Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert

	Curriculum Vitae
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Peter Thomas has extensive management experience in the insurance, software development, manufacturing and retail sectors, with particular focus on forming a deep appreciation of business / customer needs; developing pragmatic strategies to address these; having a passion for high-quality execution; and understanding the key role of education in enacting cultural and organisational change. While Peter has predominantly been a general IT manager, his recent areas of focus include business intelligence/data warehousing, financial systems, IT strategy formation, IT / Business alignment and Customer Relationship Management systems.

Since January 2011, Peter has been Head of Information at Greene King plc, a leading UK brewer and retailer.

Between September 2009 and December 2010, Peter was Head of Group IT Development at Element Six. Element Six are part of the De Beers family and a global leader and innovator in the field of super-materials. In this position he was accountable for all aspects of IT Development spanning the organisation’s 20 countries and 2,900 staff. These included areas such as Business Intelligence, ERP systems, CRM systems and general applications.

Before this, Peter was the Vice President of Management Information for the International Division of The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. Chubb provide property and casualty insurance for personal and commercial customers worldwide through 8,000 independent agents and brokers. The International Division has premium income of $2.8 billion (23% of the total) and consists of Chubb’s subsidiaries in Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe and Latin America.

In the seven years prior to this, Peter was head of Enterprise IT in Chubb’s European operation. In this capacity, he led the Management Information, Financial Systems, Marketing Systems, HR Systems and Application Integration groups. He was also accountable for Governance and Budgetary issues pertaining to all European IT departments and was a member of Chubb Europe’s Senior Leadership Development programme. He has worked for Chubb for a total of twelve years.

Peter originated the transformational concept of a business intelligence system for Europe. Peter was tasked with developing a strategy to create greater transparency for the region’s performance metrics and then with executing this programme of work. The resulting Cognos-based EMIR system is quoted by Chubb business managers as a major factor in their turnaround effort and establishing new profit records in 5 of the following 6 years. EMIR has won two industry awards and been the subject of multiple interviews and case studies in the European and US business and technology press. Peter has spoken about the factors that led to the success of EMIR at seminars across Europe and North America. EMIR was also recently implemented across Chubb’s Latin American operations.

Peter’s particular skills in cross-functional and cross-regional implementations resulted in his being assigned responsibility for the deployment of Chubb’s Oracle PeopleSoft Financial System to its Asia Pacific operations and the roll-out of several European and US-developed systems across Europe. He also nurtured a strong team of managers who have since moved on to more senior roles within the company, a tribute to his people development skills.

Peter spent the first 8 years of his career in a technology start-up, Cedardata, where he progressed to become an executive. Cedardata (now CoA Solutions) is a UK-based software development, implementation and consulting company with operations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Through developing new and enhanced products, leading major implementations and playing an active role in sales; Peter was instrumental in the company’s turnover growing from £50k to £12m ($20m) and in it floating on the London Stock Exchange.

Peter’s most significant achievement was turning round the project to convert Cedardata’s products to a graphical user interface; work that was crucial to the company’s revenue. He also worked on multi-million pound projects for clients including: BOC, BP Chemicals, Cellnet, Churchill Insurance, Energis, The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Inmarsat, Kuwait Petroleum, NEC, Orange, and The UK AEA; and partnered with organisations such as: Andersen Consulting, BusinessObjects, CAP Gemini, Coopers and Lybrand, EASAMS, Oracle and Price Waterhouse.

Peter earned his BSc. in Mathematics from Imperial College London. His MSc. in Pure Mathematics was intercollegiate; being based at Imperial College, King’s College and Queen Mary College. He specialised in Group Theory. He is a keen rock climber and a member of the British Mountaineering Council.
 

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