Areas Of Expertise:

• Project Management

Education:

• Bachelor of Science (Biology and Psychology), Graceland University
• Prince2 (Foundation & Practitioner)
• SAFEe SPC 5 (2023) Certified

About Eugene O’Connell

Eugene joined Seven Consulting’s Melbourne team in October 2021. He is a detailed-oriented and self-motivated Project Manager with five years’ experience primarily working for a major not-for-profit and in a business that has consolidated numerous operators in the Funerals industry, transforming their digital space.

What Eugene brings

• Proven track record in managing complex relationships.
• Effective communication, and transparency with technical and business stakeholders.
• Ability to think analytically and independently.
• Good understanding of IT infrastructure, core systems and their integrations which is effective in working with teams to find creative solutions to complex environments.
• Strong ability to communicate technical concepts, risks and needs to business teams to understand impact to operations and estimate project deliverables.

Key Clients:

• Seven Consulting
• The Salvation Army
• InvoCare

Key Achievements:

As Implementation Manager for the Harmony Program at Invocare, Eugene managed the first end-to-end implementation of Skedulo, a scheduling software to manage the arrangement of funerals including availability of funeral locations, staff and vehicles.  Leading cross functional teams and vendor partners throughout the project lifecycle, Eugene was responsible for the development of the detailed implementation plan and InvoCare’s first business unit continuity plan for its Funerals division.  The complex implementation required multiple integrations between Skedulo, Oracle CX and Microsoft Azure with co-ordination required across multiple vendors and large stakeholder groups.  The result was a successful implementation of Skedulo with Zero severity 1 or 2 defects and feedback from executives noted this as one of the most successful projects delivered in InvoCare’s history.

As Project Manager at InvoCare, Eugene was responsible for leading the Foundations Project under the Harmony Program. This included three projects focused on improving staff productivity and utilization through a new target operating model, digital mortuary register and productivity & cost reporting system. Reporting to the Head of Funerals and Harmony Program Manager, Eugene was responsible for the implementation, monitoring and execution of the benefits realisation plan aimed at generating $5.93M of benefits over a 5-year period. Managing a $2.2M budget and 10 people across the projects, implementation also required ensuring the newly developed operating model, systems and processes were embedded into the funerals operations teams. The project was able to achieve ~$1.5M in OPEX reductions in 2023 for the organisation prior to handing over to business operations.

As Project Manager at InvoCare, Eugene managed multiple streams of work to uplift the National Call Centre (NCC) as part of its digital program to establish consistent use of a CRM system and uplift operational technologies used. Reporting to the Head of the NCC, responsibilities included business case development, benefit realisation planning, management of the vendor selection process and of external technology partners. Implementation of the project included changes to their telephony systems and a new knowledge management system for the NCC. This led to a 10% reduction in volume of internal calls, 8% reduction in abandoned calls, 3% reduction in unattended leads per month and 35% reduction in the time required for research of knowledge articles.

As Project Manager, Eugene led the implementation of and API between Memories, a digital obituary provider, and InvoCare’s core Funerals CRM platform (Oracle). Reporting to the GM of Funerals Commercial, the project created an integration that would remove manual processes and streamline the funeral arrangement process with real time data exchanges to allow for automatic account creation. The project successfully completed the API implementation allowing for InvoCare to meet its strategic initiatives and long-term partnership with Memories.

As Project Manager at InvoCare, reporting into the EGM of Digital, Eugene managed the end-to-end delivery of the WeCARE First Contact Management project which introduced automated lead management as part of the Funerals arrangement process. Leading a team of 6, this implemented integration to all Australian branded websites into their core CRM system (Oracle CX) to capture and manage customer interactions. The project was the first step in InvoCare’s digital program to establish consistent use of a CRM system, improve volume growth, tracking and analytics to support the conversion of sales. Integration from websites to their CRM system enabled over 8500 leads annually to be tracked and managed. Implementation of the project led to a 50% reduction in data entry time required for the frontline and National Call Centre teams for capturing leads into their CRM system.

As Project Manager (Fast Track) at Seven Consulting, Eugene completed the Fast-Track Program which is designed to enhance the core Project Management skills amongst the people who are experienced in their individual professional fields. During the Fast Track program, he has gained theoretical and practical knowledge on different aspects of project management by going through different sessions and exercises with domain experts. This program utilised his previous skills and knowledge whilst developing his skills and confidence level in using PM tools (like MS Project, JIRA etc.), techniques and soft skills. Eugene also had the opportunity to work as shadow senior consultants in actual project environments where he has been exposed to risk, issues, and constraints on a project and better ways to manage them.

As Project Manager at The Salvation Army, Eugene managed the migration of the infrastructure and “on-prem” application services currently running across two data centres in Sydney and Melbourne to Equinix Melbourne. He worked with vendor and technical teams to deliver disaster recovery capability for the organisation’s data centres in Melbourne and Sydney. He successfully achieved cost avoidance of maintenance and support costs for legacy data centres and integrated multiple vendor schedules per application migration into the overall timeline. He managed the roll out of change and communications for relevant stakeholders impacted by upgrades, migrations and testing to the on-prem data centre. Eugene was responsible for developing the migration and testing strategy plans for stretched VLANs and VMs, financial management of the project budget ($350K) including reporting and forecasting, and tracking, treatment planning and management of risks, issues, and quality. He oversaw the procurement and management of HCI hardware and software upgrades, network configuration and testing between legacy data centres and Equinix and the development and creation of application test plans required for post migration verification to the data centres to uncover, identify and document software problems and their causes.

As Project Manager at The Salvation Army, Eugene managed the consolidation of three legacy domains and the migration of application databases, server infrastructure and active directory services into a newly built domain. He successfully consolidated three domains into one national domain migrating +10,000 users, 65 applications, 230 infrastructure servers, 40 databases and decommissioned 330 servers 3 months ahead of deadline. Decommissioned legacy environments within planned down time and without disruption and worked closely with various vendors and technology teams to deliver national platforms for PKI/NPS and SQL database management from three disparate domains. He enabled SSO functionality to be implemented in future for applications. Successfully achieved $126K per annum in operational savings for the organisation with the removal of Citrix, consolidation of SQL databases and Quest licensing. Eugene achieved high customer satisfaction from end users and application owners following migration activities and delivered the project under budget and utilised savings to re-baseline and deliver additional scope ahead of schedule.

As Project Management Analyst at The Salvation Army, Eugene Supported the PMO manager to monitor progress and prepare management information. This included financial forecasts, scheduling, dependency mapping, risk and issue management in line with the department framework and stage gate processes across multiple portfolios. He assisted with project scheduling and business case development for large and complex projects including resource planning, facilitated regular review meetings and supported program / project managers in closing out actions. He was responsible for management of the governance and reporting tools, office registers and program / project repositories and artefacts in SharePoint. Eugene also assisted with planning for the mail migration to Outlook for the National Collaboration Project and active Directory Consolidation project (Phase 1) for user / machine migrations, supported remediation and stabilisation of project from red to green status and delivered releases against re-baselined schedule for NCP Pilot project.