Biography
Suzie leads the commercial technology team at Ashfords advising on a wide range of technology matters with a particular focus on fin-tech. Suzie has a breadth of experience in drafting and negotiating commercial/IT contracts including for bespoke software development (using agile or waterfall methodology), support and maintenance, the provision of software and hardware for a range of deployment models as well as leading on technology transformation projects and large technology outsourcing deals.
Suzie advises on the entire sourcing cycle, providing pragmatic advice from the early stages of deciding how to structure a transaction, the strategy for purchasing within an existing IT estate or structuring a commercial model, through to contract negotiations, implementation and post contractual changes.
Suzie is ITIL Practitioner certified, PRINCE 2 certified and has undertaken Open University in Information Security enabling Suzie to efficiently and effectively manage large technology projects.
Suzie’s practice area within fin-tech includes advising payment services providers, critical sub-outsourcers to financial institutions (including compliance with EBA guidelines), scheme participants and payment gateway providers.
Relevant experience
- Sensus UK Systems Limited: Advising a leading technology solutions company in relation to its collaboration with Arqiva to put forward a solution under the competitive dialogue tender process for the Government’s smart metering implementation programme calling for the installation of smart meters in homes nationwide by 2019.
- Eltel Networks UK Limited: Advising on its subcontract with Huawei for the provision of services to Virgin Media to connect approximately 4 million UK homes and businesses to broadband speeds of 152Mb, at least twice the speeds available from competitors. The roll out by Virgin Media constituted the single largest investment in broadband digital infrastructure in the country for more than a decade.
- Form3: Negotiating and drafting commercial agreements for Form3, who offer cloud based integrated banking and universal payments solutions, with their partner third parties such as Arkea Banking Services, to provide an integrated financial services infrastructure. Form3 offers the first public cloud deployment of a fully functioned end to end payments solution incorporating a payment engine which already provides solutions to 4 of world’s 6 largest transaction banks.
- Dynmark: Advising a company providing mobile intelligence and marketing platforms on the sale of its cloud messaging and portal tools and services both directly to customers and to clients for re-sale purposes, including advising on Intellectual Property Rights and use of the data collected from end users.
