Microsoft 365 Experts in Frankfurt

• 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

• 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

Self-employed consulting, implementation, and support of IT infrastructures with a focus on IT security, network and server administration, virtualization, backup & recovery, IT documentation, asset management, and business continuity management.

• IT security consulting and implementation of technical protective measures
• Windows server and client support, patch management, user support
• M365 – Entra ID – MS Azure administration
• Planning, installation, and operation of LAN, WAN, WLAN, and VLAN infrastructures, Cisco, HP, Netgear, Sophos, Securepoint
• Support of virtual systems based on Hyper-V, VMware, and Proxmox
• Backup and recovery concepts including test recovery, documentation, and handover
• Introduction and maintenance of IT documentation, asset management, and inventory tracking
• Implementation of measures related to IT baseline protection, emergency manuals, and BCM
• On-/offboarding concepts with a focus on permissions, devices, data access, and handover processes

Security awareness and practical sensitization of users and IT staff

• Close collaboration with development teams to ensure alignment with project objectives
• Assessment of in-scope assets, creation of requirements, and support of the public tender process through the selection of a provider
• Creation and maintenance of UML sequence diagrams to document system interactions
• Extensive use of Agile/Scrum methodology and Spotify model
• Development and implementation of cutover and dress rehearsal plans together with the application managers

• Consulting and creation of various web applications based on SharePoint and the React framework for different clients
• Development and testing of accessible apps for SharePoint
• Creation of various test cases for test automation
• Development of various solutions based on Azure
• Creation of various web services based on .NET
• Development of various SharePoint Framework solutions
• Development of various UI solutions based on SharePoint
• Consulting and creation of various Power Apps applications and Power Automate for the steel industry and an IT consulting company
• Support, consulting, and development with offshore teams for SharePoint 2013, 2016, and microservices for a logistics company
• Consulting, concept design, and development of microservices and web applications based on Microsoft technology and the React framework for a logistics company
• Consulting, concept design, and development of various SharePoint Framework solutions on SharePoint 2016 for logistics
• Consulting for the migration from SharePoint 2010 to 2016 for an IT consulting company

• Software distribution to notebooks via Active Directory and image installation
• Support of iOS and Android devices, including switching from SIM to eSIM via QR code
• Scheduling appointments and setup during employees' initial registration
• Ticket processing via ServiceNow

• Loyalty Program Penny App: Go-Live preparation
• Training
• Operational structuring

• Built and successfully certified the Information Security Management System (ISMS) according to ISO 27001 in seven country organizations (Ghana, India, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania).
• Full implementation of the ISMS from kick-off phase to certification, including defining the governance structure and process landscape.
• Developed and delivered target-group-specific trainings, workshops, and coaching sessions for local responsible persons on the basics of information security and ISMS operations.
• Designed and continuously improved training concepts and content to increase understanding and acceptance.
• Identified and implemented improvements in processes and tools, including risk management for international projects.
• Optimized central ISMS core processes from the idea through pilot operation and fine-tuning to global rollout.
• Optimized knowledge management, as well as work aids and methods for the global ISMS team.
• Built and moderated cross-functional coordination with key interfaces to the ISMS.
• Microsoft Teams, Excel, SharePoint Lists, Power Apps.