Hello, I'm Lee Johnston

Business development | Consulting | Product Management | Business Analysis

Lee has 9+ years’ experience in the delivery and selling of £multi-million digital services. His background is in consulting, end-to-end digital transformation delivery, product management, business development and sales. A highly motivated, ambitious business development professional with a strong background in product management/design. Lee focuses on delivering innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for customers including; Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Document Digitisation, Demand Forecasting, Customer Intelligence and Fraud Detection (we have a catalogue of over 30+ models in production).

Lee has a passion for delivering digital transformation projects, challenging the status quo and turning complex ideas into solutions that are simple, intuitive, and deliver value from the outset.

Experience

Kainos – Business Development Manager (January 2021 – Present)

Lee takes a consultative approach to business development. Commercially focused with a passion for nurturing and developing relationships with customers. Lee has led on several successful opportunities in both the Public and commercial sector valuing £6m+

Extensive experience in problem identification, working with customers to unearth their challenges and define their vision
Experience in nurturing, growing accounts, and building pipeline of opportunities including new business
Experience in understanding market trends and building propositions to support their development
An effective communicator with proven ability at building strong relationships and credibility with customers at CxO level
Experienced in developing compelling value propositions in the Public Sector using a broad range of technologies, specifically Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Knowledgeable across a broad technology stack and tools, including their practical applications and value delivered
Experienced thought leadership and distilling customer challenges and articulating how Data and AI (or the wider Kainos portfolio) can help solve complex customer problems
Strong people and team management skills, capable of managing people and teams across locations
Commercially responsibility for building Data and AI deals within the Public Sector to ensure quarterly and annual revenue/profitability targets are achieved (successfully achieving team target FY21/22 of £21m)
Builds, owns and processes deals through the end-to-end sales and commercial process
Maintenance of a pipeline of opportunities worth approx. £8m+
Takes ownership for building, maintaining, and securing new business (3 new logos FY21/22, 2 new logos FY22/23)
Builds and maintains strategic relationships with industry partners (AWS and Microsoft), delivery partners and customers
Provides support to account teams including helping form GTM strategies, supports innovation, contributes to account planning, and contributes to the development and build of pipeline opportunities
Works with the Data and AI Business Development director (and wider team) to set and deliver the strategy for the fiscal year.
Sharing success stories and promoting the capability internally and externally.

Kainos – Product Consultant (October 2016 – December 2020)

Focusing mainly on the delivery of public sector services, I have worked on discovery and alpha phases and taken projects through to beta, live and even offered continued support. A champion for users, I work to ensure their needs are being addressed from the outset and that the products being built are not only intuitive but deliver value from the outset. Working against the usual constraints of time, cost, scope is not uncommon but, what I have learnt is to set realistic expectations and manage them through out the lifecycle of projects.

running workshops with customers to define the product vision, establish outcomes, critical success factors and ensure they align with the needs of the users/business
collaboratively work with the customer teams to define MVP and build out the product roadmap
collecting and analysing information to make informed decisions and ensuring it is shared clearly
ability to build trusted, candid relationships with customers, other suppliers and third-party stakeholders
working with customers to set realistic, obtainable benefits (KPIs/OKRs) and designing solutions that deliver on them against constraints
coaching and developing customer knowledge in agile and product management to ensure they are capable of supporting and building out the service
demonstrable experience of building strong client relationships at a senior stakeholder level
People/line management responsibilities for a small number of staff with a focus on managing employee performance and development
leading and supporting scrum teams empowering them to become high performing, self organising teams. Often acting as the escalation point for issues
actively involved with recruitment activities (contract or permanent hires)
model business processes and facilitate workshops / discussions to understand pain points and validate assumptions, requirements and NFRs
working with multidisciplinary teams to plan, create, review and release working useable software

Deloitte Digital – Consultant – Business Analyst (September 2014 – October 2016) 

I was involved in the delivery of small, medium and large scale applications varying between public sector projects, enterprise software implementation and the development of bespoke applications. I was involved in aspects of strategy, design, development through to implementation, where he successfully delivered several projects.

organised and facilitated the delivery of workshops to: understand AS-IS processes, pain points and extract business / user needs. Similar techniques were used to help the senior delivery team define the vision and roadmap for products and services.
worked in a multidisciplinary team of designers, developers and stakeholders to build a backlog of requirements. To ensure clarity and test coverage I typically ran three amigo sessions. 
involvement in business engagement activities including running product demos, blogging, speaking at universities, developing and delivering training, responding to opportunities and helping with recruitment.  
producing a list of deliverables to including information architecture diagrams, wireframes, user journeys and process maps (as-is / to-be).  
responsible for managing the product backlog and teams Kanban boards through refinement, prioritisation and sprint planning sessions. I ran the sprint retrospectives, focusing not only on improvements but escalating issues, celebrating successes and recognising team achievement.

New York eHealth Collaborative – Interface Engineer (January 2014 – September 2014)

The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) is a not-for-profit organisation who assist healthcare providers in transforming traditional paper records into electronic health records.

- worked closely with business analysts, project managers and technical experts to translate requirements into technical IHE profiles or HL7 specifications.
- developed test case scenarios and performed Q&A with clients pre, during and post implementation.
- provided general support for clients, tracking errors and resolving issues in a timely manner, within SLAs and escalating any risk or issues with senior management.