Tony Sutcliffe

IT Manager, Bott Ltd

: twitter.com/

Blog: Tales of the IT helpdesk

Biography:

Born in Portsmouth, Hants.  Left school at 19 with 3 A levels and had wanted to go to university, but had to get a job instead. I worked in a number of smaller businesses for several years in different management and sales roles; I also started working with PCs as a hobby and found myself involved in a number of small projects to install systems and set-up new working practices. In the early 1990's, I joined Shell UK as a field manager on short term contract, involved in a major project to re-furbish many of their sites. I was also involved in training staff and developed methods to improve the start-up processes, particularly involving the existing PC systems and a new one being developed. I was offered a role at a software development company. They wanted someone with hardware experience, and the ability to train people as they already had the programming skills. In 2000, I left to take up a role as IT manager for a meat processing business in the area. Their IT was very poor and I spent the next 5 years, dragging them kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I ended up managing some 90 users, as well as all their servers and systems, developed their first Web site and ran several business related projects.  I joined my current company in 2005; I manage a team of 3 people and am responsible for the IT across 3 sites in the UK and now a site in France as well. We support nearly 200 users, and have a large number of legacy systems; and are currently implementing SAP.

Top Challenges:

Currently doing an SAP implementation - this takes up about 60% of my time. I've identified that there is a lack of basic IT literacy amongst users which causes lot of issues. We also have a major issue with the growth of data transmission and storage.

If you were a superhero who would you be?

There is not a specific superhero I would be; but my real life hero was my grandfather. He lied about his age and joined up at the start of the First World War. He fought in France for 3 years, in some of the heaviest fighting before losing his leg in 1917. Despite his injury, he was never out of work, saved enough to buy his own house; married and brought up 6 children. He also won a medal in the Second World War for diving into Portsmouth harbour and saving the life of someone during the blitz. He was born before the powered aircraft became a reality, and lived long enough to see a man walk on the moon.