SKILLS – CV

These are some of the skills that Craven has acquired and duties performed over the past 25 years in the past two companies he has worked.

TECHNICAL DUTIES

ICT Consultant / mobile tech support

  • ICT consulting and analysis of existing systems, advising on upsell improvements and providing new products and services to improve productivity, increase reliability, and reduce costs.
  • Supplying, configuring, and implementing new client systems & solutions.
  • Providing user training and advice on all aspects of ICT, Office365 Cloud Services, Applications, and Communication systems.
  • Liaising on behalf of customers with third-party contractors and suppliers to ensure business processes and best practices and procedures are adhered to.
  • Use critical thinking to break down problems, evaluate solutions and make decisions.
  • Provide “Tech Support” for all manner of computers, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Windows, Networking, WiFi, routers, Google Cloud Apps & Services, Office 365 services, 3rd Party software application errors, issues and problems.
  • Migrate on-premises and older mail systems to cloud solutions.
  • Migrated from one cloud ecosystem to another.
  • Provided training, and documentation and even created video tutorials in some cases.
  • Install and set up Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Configure WiFi mesh systems, routers & other firewalls.
  • Assist with troubleshooting various website technologies. Kajabi, WordPress, Cloudflare, SquareSpace.

MANAGEMENT DUTIES

ICT Business Owner / Manager

  • Chaired monthly briefings to report on projects and service delivery status and provided updates to management.
  • Created internal business plans, and budgets, managed, mentored employees, administered debtors, creditors, stock control, billing, and support processes.
  • Became experienced with all aspects of managing, delegating, and outsourcing tasks in a successful ICT Consulting business.
  • Managed team of technical employees as well as administration and sales employees, overseeing hiring, training, and professional growth of employees.
  • Identified issues, analysed information and provided solutions to problems.
  • Used critical thinking to break down problems, evaluate solutions and make decisions.
  • Offered friendly and efficient service to customers, and handled challenging situations with ease.
  • Delivered exceptional level of service to each customer by listening to concerns and answering questions and delegating the best resources to effectively resolve their issues.
  • Supervised work of contracted employees to keep on task for timely completion of projects.
  • Developed and maintained courteous and effective working relationships with customers and management.
  • Quickly learned new skills and applied them to daily tasks, improving efficiency and productivity.
  • Oversaw daily operations and delegated tasks as necessary to ensure high levels of productivity.
  • Mapped processes, gathered data, and authored documents such as business and functional requirements.
  • Wrote and updated policies and procedures to ensure customers met government, banking, and legal compliance and regulations.
  • Managed and assisted third-party suppliers on behalf of customers to ensure that their applications and services ran smoothly on-site, and were compatible and compliant with internal customer policies.
  • Consulted, designed, and delivered Preventative Maintenance Service Level Agreements (SLA) to customers.
  • Ensured customer hardware assets and software licenses were documented, compliant, and insured to minimize risk.
  • Explained and provided technical advice to non-technical management at clients as well as provided/delegated basic training to users.
  • Assisted customers in community and government projects such as protection of information/privacy legislation.
  • Drove business growth via sales & marketing projects to new and existing customers.
  • Looking for opportunities with existing customers to improve existing systems and upsell new solutions.
  • Managed and delegated a team of employees to assist client users with consulting technical ICT support and training.
  • Promoted and marketed the company via social media including writing blogs and providing video guides and promotional material.

TECHNICAL DUTIES

ICT Business Systems Consultant & Analyst

  • migrated many customers’ on-premises services & servers to Office 365 including Exchange & SharePoint online.
  • Implementation of security and “best practices” for information protection.
  • Experimentation and implementation of new Information Technologies to learn new skills as well as acquire new business opportunities.
  • As an IT vendor, supplied, configured, and managed various brands of servers, operating systems, firewalls, and hardware.
  • Created solutions to network design issues including switches, cabling, and wireless. Implemented secure servers as well as Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS – formally Terminal Server)
  • Migrated physical servers, data, and services to a virtualized environment (Hyper-V) either on-site or a cloud solution.
  • Configured, and managed fail-over and recovery systems including backup solutions, data redundancy, internet redundancy, and power backup systems.
  • Configured and managed Network Intrusion Detection System (IDS) software and appliances as well as other cyber-security and managed antivirus services.
  • Configured switches and routers – both corporate, prosumer and consumer-grade appliances.
  • Configured corporate and consumer-grade wireless networks
  • Configured, maintained, and trained on the use of VoIP cloud PABX systems.
  • Managed and maintained all customer ICT systems, printers, and infrastructure.
  • Performed data recovery, reinstatement, and configuration to the operational state of servers, and applications.
  • Did pre-sales consultancy and fault-finding on customer systems to establish new business opportunities.
  • Offered System support by phone, e-mail, and remote desktop.
  • Assisted customers with setting up infrastructure that permitted users to BYOD, and bring their own devices, but still, maintain the integrity and security to protect their systems using VPNs.
  • during the 2000 “Y2K”, used my programming, Lotus 123 and Excel skills to write new applications (in Clarion for Windows) to replace old problematic utilities some attorneys were using to calculate interest payments to trust accounts

 

TRANSFERABLE “SOFT” SKILLS

  • Tenacity
  • Analytical thinking and problem solving
  • Interpersonal and consultative
  • Analytical thinking
  • Problem-solving & troubleshooting
  • Oral and written communication
  • Detail-orientated and capable of delivering high levels of accuracy
  • Strategic Planning, Project Management
  • Process Improvement / Documentation
  • Vendor Management / Managed Services
  • Business Management / Administration
  • Organizational Skills
  • Data Analysis
  • Public Speaking / Training / Leadership

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Built a brand, a highly regarded company servicing some of the largest attorney firms in the Eastern Cape, South Africa retaining their business confidence in excess of twenty years.
  • We never once lost a customer’s server data while we were supporting their business and managing their services via one of our Service Level Agreements.
  • Have recovered servers, and infrastructure from a state of complete system failure including direct lightning strikes, fires, theft, encryption (ransomware), customer gross negligence, and hardware failure on numerous occasions.
  • Microsoft Ethical Business Partner’s “Clean Reseller” award was provided on numerous occasions.
  • Recovered information in a high-profile national government politicians’ legal case as well as assisted with numerous other legal investigations as well as credit in the book “Freddy Boy” written by Advocate Barry Pienaar for my IT assistance.
  • Saved several clients from bankruptcy due to negligence and apathy of their previous IT service providers.