Gary Ling - Skills and Expertise - Gary Ling, Digital Producer, Data Monetiser, Political Savant, Information Economist, Solution Seller, Business Strategist.

Current Status: Gary welcomes the opportunity to discuss projects that he might be able to work on with you. Tel: +44 7878 372 158
Email: [email protected]

Juggling Balls - Gary's Skills and Expertise

In his working life as a "Digital Monetiser" (defined Here) Gary Ling aims to make his clients money by working interim projects that identify ways to make improvements to their eCommerce propositions in these areas:
* Broadband Infrastructure * IT Project Management * Scoping Requirements * Digital Marketing * Investment Pitches * Affinity Partnerships * Monetising Data * Strategy Workshop Facilitation * Market Analysis * Demand Stimulation * Solution Selling * Political Communications * Economic Analysis * RFIs * Proposition Development
Read HERE “Tale of Scale for Three Tech Cities” “Power of Social Trading” “Tranformational Digital Govt”

Gary makes his living from working ad hoc consulting projects on a variable day rate depending on the number of days contracted per month. He can also be integrated more fully into your organisation and be given operational responsibility. Gary will also consider fixed price work for projects with measurable outcomes and definitive timescales. Here are some of the recent projects and interim assignments that Gary is currently, or has recently, worked on:

• Planning and facilitating a Strategy Workshop and assisting in the development of the ‘Digital By Default’ sales plan to the UK Government with the Public Sector Practice team at Geographic Information Software worldwide leader, Esri UK
• Promoting and writing an investor pitch aimed at Chinese investors for Alpha Prospects plc
• Demand Stimulation and Project Management for Greater London Authority (GLA) Superconnected Cities Voucher scheme in the London Borough of Croydon - see here "Croydon chosen for faster Hi-Grade broadband scheme"
• Working with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) to obtain an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) presence on the SKY Digital TV Platform
• Speccing, sourcing and installing a two server web/data MS SQL solution at MDNX
• Political, economic and communications strategy consultant in The Office of Steven Woolfe MEP for the North West of England and Co-ordinator for Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group on the EU Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) Committee
• Writing promotional articles for SHARE magazine for TXO plc - see here
• Developing a business pitch for the deployment of bus screen entertainment, electronic messaging and CCTV security technologies for Hyderabad based Medien Digital Technologies
• Presenting CitiLogik's smart GIS Transport and people movement information services at Civil Service Live 2013 at Kensington Olympia

See more on Gary's Skills and Expertise and network with Gary through LinkedIn.
The essence of commercial success is successfully implementing a multitude of inter-related, large, small and tiny, projects that meet corporate objectives whilst adjusting for events that present themselves along the way (see the TOB).

Gary's Skills and Expertise in these areas enable him to Juggle Balls on a wide variety of diverse assignments - both offline and on. For each area of Skill or Expertise noted below Gary has listed the following:

1. The Essence of what makes the area important to commercial success
2. How he was Educated or learned in the skills and expertise described
3. A piece of relevant Experience evidencing his skills and expertise in the area
4. A notable Event that demonstrates the skill in a real commercial environment

Business Strategy

The very 1st COOL-ERs! Cool!

Essence? The definition of business strategy is "a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal or set of goals or objectives." Whereas, marketing strategy is "a process that can allow an organisation to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage." If the latter is not a better definition of business strategy I don't know what is. Surely, increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage is why businesses exist. That's why marketers make the best business strategists!

Education? As Sandhurst/MBA educated Leader, I have the academic training and practical experience to understand that even the best laid strategic plans can go astray (and sometimes pretty quickly). Nonetheless, without a strategy a business is rudderless. Luckily, every organisation I have worked in has taken this discipline seriously. Some, like GE, over strategised if that's possible with training in 6 Sigma, whilst others, like the Global Business Information Network (GBIN) had a strategic plan that changed organically in light of changes to the market environment and resources available.

Experience? As Digital Director with the Global Business Information Network, I was responsible for building out digital properties globally. I have experience of negotiating contracts in China and India and developing critical supply chain partnerships in those countries. As contracted Operations Director working on the COOL-ER eReader, I help devise a guerrilla marketing strategy against eReader giants Apple and Amazon.

Event? Unquestionably the most intense business strategy adventure that I have ever had was the launch of the COOL-ER in 2009. My client, Interead Limited, was lead by an innovative entrepreneur who practiced Ballsy Thinking, was receptive to new ideas and Kept It Simple Stupid (KISS). All the characteristics of a successful strategy for launch. From inception to launch the COOL-ER eReader took seven months which involved pulling people and operations together on three continents. The COOL-ER website was the most global, most heavily trafficed website at launch I have ever seen from a standing start (helped by a global PR campaign run out of New York). In this photo I am shown picking up the first COOL-ER eReaders as they rolled off the production line of our Taiwanese manufacturers.

eCommerce

This Edition Changed My Life

Essence? eCommerce is buying and selling of product or service over digital systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.

Education? A comprehensive understanding of how networks work and the digital topography behind the Internet. I read widely, attend lectures and courses and write on current trends in the digital space as both a thinker and practitioner.

Experience? Launched one of the first commercial websites in the UK in 1995 as Marketing Director with TMI and have been at the heart of eCommerce developments for both online services and products ever since. Helped launch the first online store card in the UK for Zoom.co.uk. Launched, checkSURE, the most innovative credit checking site for small businesses in 2002; the worldwide COOL-ER eReader site in 2009 (which became the 3rd largest global eReader product by market share within a year of launch); successSURE selling online training solutions and checkOnomics, an industry report portal. With Entranet broke new ground in direct response television advertising by successfully leading a challenging project for the Simplyhealth / HSA Group to deliver Britain’s first ever TV campaign on SKY which allowed viewers to immediately respond during the commercial by viewers using the red button technology platform and integrating the response directly back to the Simplyhealth marketing team.

Event? Travelling on a train from Coventry to Watford in the last week of November 1994, I pulled out my copy of Business Week and first read about the potential for commercial applications of something called the 'Internet'. Given my computer background I bought into its potential immediately and before the end of the year was hook up to a closed network (a pre-runner of the Internet) called CompuServe at 9600 baud! The TMI site was launched the following year.

Economics

Essence? Simple. In the short run economics is about 'incentives'. In the long run it's about 'demographics'. Full Stop. Discuss.

Education? All my adult schooling has had an 'economics focus' and from all my academic work, writings and research, I realise that I can be described as a 'political economist with a keen interest in globalisation'.

Experience? If marketing is the lifeblood of modern business, an understanding of economics gives business its structure and form. From policy analysis to business intelligence understanding the application of the key principles of economics has helped me add value.

Event? Walking with an MBA class mate one night discussing why economics is important. He turned to me and said: "It's easy Gary, studying economics helps us to understand how we can ADD VALUE". An epiphany moment! For that's what Life's about!

Marketing

Riding the Adword Wave!

Essence? Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. Digital marketing (the use of internet-connected devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones to engage consumers with online advertising) is, like selling, a subset of this discipline.

Education? An MBA from Cass Business School, where I specialised in marketing. I was awarded the Marketing Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and passed the entry exams for the Market Research Society.

Experience? Considerable experience in all aspects of the marketing mix (look around this site for examples). Digital channels merely emphasize these elements. Time, money and response are all exaggerated critical success factors in the digital world. The real winners will be those who can integrate digital marketing opportunities effectively into overall marketing and business strategies. Despite what some may say, digital is not the be-all-and-end-all. Companies can exist exclusively in the digital space but innovative offline marketing has an important part to play in driving digital traffic - with PR activities being one of the best aspects of this in my experience (primarily because nowadays PR generates online content on other sites so end users can click through and the effect of the PR is both immediate and trackable). The perspective that only comes from listening, reading and broad experience is what makes a great marketer in this integrated marketing age and I've spent my adult life striving to be among the very best.

Event? Difficult picking just one since I consider myself to be a marketer through and through so have enjoyed many great 'marketing events'. No company or organisation (political, profit or non-profit) is successful unless they encompasses the disciplines of 'marketing' (including budgeting!). However, a notable event was in 2007 when it was a mark of how well we had managed our pioneering Google Adwords, Pay Per Click campaigns, for checkSURE and other business, that Google asked us to be a case study (see here)

Project Management

A highly regulated environment

Essence? Project Management (PM) is planning, organizing, securing, managing, leading, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. Projects come in all shapes and sizes, are not indefinite and the sum value to an organisation should be greater than their individual parts.

Education? The best that the state's money can buy at Sandhurst. Learning how to plan and achieve objectives in a military environment was the most challenging PM education I ever had, especially as I studied a 'social science' at university. Subsequently, I could see the influence of the military's PM thinking in every PM course that I went on in private industry.

Experience? Post Sandhurst, in every job I had this skill was essential. As Marketing Director at TMI, I also had to sell PM courses (both the 'soft' and 'hard' variety) so got to understand how even 'little project' failures can cause death and destruction as evidenced by the event below.

Event? Just after my MBA, I was contracted by British Rail Operations in Paddington for a few months to assist with project management training surrounding the implementation of the recommendations arising from the Hidden Enquiry into the Claphan Junction rail crash. Of course, as a marketing consultant, I also thought it was my job to devise, edit and produce a glossy newsletter called Hidden Agenda (Ged it?) to increase the efficacy of our communications across the Railway Network!

Solution Selling

Where customers can't run away!

Essence? Solution selling is about serious listening. Thinking about what the client is telling you about the problem that they want solved.

Education? Thrown in at the deep end as a new consultant with Andersen Consulting when placed at British Telecom International as that nationalised body was being privatised. The initial brief for our team was to 'solve' the problem of their outdated IT architecture. It soon became clear to us that the solution that they really needed was more to do with cultural change. The Lesson? Solution Selling is not being narrow minded about what is first proposed, adapt to new information and findings. (See a slideshow of my last day at Arthur Andersen here - NSFW)

Experience? Strategy Director with new media agency Entranet with an £8 million pound pipeline in new business sales to some of the most innovative financial services companies in the UK during the dotcom boom.

Event? Solution Selling on the High Seas. Being one of two, Entranet consultants on the on the 3-day IT Directors Forum on the cruise ship Aurora. A truly captive Audience for solution selling - at formal meetings and during breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bliss!