Following these feelers to Royal, Valerie, Diana and I, went to Barcelona for me to discuss a position as Assistant Manager in Spain. The offer was made in February 1983. Although there were many attractions, Valerie and Diana decided they wanted to return to the UK and I turned down the offer.
What would have happened to our lives if they had wanted to live in Spain all those years ago?
We all get to crossroads in our lives and never know what would have happened if we’d chosen a different option!
Here is the offer and me turning it down.
In June 1983 an offer was made to join as Methods Manager in ISD in Liverpool which I accepted and joined Royal in October.
We lived initially in Inglewood, a large residential training centre in the Wirral. This was great while we converted our new house, Stablewalls, in Parkgate. Later we sold this house and moved to The Mount a listed building in Tattenhall.
I found I was responsible as Methods Manager to Peter McMorran. We did not hit it off as I found the ISD way of working was so different to that I had enjoyed working in charge of a computer department. This was a constant source of amusement to my new managers, David Miles, Ron Marsh, Steve Fletcher and Graham Avison, as was the fact that they were Organisation and Methods managers and I knew nothing about O&M and was in charge. My relationship with the head of ISD, Mike Sayers, was also poor.
My salvation came when a new system that ISD was developing for Royal International, called AIMS, came off the rails. I had known the International executives for ten years, and the Exec in charge, Joe Hogg, a lovely man, insisted that ISD pass the system over to a new Royal International computer department, C&IS, which I headed up. This meant that I got away from ISD and was an environment in which I knew and could call the shots.
Here is the structure of C&IS when it was created
In our library are some newsletters we issued at the time
Apart from completing the AIMS project with Roger Gay-Jones and Rob Cronley, we soon moved on to new projects. One, headed by Roger was the selection of an email system for implementation worldwide. We selected a Canadian system and were proven it was a sound choice as later Microsoft took it over and it became MSMail. Moving all the Head Office staff in London and Liverpool to email and implementing it in about fifty offices worldwide was a real project.
Rob Cronley then used this facility to design and implement a system of quarterly and monthly results being sent in electronically. This was a fantastic improvement especially as we then fed that into a SUN accounting system. It meant that every overseas company, in every continent, were sending in quarterly data and these were fed into the accounting and Management Information systems automatically, and were then available online to all Head Office departments. A massive project.
Overseas work was demanding. I had Alan Gambles who spent more than half his time travelling in Europe, Africa, South America and the Middle and the Far East. I agreed to a transfer of Martyn Cutting to Lisbon to handle a computer problem there, and I enjoyed a number of trips to Portugal to discuss progress. Learnt to love port there!
Rob Cronley started to implement the SUN accounting system in Spain, Portugal and Kenya.
I was involved in the SUN package and presented for the suppliers at a Paris conference.
Royal International was looking to expand and I visited Madrid a few times to review the computer systems (awful) of a large insurance company, Velazquez. Royal eventually purchased this company, but all sorts of problems arose including a massive understatement of claims reserves. Great to visit Spain again.
I also went and looked at the systems at a large insurance company based in Genoa in Italy. Again Royal purchased but again had some problems. However, I had lots of trips there to monitor Rob Cronley who I seconded there to implement a system. Some photos later of the ‘godfather’ I met there.
During this time I was spending a lot of time in London on the support of Head Office in Holborn and overseas work. The company rented me a flat in Windsor for a year or so, which was a relief.
Around this time I became involved with another software company, EPIC, which had a great Executive Information System. Rob and Roger implemented this in the UK to sit on top of the UK financial systems. Then Rob implemented EPIC systems for a Spanish subsidiary in Barcelona and the Italian company. So I had regular trips to Barcelona and Genoa.
My closeness to the EPIC company meant I was asked to speak at various seminars in London and Heathrow.
Tony Hortopp was brought in as head of Group IT, and in April 1992 he amalgamated C&IS and ISD. Mike Sayers the head of ISD left. Although my background was in system development I agreed to take the role of Network Systems Manager. In summary, this comprised – HELP Desk and Network support for Group Head Office in Liverpool and London, Running the Local Area Networks in Liverpool and the various London sites, International support, PC work for Group Head Office, Disaster Planning, Implementation and support of Email internationally and other projects that arose.
Here is the structure of Group Information Systems
I knew nothing about LANs, but fortunately, Kevin O’Sullivan did, and he was great at running the Hewlett Packard computers and the local area network of hundreds of users, ably supported by Len Mitchell.
We were one of the first to introduce video conferencing and implemented this between Liverpool and London which significantly reduced travel between these two cities. Not me, I still spent 35-40% of my time in London.
Phil Humphries handled PC and LAN support in Liverpool and Martyn Cutting looked after London. Alan Gambles was in charge of international support. Chris Hindmarch joined us and brought some useful knowledge to the management team and became our consultant.
I hosted the International IT Conference at Inglewood in Cheshire in 1989, at which the UK, US and Canadian IT managers attended. There were over eighty participants and presenters. I handled presentations on Executive Information Systems, and my team made other various presentations, including Phil Humphries doing a demonstration of the Internet. it was very early days for this – we had just built a Royal Insurance internet site – and as one of the first it was very basic, but it was exciting, as we were one of the earlier pioneers of what was to become the Internet phenomenon.
Attendances at some conferences are below.
In the last photo some names
back row from left – Alan Gambles, Bill Kewley, Leon Albrecht (Canada – my mentor), Martyn Cutting and the Portuguese manager.
In the front row from left – Auditor, Rob Cronley, Keith Drury, our Secretary ???, and Wallace Lam my old manager from Hong Kong.
Roger Gay-Jones, just behind Rob and Keith, took a secondment to Indonesia. He later moved to Singapore and Hong Kong.
I attended and presented at an international conference in Manila in 1995,
Photo of participants.
While in Manila I was asked to visit Hong Kong for a few days to meet Roger there. This I did with some hesitation as I had vowed not to return. Very emotional flying into Kai Tak and also meeting the Taikoo Royal and Swire staff again.
I’ve added various photos mostly taken from Royal International magazines – of people I worked with
Bless him!
I signalled to my boss, Tony Hortopp, I was looking to retire and David Guerin took on my role in October 1995
I assumed an MIS role using the EPIC software and lined up some consultancy work with the proposed merger of Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance and then took early retirement from Royal in 1996, aged 55.
A varied and successful 13 years in my career with lots of great projects such as implementing worldwide email throughout the Group, installing a wide local area network within the UK and Europe, implementing a very sophisticated quarterly reporting system whereby all overseas subsidiaries sent results via email which were processed by the Financial systems and then presented to executives and managers by a very advanced (at the time) management information system.
Also lots of travel. Trips to Italy and Spain when Royal was planning to purchase companies there. Regular trips to visit managers seconded to Lisbon, Barcelona and Genoa.
Handling presentations in Paris, Manila and London.
A trip to Charlotte in North Carolina to discuss stuff with Royal USA.
and because of the successful implementation of the EPIC system lots of personal publicity with articles in the Financial Times, Economist and PC Magazines.
Then I became an IT consultant, a far cry from qualifying as a damn chartered accountant 30 years ago.