Student Success Stories
Darren Price
Program Manager, Ericsson Global Services, China, Japan.
"After I completed my studies at ACIT in February 2005, I was fortunate to secure a position at Ericsson China. As I was holding a diploma in network engineering I was placed at the test environments in Beijing, where I worked as a support engineer on 3G wideband WCDMA networks. Within the year I was the lead engineer responsible for the test environments network. This position gave me the responsibility of the core networks and to make functional improvements of the day to day running of the network operations. As my role developed, I was invited to join the local network planning council where I helped to optimize efficient use of test environment assets within the Asia region by evaluating the capacity of test networks available and helping to drive efficient operations of these networks. Faced with many service delivery problems I was appointed as service delivery manager to resolve delivery issues after the department received strong customer requests for increased service. I developed a weekly action point forum and cleared the customers most significant headaches relating to invoicing, delivery and investment issues. Together with the customer I helped to developed delivery strategies then conveyed this information back to the departments to ensure secure delivery of services. It was a very good time that enhanced inter-departmental relationships. Around this time Ericsson acquired Marconi and I was placed as project manager for the Marconi acquisition project in Beijing. The project planned and executed the move of the entire Marconi operations from the original Marconi building into an Ericsson building and was successful in securing the maximum return on investment. Many of the projects improvement suggestions proved to be significant enablers for savings in cost and time.
In the October of 2007, I was interviewed by global services in Sweden, and was appointed a senior level management role sustaining as a primary contact delivery manager for mass network deployment in Asia Pacific. The role spanned across five market units comprising of nineteen countries and was tasked with the delivery of high competence resources to the each of the Market Units. As a member of the management team, this was by far the largest role I have ever held. During the fist year the unit developed first forecasting tools with an 87% forecasting accuracy. The unit forecasts resource needs of the delivery organizations so that sufficient resources can be prepared in order to deliver the projects on time and successfully. During the year I concentrated hard on professional competence development and utilized all available training programs. I also completed GRID leadership training, line management training and project management training. I also received a certificate in leading complex projects from George Washington University.
After holding the delivery management role for a little over a year, I was offered a long term assignment at Yokohama in Japan, where I currently hold the position of Program Manager. I will remain in Japan for the next two years before returning to my home organization at global services in Beijing."
