Olufemi Onabowale

An IT leader & Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) expert, guided by the principles of information security and customer experience, in ensuring business value delivery through the effective management of IT service assets.
 

IT Operations, IT Service Management, NOC, Global Service Desk and Support, Internet of Things, IT Infrastructure, Client Services

Title: Associate Director, Global IT Service Management  |  2021 - Present                                                                                                 Reports To: IT Shared Service Center (SSC) Director. 
Reporting Line: Direct – 2 (Senior Managers), Indirect – 9 (Managers), Indirect – 27 (Analysts & Specialists) 
Company: IHS Towers; Largest telecom infrastructure provider in Africa, Europe & Middle East by tower count, & 3rd global independent tower company 
Responsibility: 
Responsible for the cost-effective oversight of an annual operating budget of NGN 1.3 bn (Capex - NGN 500m & Opex - NGN 800m) to deliver key projects and initiatives associated with IT Service Management Office (SMO) and Shared Service Center strategies for the execution/achievement of the global strategic business goals and objectives. Key activities include: 

▪ SOX Compliance & Risk Mgt:
Oversee the design and implementation of technical, administrative, process, and organizational controls, and continual monitoring for applicability and effectiveness.
▪ Infrastructure Upgrade & Acquisition Support:
Coordinate global infrastructure upgrade and rollout as CAB chair to ensure business value realization through project delivery while
reducing/eliminating change impact. Ensure the commoditization of IT resources and services for prompt rollout/onboarding to new countries.
▪ ITSM Process Maturity:
Ensure that all core SOX and IT capability processes are developed, optimized, continually improved, and benchmarked against COBIT, ITIL & ISO best practices and standards.
▪ Process Standardisation & Automation:
Ensure all established processes and function activities are extended to and utilized across OpCo locations by leveraging economies of scale and center of excellence strategies such as centralized ‘cloud’ ITSM applications and enterprise applications.
▪ Cost Efficiency:
Demonstrate cost rationalization techniques for IT investments required to Run and Grow the business, as well as explore cost-saving opportunities via SAM license reviews/consolidation and adopting a zero-based budgeting approach for acceptable budget variance.

Title: Senior Manager, IT Service Management (Deputy ITSSC Director)  |  2020 - 2021 

Reports To: IT Shared Service Center (SSC) Director. 
Reporting Line: Direct – 7 (Managers), Indirect – 23 (Analysts & Specialists) 
Responsibility: 

To deliver excellent customer experience and satisfaction to the business by overseeing the strategic alignment and tactical management of all functions within the service management office (SMO), and promoting overall efficiency and effectiveness through process implementation, controls, and enablement. Responsible for continual service improvement and an annual operating budget of NGN 1.3 bn ( Capex - NGN 500m & Opex - NGN 800m). 
Achievement: 

▪ SMO Standardization: Consolidated support functions and implemented ITIL processes to transform the unit from ‘fire-fighting’ to stabilized mode which increased productivity such as; increasing the first-level resolution to 70%, recording zero change-related incidents, & avg MTTR of 24hrs.
▪ Reduced Cost of Support: Reduced by approx. 50% (human capital ROI) by performing a ticket trend analysis and implementing a shift-left strategy that empowered level 1 support via training and access permission, also a self-service portal and knowledgebase for end-users (level 0 support).
▪ Team Leadership: Launched initiatives such as knowledge sharing, secondment program, and development plan, and re-engineered processes to improve employee engagement and satisfaction thereby leading to the promotion of 15% of the level 1 support agents to level 2 support roles.
▪ IT Strategy Development: Developed the departmental strategic plan for the global ITSSC, with oversight function for its implementation and performance tracking to support the achievement of strategic business goals.
▪ IT Transformation Delivery: Project lead (with CIO as IT project sponsor) involved in the IT transformation project into a design, build, and operate model that operationalized the new IT strategy. The outcome was the establishment of a ‘PMO/Solution Delivery’ unit responsible for strategic business partnering and project delivery, ‘ERP Operations’ unit responsible for enterprise applications transition planning/support, and an ‘ITSSC’ unit responsible for generalist support (ITSM), as well as specialist support (infrastructure and security operations).
▪ Capability Maturity Improvement: Improved service management capability to become a strategic business partner via the development of a business service catalog and service portal to view all services delivered by IT, development of master service level agreement to track IT committed service targets/levels, and demand management portal to effectively process and qualify business request intakes for proper coordination and value delivery.
▪ IT Balanced Score Card: Developed a BSC for the department that mapped all IT KPIs (leading and lagging indicators) and supporting metrics from the lowest in the organogram up to the highest level i.e. ITSSC Director Goals, and released a monthly dashboard report to IT leadership and C-level to track IT performance and ensure that IT remains aligned with strategic business objectives.

Title: Senior Manager, IT Service Desk, IT-NOC, IT Support & Telemetry Support   |  2018 - 2020

Reports To: IT Director 
Reporting Line: Direct - 5 (Managers), Indirect – 20 (Analysts & Specialists) 
Responsibility: 

To ensure the strategic alignment of the IT-NOC with the NOC as well as the prompt and efficient handling of all incidents and requests, while overseeing the telemetry infrastructure and APN services needed by the NOC to proactively monitor 20,000 towers nationwide. Aligning the service desk and end-user support with the business users for the provision of best-in-class service that covers helpdesk, endpoint-related projects, and IMAC changes. Over CAB for change control and deployment management as well as service-level management. Responsible for an annual operating budget of NGN 800m. 
Achievement: 

▪ Cost Savings: Saved approx. NGN 140m in annual budget reviews that involved aggressive vendor, service, and cost rationalization strategies.
▪ Investment Optimization: Resuscitated underutilized IT service management platform for effective service delivery and management by initiating the SysAid optimization project focusing on utilizing unused features such as CMDB, Asset Management, Configuration Management, License Management, vendor management, and mobile app which mitigated SOX/IT risks, improved IT productivity.
▪ Enterprise Service Management: Extended the functionality of the IT service management platform to other business units/departments to improve and automate their incident, complaints, and request handling thereby improving overall business productivity and employee satisfaction. Beneficiary units include HR, Facilities, Fleet, Finance, and HSE departments. Savings realized is approx. NGN 60m in three (3) years.
▪ Established a Vendor Master Tracker: Improved vendor management maturity from chaotic to ‘defined’ and ‘standardized’ by developing an end-to-end vendor-service map, SLA targets, and escalation contact list to manage vendor contracts and ensure ROI. Provided input to procurement/supply chain’s vendor database to maintain top performers and promote revenue assurance where expenses are reclaimed legally via service credits.
▪ Team Leadership: Aligned with HR to review job level of IT service desk and end-user support functions by creating a JCP, new JDs, rotation scheme, and training plan which improved employee satisfaction that resulted in zero turnovers in 2 years.

Title: Head, Client Support & Compliance  |  2017 - 2018

Reports To: MD/CEO 
Reporting Line: Direct – 8 (Officers) 
Company: Cloud Cover; Pioneer V-SIM technology connectivity provider in partnership with MNOs (telcos) & roaming partnerships in 100 countries. 
Responsibility:  
Implement ISO27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS) and ensure regulatory, industry, and organizational compliance. Responsible for the overall effectiveness of the contact center and ensure best-in-class customer service support. 

Achievement:

▪ Contact Center Development: Designed, built, and staffed a 24x7x365 Contact Centre for complaints handling, monitoring, and customer support.
▪ License Acquisition: Secured NCC product Type approval, product certificate, Form-M, and SONCAP license/certificate to do business in Nigeria
▪ Cost Savings: Saved approximately NGN 100,000,000 over 3yrs by personally sourcing and responsible for the courier of 3000 MiFi devices from China instead of using an outsourced service provider.

Title: Manager, IT and Network Operations Center (NOC)  | 2014 - 2017
Reports To: Director of Operations 
Reporting Line: Direct – 1 (Team Lead); Indirect – 8 (Engineers) 
Company: Rack Centre; A state-of-the-art, Tier III Data Centre facility that offers best-in-class and vendor-neutral colocation services. 
Responsibility: 

To Implement ISO27001 (ISMS) and ensure regulatory, industry, and organizational compliance. Whilst overseeing IT operations management that included servers, storage, networks (LAN & WLAN), cloud services, VoIP, AD, printers, service desk, CCTV, antivirus, firewalls, backups/restore, vendor mgt., etc. Responsible for the overall effectiveness of the Network Operations Center (NOC) and ensure best-in-class technical support services. 
Achievement: 

▪ ISO27001 Certification: Certified Information Security Management System (ISMS) manager and project technical lead responsible for certifying the organization to ISO27001 standard which met one of the board of non-executive director’s strategic objectives in the first 3 years of operation.
▪ NOC Development: Designed, built, and staffed a 24x7x365 NOC facility for the prompt and efficient handling of incidents, requests, and changes, as well as proactive monitoring of the data center's critical physical infrastructure.
▪ Team Leadership: Established a shift roster/rolling schedule to ensure seamless transition/handover between teams, made adequate provision of key tools and technologies such as Office 365 to increase collaboration, migrate from paper-based to e-form processing, improve business productivity.
▪ ITSM Application Deployment: Project’s technical lead responsible for deploying BMC Remedy to standardize our service management function by rolling out the following key modules; incident management, request management, change management, configuration management database which provided actionable insight for clients’ data center onboarding decision making and resulted in zero change incident.

Title: Team Lead, Network Operations Center (NOC)  | 2013 - 2014
Reports To: Director of Operations 
Reporting Line: Direct – 8 (Engineers) 
Responsibility:  
Responsible for the overall effectiveness of the Network Operations Center (NOC) and ensure best-in-class technical support services. 
Achievement: 

▪ CCTV Solution Deployment: Project’s technical lead responsible for the deployment of an NVR IP-based CCTV system with online real-time NAS backup to address security gaps, ensure industry and regulatory compliance, as well as client satisfaction due to the safety of their asset.
▪ Policies & SOP Implementation: Developed NOC policies, processes, and procedures that guided  NOC  operations and supported the achievement of the department’s strategic objectives e.g. key management, access control, infrastructure performance, incident management, etc.
▪ Infrastructure Health Check Initiative: Designed and implemented a daily physical and remote performance check of the data center's critical physical infrastructure. Trend analysis reports were able to identify cooling, airflow, and controller anomalies which were resolved via corrective maintenance to improve overall system reliability and ensure customer SLA were met 100% and no penalties against the company evoked.

Title: Supervisor, Global Network Operations Center (NOC)                                                                                                                             2010 – 2013 Reports To: Head of Operations 
Reporting Line: Direct – 5 (Engineers) 
Company: Main One; Submarine cable system provider from W/Africa to the UK specialized in wholesale bandwidth, IP access, transit, & IPLC services. 
Responsibility & Achievement: 

▪ Served as internal  DWDM  and submarine system level two support specialist and leading technical issue resolution.
▪ Acted as ‘emergency’ Deputy Power Station Officer for the power feed equipment for a cable system shunt along the Atlantic, enforced authorized access control into the SLTE room, and coordinated power (voltage) restoration to the line with the team in Portugal.
▪ Developed processes and procedures that guided GNOC operations and supported the achievement of the department’s strategic objectives e.g. spares management, return material authorizations, work authorization, change management, fault management, and cable route patrol, etc.
▪ Prepared the monthly service report and led the service level performance review meetings with over 15 clients.

Title: Engineer, Network Service Management Center(NSMC) | 2009 - 2010

Reports To: Team Lead, VAS, and MPLS 
Reporting Line: None. 
Company: MTN; Largest telecom service provider in Nigeria,  providing data, voice,  mobile, and IP access services to businesses and customers. 
Responsibility & Achievement: 

▪ Proactive monitoring of the BTS/BSC sites nationwide using Ericsson’s Operations and Support System and Huawei’s I-Manager, to ensure uptime.
▪ Troubleshooting incidents, resolution of incidents, and prompt escalation where necessary in line with the fault management process.
▪ Provided remote assistance to Field Support Engineers (FSEs) in granting site access for hardware fixes and resetting TRUs for software fixes.
▪ Providing periodic daily reports and ad-hoc reports for management’s decision-making.

Masters (MSc.) in Information Technology [ Indiana University, Kelly Business School, USA.] – In View     
Micro Masters in Information Systems [ Indiana University, Kelly Business School, USA.] – Grade Average 89%    
Post Graduate Diploma in Business & Management [ Bradford University, School of Management, UK.] – Merit    Service Management Program [ Lagos Business School ]
B.Sc. Hons in Systems Engineering [ University of Lagos, Nigeria.]