Microsoft 365 Experts in Frankfurt

• Creating concepts and architecture for domain integration (SEAT into the VW structure)
• Domain trusts and administration
• Operation and administration of Windows 2022/ 2025 servers and domains
• Domain restructuring
• GPO and SG editing and migration
• DNS restructuring and migration

Technologies: Windows 2022, Active Directory, ADFS, AD Azure Connect, DHCP, DNS, GPO, VMWare vSphere, Hyper-V, Powershell, Jira, MS Office 365,), SCCM, VSAN Fileservices, Approximately 800 servers, 400 users

• Functional requirements management for DIVID, the Umweltbundesamt platform for administering the single-use plastics fund. Focus: entitled parties, sub-entitled parties, and benefit reports.
• Consolidation and analysis of specifications, Jira, Confluence, functional concepts, and UX designs. Independent structuring and delimitation of requirements, as well as identification of contradictions, gaps, and dependencies.
• Creation and quality assurance of implementable user stories with clear, testable acceptance criteria. Preparation of decision alternatives and coordination with business, development, UX, and QA through team refinement.
• Conducting manual and technically assisted accessibility tests. Coordinating findings with QA and the Product Owner for further planning and implementation.
• Result: more consistent requirements, clearly defined processes and stories, and transparent open decisions. Separation of assumptions from confirmed requirements; better basis for implementation, refinements, and QA test cases.

Tools used: Jira, Confluence

• Industry: Insurance, Trade, IT
• Customers & Projects: Consulting and selling insurance and similar services
• Main tasks: Insurance consulting (health insurance, retirement planning, wealth building); commercial services, inside and field sales; sales data analysis and forecasting; customer consulting and support; opening a new sales headquarters for private and business customers; business development & innovation management; business use case development; process optimization; stakeholder management; team leadership and training; preparation and delivery of trainings;
• Technologies used: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Draw.IO, Camunda 8, Java (8, 17,21,25), Git, Spring Boot, Spring Batch, Spring Data REST, Spring Web, Spring Security, J-Unit, Playwright, Lombock, Vaadin, H2, PostgreSQL (16, 17 18), pgAdmin, Docker, LLMs, JasperSoft Studio, JasperReports

• Elevator emergency call reorganization project: Project to evaluate and define a new technical solution for connecting elevator emergency calls for all facilities of DB InfraGO passenger stations.

• Objectives: Secure, redundant connection of all locations across Germany. Definition of the technical solution, documentation, subject-matter support and management of specialist and line organizations.

• Identification and commissioning of technical solutions.

• Management of documentation and approval of the technical solution in DB regulations.

• Definition and tracking of the roadmap for describing the solution.

• Preparation of a rollout plan to avoid shutdowns.

• Coordination and implementation of decision proposals for steering committees.

• Communication of the solution to all committees and regional areas.

Asset of GPP (Private Equity)

• B2B, Provider of cooled packaging solutions for the pharmaceutical industry
• €20m in revenue, 50 employees, 2 locations

Responsibilities:

• Responsibility for all commercial and financial activities
• Establishment of a finance and reporting structure
• Carve-Out / Post-closing transition management

Achievements:

• Preparation of investor reporting package (sales, financials, cash) using Power BI
• Development of a sales funnel
• Business process redesigns and implementation of regular business reviews

MOVE-ZPD – Strategic Infrastructure Project | Total Program Budget 48 Mio. € | Data Center Migration Hannover → Hamburg

Responsibility for a central subproject for migrating business-critical specialist applications to a highly available data center architecture.

• Management of a central subproject for migrating business-critical specialist applications to a highly available data center architecture.
• Independent management of around 30 of approximately 100 business-critical specialist applications, including Exchange (approx. 30'000 users), LDAP, DNS and cross-state applications.
• Management of project structure, milestones, dependencies, risks and escalations, as well as coordination of the required business and technical stakeholders.
• End-to-end coordination of the managed migrations, from planning and structuring through environment provision, testing and acceptance to production deployment and go-live.
• Stakeholder management between business units, Product Owners, data center operations, program organization and external service providers.
• Development and implementation of a standardized server request and change process to speed up VM provisioning and reduce manual coordination.
• Management reporting as well as preparation and moderation of steering and decision-making bodies and workshops.

Technologies & Tools: MS Project, MS Teams, SharePoint, Oracle APEX, CA Automation Manager, Visio, MindManager

• User account management and creation in Active Directory
• Group management and updates in Active Directory
• Permissions management on file servers
• Exchange/Outlook support
• VPN setup
• System and product support: Windows 10, Windows 11, Office 2019, Office 365, Active Directory, TeamViewer, RSA VPN, Microsoft Teams, RSA Security Console, Deep Discovery Mail Inspector, ServiceNow, Macmon

• Delivery of various end-customer projects in server and network infrastructure on time, in quality, and within budget.
• Project 1: Firewall renewal, replacement of an ASA firewall with a Fortinet firewall at an automotive supplier.
• Project 2: Migration of file services from dedicated servers at 5 branch locations into a central managed file service, including DHCP, directory, and print services, as well as decommissioning of the old domain controllers.
• Project 3: Renewal of the network infrastructure at the headquarters and branch locations of a logistics company and transition of the LAN, WLAN, and firewall environments into a managed network service.
• Project 4: Network renewal, replacement of the core and access switches at the headquarters of a medical technology company and transition into a managed network service.
• Project 5: Firewall renewal, replacement of an ASA firewall with a Fortinet firewall for a city.
• Environment: ASA and Fortinet firewalls, Cisco network components, ITSM Heat/Ivanti, Confluence.

Europe-wide re-platforming & centralization

• Independently created the migration concept and implementation plan for the Europe-wide centralization and consolidation of IT services for around 20 European companies as part of a re-platforming program.
• Migration assessment: analysis of the existing IT, infrastructure, application, and service landscapes of the companies as the basis for the migration strategy.
• Development of the centralized target vision and target architecture based on a modern technology stack, taking platform and containerization approaches into account.
• Design of a highly available central infrastructure in an active-active model across two data centers; consideration of cloud, infrastructure, application, CMDB, and IAM services.
• Development of the migration and transformation roadmap, including defining migration waves, dependencies, requirements, and priorities for the move from decentralized services to the central platform.
• Analysis of technical and organizational dependencies, identification of migration risks, and development of a structured approach for step-by-step migration and centralization.
• Creation of target, solution, and implementation views for each service domain; design of the end-to-end join-move-leave process as a blueprint for the European rollout (Jira/Jira Asset Management).
• Alignment of migration strategy and roadmap with European companies, management, IT, providers, and other stakeholders; presentation of the 12-month roadmap to the Managing Director Europe.

I founded Nick's Advisory to make HR management, HR project delivery, and AI expertise available to companies on a temporary basis when internal capacity or experience is lacking.

Services:

• HR interim management: taking over the HR business partner or HR manager role during restructuring, growth, or a vacant leadership position, on a daily or hourly basis
• HR consulting: projects around reorganization, talent acquisition, separation processes, and building HR structures
• AI consulting for HR teams: selection, introduction, and use of AI tools in HR processes

Further development & digitalization of key sales and application processes in a regulated banking environment, including requirements structuring, roadmap development and AI-supported use case assessment

Responsibilities & Impact:

• Management of existing digital products to ensure stable operations (Keep the lights on) amid growing regulatory complexity
• Product vision and development of a consistent, implementable roadmap
• Strategic backlog prioritization based on business goals, dependencies and technical feasibility
• Coordination of release planning, backlog, quality assurance and go-live readiness with business departments, IT, implementation teams and management
• Identification, structuring and assessment of AI-supported use cases at the interface of business departments, IT and the regulatory environment
• Analysis, structuring and translation of complex business requirements into epics and user stories
• Facilitation of team, stakeholder & alignment formats to ensure clarity of objectives, collaboration and decision-making ability
• Transparency on capacities, dependencies, delivery status and KPI/status aspects as a basis for product & management decisions
• Compliance with transparent structures and documentation (LeanIX, application profiles, runbooks)

Contribution to results:

Stabilization and further development of key financial processes under high regulatory and technical complexity. Improved transparency, decision-making ability and implementability through structured requirements, auditable documentation and AI-supported ways of working.

• 100% Remote | Germany & Europe
• Freelance and interim support in talent acquisition, recruiting and executive search
• Flexible and short-term support for companies during recruiting peaks, temporary resource shortages and project-based talent acquisition needs
• Fast assumption of operational recruiting responsibility through many years of experience in in-house recruiting, RPO and recruitment consulting
• End-to-end recruiting from requirements analysis through active sourcing, direct search and interviews to selection, offer management and onboarding
• Targeted support for hard-to-fill positions through active sourcing, direct search and executive search
• Advising HR and hiring managers on recruiting, sourcing and hiring strategies
• Support with recruiting process optimization, standardization and further development of existing recruiting processes
• Independent management of parallel vacancies and recruiting projects with a short onboarding period and a high degree of operational independence
• Project-based engagement without long-term headcount expansion – 100% remote and flexible in Germany and Europe

• Analyze business situation: stagnation of sales, small recurring customer rate, huge number of visitors but little conversion rate, average order value does not increase, no customer segmentation or targeting, performance marketing approach fails to acquire the right customer
• Advise on sales and marketing strategies and improve operations; agile coach advice with key business strategy using Scrum and Kanban
• Acquire key requirements and derive user stories for e-shop product owner development and customer data analysis
• Develop comprehensive 360 degree customer data model using Shopify and Amazon; implement data feeds from more than 10 systems (Klaviyo, Typeform)
• Develop meaningful ad-hoc data analysis detailing aspects of Triple Whale customer behavior using standard e-commerce KPIs such as AOV, Google Analytics, churn, conversion and abandoned checkout rates, ROAS, CPA, CPC; tools: SQL, Power Query
• Derive clear and data-driven customer segmentation and targeting; ETL processes and Power BI
• Introduce and feed new content agency with customer insights using GraphQL and Postman; improve messages, frequency, and targeted audience; Microsoft Planner
• Provide crystal clear data proof to steer new performance marketing approach
• Develop standard business operations reporting