters/CTP , scanners and an understanding of telecom/PBX's Avaya . Software includes Veritas , Tivoli , Openview , OpenManage , Clarify , Magic , Sun/Solaris , SGI/Irix , Windows 2k , Macintosh , Creative Suite , Project .



Miscellaneous

Formed international partnerships with independent Pre-Press service engineers and partnered with local service providers. Provided on-site training on Pre-Press equipment in Latin America and acted as technical and business consultant. Brazilian sales grew over $150k in 6 months.
Developed a targeted, culturally specific international marketing plan that resulted in over 400 responses and a 20% revenue increase.
Grew the business in a remote country with major political strife by developing relationships through a local trade show. Partnered with local service engineers to ensure ongoing effective delivery of parts and service under adverse conditions.
Created supply chain of trusted vendors both domestic and international who could be relied upon to deliver goods under negotiated terms in a just-in-time environment.
Created and built a Company website in 3 languages English, Spanish and Portuguese ; performed all maintenance and Search Engine Optimization SEO to ensure placement in the top 20 results on all major engines.
Paul Thornton Page 3




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