Tim Nightingale

Adaptive Innovator

PowerPoint is like being trapped in the style of early Egyptian flatland cartoons rather than using the more effective tools of Renaissance visual representation.

Edward R Tufte, Beautiful Evidence
LinkedIn
Resume

An expert in data architecture and analytics.

I have over 24 years experience delivering solutions, with a diverse background in data and analytics across various industries, including medical, telephony, logistics, pharma, retail, manufacturing, and financial sectors. ​

In all projects I emphasise the need of having data that is of high quality and being secure.

I have developed global best practices in migration and security model designs and contributed to SAP certification exams. ​ I have led and supported analytical projects, designed training modules, and presented at numerous conferences. ​

I am passionate about understanding how things work and have explored various fields such as eCommerce, full stack development, and LoRaWAN IoT. ​ I enjoy sharing my knowledge to help others learn and grow. 

Solution Design

Expert

Analytics Development

Proficient

Systems Integration

Proficient

Data Engineering

Proficient

Presentation and Communication

Expert

Business Analysis

Expert

Resume

Analytics Architect

Developing integrated solutions with newer technologies and business models, including LoRaWAN, ecommerce and transport logistics, microcontroller design and IoT, MQTT, web application development, document databases, audio visual broadcasting and editing.

Solutions include a field based monitoring system for the orientation of farm gates (open, closed or damaged) using LoRaWAN radio communication, encoding and compression of data (56 bytes per message), and no moving parts (switches etc...). 

Senior Engineering Lead

I managed the technical rollout of a replacement for an existing analytical product for a UK Government customer, working with a diverse workforce across many locations.

Responsibilties included planning, reporting, resourcing and costing of the project, working closely with the customer to ensure the activities are fully understood.

I also mentored junior colleagues on solution innovation and inception, prototyping, presentation to internal management teams.

BI Principal Consultant

I worked with customer in deploying new applications, including SAP Analytics Cloud, into their existing landscape and BI strategy roadmaps, as well as managing their upgrade to newer versions.

I was involved in many pre-sales activities, ensuring the importance of good data and analytics was not left out of the solution.

I developed innovative solutions combining digital voice assistances, and underlying technology, with large scale dashboards.

Worked closely with sales cycles to bring in new revenue and expand existing clients.

I also presented and attended many user group conferences, sharing practical and honest know-how to the attendees. I was invited back to rpesent several times based on the session feedback. 

Solution Architect

Initially as part of a 'fire fighting team' I then went on to provide skills and knowledge transfer both internally and to customers on all aspects of deploying and running Business Intelligence applications.

I actively developed skills in many technologies, reporting, installation, customisation, troubleshooting, analytics platforms, ETL applications and processes, data modelling and architecture sizing.

I assisted customers in running BICC’s and ensuring security model and the BI Life Cycle processes meet company policies and compliance requirements. I produced global best practices using my hands-on experience for both security model deisgn and lifecycle management processes.

I was invited to develop and reveiw the content for the official SAP certification.

I actively worked within a global cross functional team ensuring successful customer migrations the newer platform, liasing with product management testing any tools being developed and updated. 

I spent 10 years working within the hospitality and licensed trade industry, giving me valuable insights into business management as customer services.

Working in all levels of the industry I managed high turnover and profitable premises, winning three national promotions. Understanding the importance of analytics, I transferred into a Head Office role looking after 22 premises.


I also spent my younger years working in the Management Information department of a regional newspaper, producing reporting around advertising sales, bonus schemes, press run times and weekly management packs.

I am always up for learning something new including; PCB design and fabrication, IoT solutions (sensors, communication & data analysis), lock picking, solving puzzles, graphic design, laser engraving and cutting, business management and ecommerce, LED lighting and electronics, cooking, arts and crafts, cyber security.

I also volunteer at a local community theatre where I help manage rotas, and perform varied roles from duty manager to confectionary seller.

I enjoy the outdoors and am often helping my children understand and respect nature, and how we can learn from it. As a teenager I enjoyed orienteering and still have the navigational sense to know how to get back, letting the children lead the way.

I enjoy photography and should undertake it more often. In the past I have experimented with Infa-red and stereoscopic images. 

Career Highlights

Plant equipment manufacturer

A global manufacturer based in the UK already had an established analytics team. I was bought in to see how we could push their use of data and analytics further, a directive from the Group Chief Information Officer.

The first solution was a touch-based interactive dashboard that would allow management to interrogate the main service KPIs while VIPs were visiting.

Presented on an 80-inch 4K screen, the success led to each director having their own dashboards based on the same principal (faceted filtering instead of hierarchical drilling).

Another success was to help integrate a digital voice assistant (Alexa) with a SAP dashboard that was displayed on an 80 sqm. 4K screen.

Multinational aerospace and defence company

I worked on a team that created a new global dashboard with eight indicators for each of the 54 KPIs for the board. Careful data modelling was necessary for such a design to achieve satisfactory performance for an interactive solution.

I was heavily involved in the performance testing, using scripting and human input scenarios. Being able to monitor the application and client at the same time proved paramount to finding efficiencies.

I also developed and deployed their application security model in line with strict guidelines, covering export control licenses, user access points, etc.

As part of the rollout, I created and delivered user training for both maintenance and users of the solution.

In order to guarantee a coordinated effort from all departments, the project was completed in collaboration with their current suppliers.

SAP/Business Objects - Global Migration Team

In my understanding of the upcoming release while on secondment with Business Objects product management, I mentioned that the upgrade tool they were hoping for would be easier than the complexity of moving from the old platform to the newer one.

As a result, I created protocols, resources, best practices, and instructional materials to help guarantee that clients could migrate successfully. I was one of two technical leads on a multinational team that was established.

I travelled throughout North America, Europe, and Asia training consultants in best practices, and I gave presentations at numerous user and partner conferences. Additionally, it assisted in updating the questions for the SAP certification test.

Regardless of who was performing the migration, Key Account customers would naturally receive extra attention from me as I verified their plans and activities.

I moved to the UK consulting team after the team was disbanded following the successful migrations and upgrades of multiple releases.

Multinational healthcare company

As part of their investment in SAP Analytics solutions, the Swiss-based client had put together a team to be their first BI Competency Centre. A colleague had already visited them and taken them through roles, responsibilities, and structure.

I worked with them to teach them the technical skills to be self-sufficient.

Working with them, I developed their security model, ways of working, life cycle management processes, and development best practices. Each considering the stringent compliance rules they abide by.

We also worked through an upgrade to a newer major release. At this time, there were over 86k global users.

Working with SAP Product Managers, we tested and provided feedback to the upgrade tools so they could be reliable and trusted for a migration of this size.

We ran the migration in 4 increments, one month apart, allowing for BAU. Each period of downtime was limited to 44 hours.

As well as the successful outcomes, the designs, models, scripts, and plans became SAP best practices for SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise.

UK Government Ministry

For each of its directorates, every UK government ministry creates a report pack every month. These were created by combining Excel and manual report analysis, after which the content was copied and pasted into PowerPoint for distribution. While some recipients would have the results printed for them, others would view them on a laptop.

It would take roughly two days to produce each pack, allowing for the inclusion of pertinent commentary and meeting the strict month-end closure deadlines.

The Ministry's SAP ERP systems would serve as the primary source of the necessary data.

I used Web Intelligence (a component of SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise) to come up with a solution that would reuse the rules that were already hidden in the Excel workbooks to generate the report content automatically. Additionally, the necessary commentary was typed straight into the report, and the finished product was exported to PDF format for sharing.

Each report pack would then be updated, examined, verified, and finished in a few hours, not including waiting for the commentary.

Naturally, a great deal of time was saved, and the recipients were not aware of the modifications. This began the strategic shift to improve the Ministry's capacity and response time to all requests by combining data modelling with reporting and analysis.

In subsequent work, I assisted with the analytics strategy, which included using cloud SaaS apps and adhering to data governance and sovereignty regulations set forth by the UK government.