Our part-time IT director came into this company, offering digital Cinemas services to implement new IT system after rapid growth.

Company Profile

A leading provider of cinema software and digital services, working with business across the globe. The business started with just three employees, and has since grown exponentially. The company won a tender for a Lottery-funded initiative to grow digital cinema in the UK.

CEO’s Mission

The Director was challenged to help grow the business into the world-leading company it is today. Managing multiple cinemas and offices across multiple global locations was a huge task, and required an overhaul of existing systems and updates to team structures. Therefore, the Director needed to put a helpdesk in place to manage queries, implement new software and help recruit a team across multiple digital cinemas to help business growth.

What Our Director Did

Software Development

The business worked with a selection of top studios and manage contracts across Europe, South Africa and Latin America. The IT Director recognised a need for software to manage the scale and volume of deployments across the globe. Then they needed to develop a specialised theatre management system. After hiring a VP of Development as the business grew, software was developed directly with one client, meaning all specific requirements were met. The company ended up selling that software all around the world.

Overhaul Of The Software Division

  • The Director stepped in to head up and manage the entire software division, and took on the CTO role to oversee development. From here, there was an overhaul of multiple processes, with actions including:
  • The introduction of an agile methodology
  • Implementing a new DevOps culture
  • Automating the release process, thus reducing time between development and production
  • Moving services to the cloud rather than hosting them on the premises (led by the Director)
  • Embraced the introduction of AWS
  • Finally, Improving the structure of the development teams and bringing in more experienced team members

Cloud Strategy

Before the Director came aboard, the cloud strategy at the company was outdated and causing challenges for growth – in short, it needed modernising and making fit for purpose. The Director came up with a new native cloud approach to build a platform for the business to offer worldwide products and services. Now the new cloud product is truly multi-tenanted, scalable and completely adaptable, while also being versatile and secure; it also increased the value of the business (which was later acquired).

Personnel Development

The IT team began with just the Director, and by the end of his term consisted of:

  • Internal IT Team: five members working on internal systems, VPNs and maintaining them.
  • Business Intelligence officer
  • Small DevOps team: two managers and three teams of up to seven people (two teams based in Poland and one in London)
  • Engineering team for hardware platforms and a support team

The Results

The Director’s work with the business led to a huge upturn in functionality, efficiency and productivity across the business. As well as improving structures and developing teams, under the Director’s tenure, the company became the biggest provider of that particular Theatre Management software in the world.

Returning to the business later on a consultancy basis, the Director was able to reduce the cost of the cloud software by £200k per year. Other responsibilities included liaising closely with the CEO and Senior Management teams, working on several mini-projects to improve process on the ground, supporting to transition development from the UK to China. The Director was involved in the sales process and worked on an outward-facing basis as a member of the senior management team; being commercially-minded and not obsessing over the technology was crucial for this project’s success.

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