Ajinkya Apte
Open for opportunities
IT Leadership
Business Partnering
Delivery and Programme Management
B2B and B2C (eCommerce)
Agile Transformation
Almere Netherlands
Professional Status
Employed
Open to opportunities
About Me
I am a strongly motivated senior servant leader, who believes in agility and agile mindset . Currently
I work at Imperial Brand's where I am responsible for IT Delivery organisation of B2B and B2C Solutions that includes capabilities such as B2B CRM,B2B Commerce and Loyalty portals, B2C eCommerce , B2C eCRM , Brand and Customer care.
During my professional career, I began my journey working with an Indian IT giant where I enhanced my corporate and technical skills by assisting International clients in their business processes. Later I got opportunity to be part of Heineken’s well know young leadership development program at Heineken. During the program, I worked in areas such as IT strategy ,projects and operations
Afterwards I worked in IT application management team where I managed for office 365 suite and also did service management for region Europe where I managed global supplier. Later I was working as an Agile transformation lead within Agile transformation team at Heineken to help IT and functional team to Experiment , Adopt Agile mindset and ways of working to improve time to market and increase customer collaboration and satisfaction Later I worked in very exciting scale-up Upfield - plant food company where I was Head of f IT for south west Europe region.
I work at Imperial Brand's where I am responsible for IT Delivery organisation of B2B and B2C Solutions that includes capabilities such as B2B CRM,B2B Commerce and Loyalty portals, B2C eCommerce , B2C eCRM , Brand and Customer care.
During my professional career, I began my journey working with an Indian IT giant where I enhanced my corporate and technical skills by assisting International clients in their business processes. Later I got opportunity to be part of Heineken’s well know young leadership development program at Heineken. During the program, I worked in areas such as IT strategy ,projects and operations
Afterwards I worked in IT application management team where I managed for office 365 suite and also did service management for region Europe where I managed global supplier. Later I was working as an Agile transformation lead within Agile transformation team at Heineken to help IT and functional team to Experiment , Adopt Agile mindset and ways of working to improve time to market and increase customer collaboration and satisfaction Later I worked in very exciting scale-up Upfield - plant food company where I was Head of f IT for south west Europe region.
Experiences
Head of IT- Commercial Solution Delivery
Imperial Brands PLC
Since September 2021
- Part of Leadership teams of B2C CoE and B2B CoE .
- Work with Sales and trade as well as Digital marketing team to create IT solution roadmap that will delivered business value
- Responsible for overall IT commercial portfolio delivery and responsible to delivered solutions to ensure fit with business requirements.
- Provides leadership to architects and delivery leads who leads team including Product Development, Platform implementation(Projects), DevOps and Support teams
- Accountable for maintenance, availability, and operations of infrastructure of B2B (Salesforce) and B2C platform (Headless E-Commerce).
- Accountable with my Technology Architects to ensure, delivery team develops/ delivers features and improvements according to architecture standard that follows good industry practices as well as that is inherently secure, performant, robust
- Work with different stratgic vendor such as Saleforce, commercetool, Optimove etc to identify right solution to solve business problems
- Responsible to setup agile ways of working as well as Engineering standards and processes are applied to ensure value driven delivery has been done
- Manage and work with outsourcing partner to delivery on agreed portfolio roadmap
- Enable Head of Product( B2B and B2C) by provide right development capabilities for feature development
- Support VP IT for commercial solution to create 3-5 strategy and vision for commercial IT solutions
Head of IT (South-West Europe)
Upfield
September 2019
to August 2021
- Responsible for IT for the 7 Markets ( Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus) and 3 Factories ( Netherlands, Portugal and Greece)
- Leading team of 4 with 1 internal employee and 3 contractors
- Responsible for Business relationship linkage between the business units & primary IT contact for the business working with 4 GM’s & 3 factories directors
- Serve as strategic interface between the Business & Global IT transformation project to support the divestment of Upfield business from Unilever.
- Responsible for supporting the Transformation, Business Engagement and the delivery of IT Services
- Responsible for supporting the Transformation, Business Engagement and the delivery of IT Services
- Accountable for alignment to IT Compliance and governance framework and provide appropriate input to and management of IT Costs.
- Responsible for local and regional IT budget management
Agile Transformation Lead
Heineken
March 2018
to September 2019
- Lead work stream to create agile delivery organisation
- Do portfolio planning/Big room planning and help setup OKRs with Portfolio Managers
- The set-up of the actual product team (including structure governance and Agile ways-of-working
- Enabled Product Owner in Initiating, Preparing and Launching Product and Product teams
- Set up escalation mechanism (e.g. sponsor)
- Identity relevant budget lines and navigate budget governance to obtain ownership over this budget
- Change management around adoption and transformation towards agility
- Setting up to DevOps teams
Service Management (Europe)- Business Applications
Heineken
April 2017
to April 2018
Amsterdam
Netherlands
- Responsible for Application support service management for portfolio of 8 million
- Lead Agile implementation project for ERP and BI/BO application support service for region and successfully decrease new development delivery time from 60 days to 20 days- Approx team size 20
- Held Service reviews and acted on Pro-active & on- requests to European operating companies
- Monitor supplier performance and liaise with supplier to ensure pain point are address and SLAs are green
- Drive regional service improvement initiatives
- Acted as a SPOC for escalation within Europe region for Application support and managed stakeholders in European Operating companies IT teams
- Help drive negotiation with liaising with multiple senior stakeholder and with supplier to bring saving of 2mEUR
Business Application Manager
Heineken International
March 2015
to 2017
Full-time
Amsterdam
Netherlands
- Was responsible for creating technology roadmap for Office 365 cloud solutions
- Worked as an application manager for Microsoft collaboration platform (office 365 - Sharepoint OneDrive Teams Delve )
- Managed continuous improvement projects to improve process and technology to enable people
- Lead projects for system maintenance project( ERP and Non -ERP systems)- approx team size 10-15 FTE
- Managed outsource team (5 FTe) to ensure delivery is made as per agreed SLA
International Graduate Program
Heineken International
September 2013
to March 2015
Full-time
Amsterdam
Netherlands
- "The IGP is built around three six-month assignments which are designed to provide intensive and contrasting learning experiences. This is quite a challenge for the individuals involved: every six months, they have to establish themselves in a new country, start a new job and embed themselves in a new team."
"For the 2013 edition, 15 International Graduates have been selected out of more than 22.000 applications around the world" - Worked on various IT and non-IT functional areas such as performance mgmt, financial /business analysis and change mgmt
- In Nigerian Breweries ,Acted as local project manager and did activities such as change management , stakeholder management , planning ,budgeting for SAP roll out.Created and executed user training as well as change awareness strategy
- In CEE regional office, work as IT business analyst
Software /Solution Engineer
PERSISTENT SYSTEMS LIMITED
July 2010
to July 2012
Full-time
Pune
India
- I was responsible for the requirement interpretation and implementation of solution for critical modules
- I worked on the projects that would automate presale /post-sale activities of services of one of the Reputed US based company
- Participate in requirement analysis, risks analysis and worked with Business Analysts for User Acceptance Test (UAT)
Essentials of Growth growth marketing Deep dive into the cutting-edge growth processes, frameworks and mental models used by fast growing companies and their people.
MASTER IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS (MIB)
GEM/ Grenoble Graduate School of Business ,Grenoble France
September 2012
to September 2014
Unique Master’s program in International Business to provide international companies with graduates who have both international business and management skills,with cross-cultural competencies
Learn more
Demonstrates an advanced level of Scrum mastery. PSM II certificate holders show an understanding of the underlying principles of Scrum and can effectively apply Scrum in complex, real-world situations.
B.E.(Electronics and Telecommunication)
University of Pune/ Maharashtra Institute of Technology ,Pune India
September 2007
to June 2010
This course has been designed by the University with senior industrialists in the Electronics & Telecommunication field. The career paths followed are diverse ranging from electronic product design to heavy electrical plant maintenance, from technical focus to customer focus.
Skills
IT Sales and Trade
- Salesforce Consumer goods cloud
- Salesforce.com
- Salesforce marketing cloud
- Salesforce Experience cloud
- Saleforce loyalty management
Digital and eCommerce
- Digital Delivery
- eCRM
- Consumer data platform
- Personalization
- Azure DevOps
- eCommerce (Commercetools)
Agile and DevOps
-
Professional Scrum Master
Expert
-
Scaling Agile Frameworks
Advanced
-
Creating CI/CD /DevOPS teams
Advanced
-
Lean KanBan
Good
Project and IT Management
-
Project Management (Prince 2 certified)
Prince 2 certifiedGood
-
Change Management
Advanced
-
Budget Management
Advanced
-
Performance Management/ Dashboard creations
Advanced
IT Service Management
-
Change and release management
Expert
-
Supplier management
Advanced
-
Application support
Expert
-
Contract Management
Expert
-
Incident and Problem Management
Expert
-
SLA management
Expert
Growth Hacking
- Google analytics/tag manager
- Design thinking/ personal Canvasing
- Usability Hub
Technical
-
Office 365 - SHarepoint , One drives , Team , Delve
Good
-
Oracle DBA
Good
-
Appian -Business Process Management tool
Good
-
MS Excel-advance
Advanced
-
Java/Java scripts
Good
Language
- English-Proficient
- Dutch- Beginner
- Hindi-Proficient
- French-Beginner
Interests
Sports
- Karate
- Table Tennis
Music
- Marathi Folk music
