Steve Lewis

ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company)

US Oil & Gas multi-national (1999 Mkt Cap: $26Bn, Revenue: $13Bn)

Head of I.T. (Europe, Africa & Central Asia), 1998 - 2000

Reporting to the UK Managing Director and to the US-based Corporate CIO. Responsible for an international I.T. staff of up to 50, an annual budget in excess of £15m and for the provision of all I.T. services across 30 sites in Algeria, Pakistan, UK, Turkey, Mozambique, Gabon, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moscow, varying in size from 1 to over 300 users.

Leadership

• Led geographic IT integration programme for ARCO's global assets outside the US (>80 sites across Europe, Africa, South East Asia and Latin America) for its 1999/2000 merger with BP Amoco. Identified cost synergies in each location, planned office closures and relocation of staff and systems, re-configured WANs, and identified all data.

• Managed Y2K programme for all operating companies in the region. Established project managers and teams for each location, provided project guidance, monitored progress, and carried out peer reviews internally and with third parties.

Service Management

• To support the business need to set up small offices in remote third world locations at very short notice, developed architecture and processes to support an "Office in a Box" fast small office deployment. Solution included design of WAN and LAN, together with multi-function servers and procedures for storing, shipping, implementing, and remotely supporting the environment. Developed a methodology for pricing a range of service levels.

IT Infrastructure

• Implemented the UK's first CISCO-based international virtual private data network over the Internet. Reduced WAN operating costs by 50% and improved network performance by 400%.

• Developed the company Lotus Notes environment into a full service Domino-based Intranet. Established data workrooms to capture documents and to archive knowledge from personal e-mail. Converted existing Lotus Notes applications including company bulletin board, resource reservation system, address book etc. to web applications.

• Developed a common PC Client "build" architecture to significantly improve the efficiency of building and maintaining networked PCs. Deployed Windows 2000 PCs (completed pilot deployment in 2000 Q1 with full deployment planned for 2000 Q3). Architecture provided support for "fat" and "thin" clients (using Windows Terminal Server), Lotus Notes 5.0, Office 2000 and support for PDAs. Incorporated PC-mobility technologies previously developed by the ARCO team and adopted by Symantec into their Mobile Essentials product.

Business Process

• In partnership with the business, executed business re-engineering programmes to implement strategies that significantly reduced business cycle times and improved decision quality. Reviewed and redesigned business processes, and implemented workflow systems for processing and managing data, and to capture post-mortem learnings.

• Developed a Lotus Notes-based self-service workflow application to administer processes associated with staff joining and leaving the company and to maintain consistent staff records between Human Resources, Finance and Information Services.