Me in 50 words
Inspiring, Excellence, Honesty, Integrity, Respect, Vision, Insight, Forthright, Fairness, Openness, Change, Value, Passionate, Thought, Workaholic, Loyal, Committed, Team-Player, Leadership, Motivated, Challenging, Articulate, Techie, Salesman, Strategist, Consultant, Proj/Prog Manager, Social-Media, Systems, Process, Technology, People, Travel, Solutions, NGOSS, OSS/BSS, eTOM, Culturally-aware, Father, Husband, Rugby, Outdoors, Rioja, Chianti, Amorone, History, Art, Blue-sky, Laughter, Fun.
Personal Summary
My name is Rory Murray, I'm (ah-hem) "40-something" and I live in South London with my wife, 3 kids and a dog, so I'm not this Rory Murray, because she's far more attractive than me and American.
Introduction
I'm a Technology Consultant - my career started in Sales in the early days of desktop computing (big boxes, green screens and DOS) and I discovered that I understood the underlying technologies, but was able to explain them in plain and simple English, when most people were burying customers and colleagues alike in buzzwords and acronyms. As technology advanced into local area networks (LANs) and on to wide area networks (WANs), the possibilities to revolutionise the way people and companies worked became more exciting and in 2000 I moved into Telecoms, working for Nortel, managing a number of large accounts (e.g. Royal Dutch KPN, France Telecom and Telecom Italia), looking after the systems that manage the network - called Operational Support Systems "OSS" (the back-end systems that make the network work) and Business Support Sytems "BSS" (the customer-facing systems, like CRM and Billing).
Background
When the Telecoms market crashed spectacularly in 2001/2, I left Nortel and went back to my roots in IT systems, where I managed the implementation of the Malawi Government's new IFMIS Financial System on behalf of the World Bank. When that was done, I came back to the UK and, after a short time working for DEFRA on their financial system implementation, I started my company Atholl Consulting Ltd and resumed my career in Telecoms. For the last 5 years I have worked as a Consultant with a variety of Vendors, Telcos, Value Added Service Providers and Offshore companies to create and deliver solutions that improve the profitability and efficiency of Telecoms companies. In this time I've had the pleasure of working with Portugal Telecom, France Telecom, Cable & Wireless, BT - Retail, Wholesale, Openreach and Exact, Bahrain Telecom, Umniah, BSkyB and others on a variety of technology transformation, product development/delivery and service improvement programmes.
What makes me tick
I'm passionate about making things work better - from childhood I've always enjoyed solving problems and fixing things. I get my kicks from working with companies and people to change things that don't work well into solutions that make a tangible difference to the way companies and people deliver services to their customers. My gift is being able to rapidly understand what's wrong - the root cause, not just the obvious symptom and then create and deliver solutions that remedy the issues.
Social Media Expert
In addition to my Technology career, I'm fascinated by, and hugely enthusiastic about, the potential that Social Media and Social Networking offer to change the way we engage and collaborate via the web to a greater degree than mobile phones did for how we stay in touch with family, friends and colleagues during the 90's. I believe we are at the start of a revolutionary period that will change the way we communicate and work together, using a wealth of web-based tools, platforms and services. The advent of high-speed mobile networks will change the way we do things forever within the next few years, making all these services and applications (e.g. Cloud Computing, Software as a Service "SaaS", etc) available to us pretty-much anywhere, which is an amazing possibility!!
Social Networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Ecademy, Naymz, Twitter and many others (too many to name here!) are already changing the way we interact with people we may never meet, market ourselves and our companies and sell products and services - I guess this site proves that too!
More specifically, the ability for anyone to start a Blog, or a website, to articulate their ideas, concerns, sell products, market themselves and be found on search engines like Google has already turned the accepted concepts of marketing, like Porter's 5 Forces on their heads. My blog - "Return on Relationships" talks in detail about some of these aspects and how to leverage them.
The basic concept behind Return on Relationships is that the old Return on Investment model is fundamentally changed in a networked economy, because the most significant investment is in building relationships and collaborative partnerships and a Reputation in the Marketplace, which means you can be found for your expertise, products or services, whether by searching online or by asking around your own network. This means that the old paradigm of Return on Investment (ROI) becomes a Return on Relationships (ROR).
Introduction
I'm a Technology Consultant - my career started in Sales in the early days of desktop computing (big boxes, green screens and DOS) and I discovered that I understood the underlying technologies, but was able to explain them in plain and simple English, when most people were burying customers and colleagues alike in buzzwords and acronyms. As technology advanced into local area networks (LANs) and on to wide area networks (WANs), the possibilities to revolutionise the way people and companies worked became more exciting and in 2000 I moved into Telecoms, working for Nortel, managing a number of large accounts (e.g. Royal Dutch KPN, France Telecom and Telecom Italia), looking after the systems that manage the network - called Operational Support Systems "OSS" (the back-end systems that make the network work) and Business Support Sytems "BSS" (the customer-facing systems, like CRM and Billing).
Background
When the Telecoms market crashed spectacularly in 2001/2, I left Nortel and went back to my roots in IT systems, where I managed the implementation of the Malawi Government's new IFMIS Financial System on behalf of the World Bank. When that was done, I came back to the UK and, after a short time working for DEFRA on their financial system implementation, I started my company Atholl Consulting Ltd and resumed my career in Telecoms. For the last 5 years I have worked as a Consultant with a variety of Vendors, Telcos, Value Added Service Providers and Offshore companies to create and deliver solutions that improve the profitability and efficiency of Telecoms companies. In this time I've had the pleasure of working with Portugal Telecom, France Telecom, Cable & Wireless, BT - Retail, Wholesale, Openreach and Exact, Bahrain Telecom, Umniah, BSkyB and others on a variety of technology transformation, product development/delivery and service improvement programmes.
What makes me tick
I'm passionate about making things work better - from childhood I've always enjoyed solving problems and fixing things. I get my kicks from working with companies and people to change things that don't work well into solutions that make a tangible difference to the way companies and people deliver services to their customers. My gift is being able to rapidly understand what's wrong - the root cause, not just the obvious symptom and then create and deliver solutions that remedy the issues.
Social Media Expert
In addition to my Technology career, I'm fascinated by, and hugely enthusiastic about, the potential that Social Media and Social Networking offer to change the way we engage and collaborate via the web to a greater degree than mobile phones did for how we stay in touch with family, friends and colleagues during the 90's. I believe we are at the start of a revolutionary period that will change the way we communicate and work together, using a wealth of web-based tools, platforms and services. The advent of high-speed mobile networks will change the way we do things forever within the next few years, making all these services and applications (e.g. Cloud Computing, Software as a Service "SaaS", etc) available to us pretty-much anywhere, which is an amazing possibility!!
Social Networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Ecademy, Naymz, Twitter and many others (too many to name here!) are already changing the way we interact with people we may never meet, market ourselves and our companies and sell products and services - I guess this site proves that too!
More specifically, the ability for anyone to start a Blog, or a website, to articulate their ideas, concerns, sell products, market themselves and be found on search engines like Google has already turned the accepted concepts of marketing, like Porter's 5 Forces on their heads. My blog - "Return on Relationships" talks in detail about some of these aspects and how to leverage them.
The basic concept behind Return on Relationships is that the old Return on Investment model is fundamentally changed in a networked economy, because the most significant investment is in building relationships and collaborative partnerships and a Reputation in the Marketplace, which means you can be found for your expertise, products or services, whether by searching online or by asking around your own network. This means that the old paradigm of Return on Investment (ROI) becomes a Return on Relationships (ROR).