Iain Toolin | Professional practice

Professional Practice

My professional practice has developed through delivering change across public services, telecommunications, financial services and enterprise technology. The environments and technologies have changed; the underlying challenge has remained remarkably consistent: understand the information, make sense of the process and apply technology where it genuinely helps.

The table below presents a selection of practical assignments rather than a catalogue of job titles. Each row sets out the context, my contribution and the technologies involved.

Data first. Then process. Technology where it helps.

The tools matter, but the real work is understanding the problem and making a practical improvement that lasts.

Selected assignments

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Period	Practice area	Assignment	Situation	My contribution	Outcome / perspective	Enabling technologies
1986–1987	Public services	NHS Scotland Parliamentary information and reporting	Health-related parliamentary questions required information from a mixture of digital and non-digital sources within demanding deadlines.	Collected, reconciled and structured information for statistical analysis and timely reporting.	Produced consolidated datasets and reports to support responses to parliamentary information requests.	IDMSX, COBOL and established data-processing methods.
Early career	Telecommunications	GSM commercial systems Rating and operational support	The emergence of commercial GSM services created new requirements for charging, billing and operational support.	Worked on early GSM rating and business/operational support systems, connecting technical data flows to commercial processes.	Telecommunications made the cost of inaccurate or incomplete data immediately apparent: systems needed to work at scale and support real customers.	GSM, rating, BSS and OSS.
Subsequent assignments	Telecommunications	Telecoms transformation Multiple operators	Operators needed to evolve customer, service and commercial systems as networks and business models developed.	Contributed to programmes involving BSS/OSS processes and data across major UK and European telecommunications environments.	The technical solution was only part of the job. Alignment between data, operations and delivery was equally important.	Customer operations, billing, service support and systems integration.
Selected assignments	Financial services and insurance	Insurance and banking Systems and data change	Complex, regulated environments required dependable information and controlled changes to operational systems.	Worked across insurance and banking initiatives including insurance tooling, platform migration and regulatory recovery programmes.	Traceability, data quality and a clear understanding of operational dependencies are essential where mistakes have material consequences.	Insurance platforms, Guidewire, banking and regulatory programmes.
Selected assignments	Enterprise transformation	Utilities and enterprise platforms Transformation and separation	Large organisations needed to manage process and data dependencies through platform change, divestment and governance initiatives.	Contributed to transformation work involving SAP S/4HANA, service management and data governance platforms.	Enterprise change succeeds when system boundaries, data ownership and business responsibilities are made explicit.	SAP S/4HANA, ServiceNow and Collibra.
2025–2026	Data migration and transition	BBC Audience Services Data migration leadership	A service transition required the controlled movement of operational information across multiple platforms, while maintaining relationships and business continuity.	Led the data migration workstream, developing the approach, sequencing, reconciliation controls and cutover planning for customer-service and related data. Defined dependencies, staging and validation for linked records, reporting data and supporting content.	Established an approach emphasising auditable counts, referential integrity and controlled cutover planning.	Dynamics 365 CE, Dataverse, SSIS/KingswaySoft, SQL Server Reporting Services, SharePoint and cloud contact-centre services.