Available for Engagements

Turning Technical Delivery
into Operational Reality

Senior IT Service Design & Transition Consultant with 15+ years' leadership experience across global Financial Services, Insurance, Consulting, and Media organisations. I ensure that what gets built actually works in operation.

ITIL v3 Expert ISO 20000 Certified APM Foundation Cambridge, UK
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15+
Years' leadership
experience
5
Major global
programmes delivered
140+
Countries reached
across EY transition
240k
End users served
in a single programme
About Richard Brown

Service Design & Transition Leadership

I am a Senior IT Service Design & Transition Director and Consultant with more than 15 years' experience leading large-scale transformation programmes across some of the world's most complex organisations. My work sits at the intersection of technical delivery and operational sustainability — ensuring that what programmes build is not only functional, but operable, governed, and ready for the real world. I have spent the majority of my career operating within heavily regulated industries — including Financial Services, Insurance, and Media — where governance rigour, audit-readiness, and compliance alignment are non-negotiable elements of every transition.

Throughout my career I have led service design and transition activities at BUPA, Tokio Marine HCC, Johnson Matthey, EY, and News UK — spanning Financial Services, Insurance, Professional Services, and Media sectors. I have built service management capabilities from scratch, achieved ISO 20000 certification, and delivered repeatable transition frameworks that scale across geographies and multi-vendor environments.

I hold ITIL v3 Expert certification with lifecycle qualifications across Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operations, Service Strategy, CSI, and Managing Across the Lifecycle — giving me a comprehensive, framework-grounded perspective that I apply pragmatically to each engagement.

Through RCB IT Consulting Ltd, I work with organisations that need a senior, experienced practitioner to lead or assure their service design and transition activities — bringing structure, governance, and real-world accountability to their most important programmes.

IT Service Design & Transition Service Management Strategy Governance Frameworks Multi-Vendor Management Programme Leadership Operating Model Design Transition Planning Early Life Support Knowledge Transfer Capability Development

Qualifications & Certifications

ITIL v3 Expert
Full lifecycle suite: Service Design, Transition, Operations, Strategy, CSI & MALC
ISO 20000 Foundation
IT Service Management — international standard
APM Foundation
Association for Project Management

Sectors Served

Financial Services Insurance Professional Services Media & Publishing FTSE 100 Global Corporates
What I Deliver

Consulting Services

Every engagement is tailored to the programme and organisation. These are the core service areas I bring to complex technical transformation programmes.

Service Design Leadership
End-to-end design of IT services across all five ITIL aspects — from service level requirements and capacity planning through to availability, continuity, security, and supplier governance. Producing Service Design Packages that give operational teams everything they need from day one.
Service Transition & Go-Live Assurance
Comprehensive transition planning and execution — covering release governance, operational acceptance testing, CMDB population, knowledge transfer, and Service Readiness Reviews. Ensuring controlled, evidenced, and reversible introductions into live operation.
Operating Model Design
Designing the governance structures, ownership boundaries, process frameworks, and resource models that allow a new or changed service to be operated sustainably. Defining roles, responsibilities, and escalation paths that remain fit for purpose beyond programme closure.
Multi-Vendor & Supplier Governance
Structuring and managing supplier relationships within complex, multi-vendor programme environments. Ensuring underpinning contracts and OLAs are aligned to service commitments, and that supplier governance frameworks provide the accountability required at every stage of transition.
Capability Development & Knowledge Transfer
Building service management capabilities within client teams — designing knowledge transfer frameworks, developing operational procedures and runbooks, and embedding best practice so that organisations are self-sufficient after the engagement concludes.
Service Management Strategy & Governance
Establishing the strategic frameworks — policies, governance models, quality assurance, and measurement approaches — that ensure service management disciplines are embedded, sustained, and continuously improved. Includes support for ISO 20000 alignment and audit readiness.
Programme Track Record

Selected Experience

A career defined by leading service design and transition on programmes that matter — across complex, multi-vendor, global environments in heavily regulated industries.

Bupa
Current Engagement
Modernisation Programme — Service Operating Model Design Consultant
Leading the end-to-end design and implementation of the Service and Operating Model for a crown jewel service undergoing strategic cloud migration. Defining service architecture, ownership boundaries, and lifecycle protocols — bridging the gap between technical execution and strategic governance. Deliverables include SLA/SLO frameworks, observability design, incident response playbooks, and resilience rehearsals.
Tokio Marine HCC
4-Year Programme
Transformation Programme — Service Design & Transition Lead
Led all Service Design & Transition activities across a multi-country insurance transformation programme delivering Guidewire, Verisk, PEGA, and Newgen platforms. Defined and implemented service acceptance and governance frameworks, assured transition readiness, and developed early life support approaches. Directed project managers and delivery leads while reporting to programme boards and overseeing exit gate approvals.
Johnson Matthey
SAP Global Template 3 Year Programme
UNIFY SAP Programme — Transition Lead
Delivered transition strategies at scale for this FTSE 100 company, partnering with the SAP Centre of Excellence and global deployment teams to establish a repeatable transition framework for SAP rollouts across the UK, Poland, South Africa, and China. Defined governance, service acceptance, and early life support models in a complex multi-vendor environment. Built support team capability and drove knowledge transfer from systems integrators.
EY
5 Years · Multiple Senior Roles
Global Messaging Transition & SAP COE Governance Lead
Managed the global transition of EY's messaging and collaboration services (Exchange, Lync, SharePoint) to steady-state operations across 140 countries for 240,000 users — coordinating globally dispersed resources across the US, India, UK, and Netherlands. Subsequently led governance and financial control for a $60m SAP Centre of Excellence, and directed the transition of EY's SharePoint Solution Centre from Capgemini to TCS.
News UK
Service Transition Function Build
Service Operations — Head of Transition
Created and led a new Service Transition function within Service Operations from the ground up. Designed governance models, policies, and process improvements that directly enabled ISO 20000 certification. Directed the enterprise implementation of BMC Remedy Force including ServiceNow integration, and established the vendor management and governance structures that underpinned the function's long-term success.
Get In Touch

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Let's discuss your programme
Whether you are planning a major transformation, approaching a go-live, or looking to strengthen your operational readiness — I would welcome the opportunity to understand your needs and explore how I can help.
Location
Cambridge, UK
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