Who We Are

Tim Hardcastle

Managing Partner

Tim co-founded F2X in 2006. Tim’s career over the past 25 years has covered accountancy, corporate strategy and technology within support services, utilities and insurance in the UK, America and New Zealand. This wide range of experience means he is able to engage and facilitate discussions and offer insights at Board level. Not only has he led £100m plus technology enabled change programmes but also led a corporate recovery team reducing costs in IT and shared services over a 9 month period by 50% (£11m p.a.)

He specialises in business and technology alignment and his client work typically covers the areas of core capabilities, leveraging value from technology, and sourcing strategies.

Derek Hill

Partner

Derek, a co-founder of F2X, is the partner who leads the IT services and strategic sourcing practice. With over 25 years experience in both the public and private sectors, he brings experience from roles and assignments in both the USA and Europe. Derek leads assignments that deliver dramatic improvements in the essential IT services which underpin all technological capability.

He specialises in IT service re-engineering, IT outsourcing, in-sourcing and providing senior management with value for money assessments.

Mark Oakton

Partner

Mark heads up the security practice of F2X. Mark has a background as a lead consultant with both commercial companies and the public sector and has worked with F2X for the last 3 years.

Mark has a rare talent – the ability to articulate fiendishly complex ideas to CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s in simple terms. Programme initiatives such as Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI compliance, and information security standards are all matters of utmost importance. Simplifying the complex means that Mark is consequently in great demand.

Daren Rudd

Partner

Daren heads up the Enterprise Architecture Practice within F2X. With over 15 years experience, most notably within the UK’s leading players in insurance, Daren works with Boards and CIO’s and EA teams to create achievable technology roadmaps and architectures. His recent assignments have led to significant acceleration of results in terms of system and service choices through a focus on ‘agile’ architectures.

Malcolm Johnston

Malcolm is a business strategy consultant currently fulfilling the role of interim sales and marketing director at F2X.

His international business experience was primarily gained during 17 years with BT, Cable & Wireless, T-Mobile and PSINet (an American ISP). He has undertaken many international roles in sales and marketing from product manager to sales and marketing director. He has lived and worked in Germany and the USA – where he ran the Cable & Wireless international sales organisation prior to attending the C&W Senior Management Development Programme.

He holds a BA in Accountancy & Law from Stirling University, a Diploma in International Business from Georgetown University (USA) and a MSc in Strategic Marketing Management from ARU. In addition to this, Malcolm is an NLP Practitioner, a qualified administrator of Belbin Team Roles and MBTI and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Ann Brown

Director

Ann leads the transformation and programmes services for clients and has the benefit of experience in numerous sectors from engineering to education covering a range of business critical services ranging from digital strategies to supply chain and logistics.

Ann works closely with clients to ensure that programmes are working effectively and delivering the desired results.

John Panther

Director

John is a senior member of the cost saving and commercial team having honed his skills in consultancy and more latterly at one of the UK leading Utility organisations where he had the pleasure of facing off the one of the worlds largest technology outsourcing providers.

John’s experience over the last 20 + years means that he is able to rapidly assess cost saving opportunities and use his vast commercial insight to rapidly access them.

Martin Joyner

Martin works with F2X as a senior consultant specialising in developing and delivering performance and value improvement projects. A professional engineer and manager, he has extensive Director level experience in the public and private sectors, both in the UK and internationally.

Martin brings to F2X a set of experience and skills that include

• Procurement and contract management – Procuring and managing multi million pound contracts that have delivered clients cost reductions and improved value of over 20% against previous benchmarks
• Performance improvement – Leading teams in the design, implementation and operation of renewed organisations and business processes that have delivered improved performance, cost reduction and greater employee satisfaction.
• Project Management – Experience of managing large projects which have often been complex and involved multidisciplinary teams. This has been done in variety of different sectors that have included utilities, rail and government services.
• Asset management. – Driven by the need to maintain and improve service standards, Martin has developed medium/long-term plans for the maintenance, refurbishment and renewal of assets.
• Business process outsourcing – Responsible for managing and delivering BPO contracts; dealing with the associated issues such as the TUPE transfer of staff.
• Operational management – Responsible for managing a £40m pa contracting profit centre that has included over 300 staff.

Martin is a Chartered Engineer and has a MBA from City University London.

Steve Lunn

Steve brings a wealth of experience in Programme and Project Management delivery and assurance experience within government departments/agencies and the private sector. With a demonstrable track record of leading operational and business change teams to success. Results focussed, he is able to identify areas for improvement, understand what needs to be done, and drive improvements through to achievement.

He has completed a number of successful programme management delivery and assurance, and performance improvement assignments for clients including: National Offender Management Service (NOMS); HM Prison Service; Ministry of Defence, Tata Consultancy Services and Northern Ireland Water Ltd.

His qualifications include:
ACMA – Institute of Chartered Management Accountants
Certified Management Consultant – Institute of Business Consultants
MSP & PRINCE2 accredited practitioner
Government High Risk Gateway Review Team Leader

Ben Whittaker

Ben leads the Infrastructure Architecture practice at F2X and has experience working with a broad range of clients in insurance, support services, construction, manufacturing and media sectors. Ben’s wide experience rooted in a deep technical domain knowledge means he is able to bridge the gap between business and technology. Often clients have been badly advised and require rapid problem resolution and Ben’s reputation as the infrastructure equivalent of Red Adair is growing.

Ben works with clients to define, design, oversee implementation and support technology solutions and is happy working with server room managers or Board Directors. He achieves this through communicating and collaborating with in house teams to deliver effective tailored solutions based on best-practice and industry-standards.

Helen Fraser

Helen has over 12+ years experience in delivering business and IT solutions to clients in banking, insurance, professional services, local and central government. Having sharpened her skills through a portfolio of projects her MSC, in business systems analysis and design, has enabled her to combine practical experience with deep theoretical knowledge. She understands how to deliver projects effectively and efficiently and leads the design and implementation of PMO’s.

Her extensive knowledge of best practice enables her to rapidly identify solutions to complex issues. Extremely commercially driven Helen ensures that the optimum approach is taken to deliver the best value for clients.

Cassie Canham-James

Cassie brings a wealth of experience in managing IT service teams to provide an outstanding support service to clients, as well as Project Management experience within a broad spectrum of projects. She has an in-depth understanding of the issues faced by customers, and constantly strives to ensure customer satisfaction over and above the expected level. She is diligent and tenacious with the capacity to create, plan and organise effectively, and has a keen eye for detail ensuring that everything is covered first time.

Cassie has worked in market leading and FTSE 100 corporations within the IT Services industry, giving her a wealth of knowledge and an understanding of the common problems faced by organisations. This understanding enables her to have a view of how outsourcing IT Managed Services can help to solve these problems, giving business leaders greater freedom to forget about operational IT issues and have more time for strategic thinking and planning.

Cassie has recently been working on delivering an outstanding service for Vistanda’s largest customer, achieving 100% SLA scores since transition from migration to live running.

Cassie received a bachelor’s degree with honours in Managerial & Administrative Studies and has qualified as a Certified Associate of Project Management (CAPM) through the Project Management Institute.