Kevin McFarlane

About Kevin McFarlane

Information Technology leader with experience building and managing global high performance teams, launching and managing digital products, and developing and executing a unified product and technology strategy. Proven track record of leading teams toward meeting objectives and exceeding customer expectations. Leads cross-functional projects to reach organizational objectives; manages IT staff through complex IT initiatives to aid in professional development. Demonstrates skill in project lifecycle management, Agile and Scrum framework, web and software development, process improvement, and global outsourcing management. Provides extensive experience in management of on-site and offshore technical teams in implementation of enterprise-wide projects resulting in significant savings for IT operations worldwide. Proven success in vendor management and client relationship management.

Experience

1. Director of Technology - Distribution Services

   Cision

   Jan 2016 — Present

   Perform team building while managing Data Feed Support Desk, Widget Support Desk, and Solutions Delivery departments. Maintain full responsibility for all domestic and international external distribution systems. Provide leadership and vision for the IT department include strategic planning of information systems. Develop strategic direction for the information systems plan including technology deployment plans. Create operational policies, procedures, standards, guidelines and best practices. Manage IT training for IT staff members on software and desktop systems. Serve as Technical Lead/Business Sponsor on projects that are aligned with data feeds. Oversee department meetings with staff leads and managers to ensure continuity of information systems support and goal attainment. Ensure project completion by coordinating resources and timetables with user departments, IT staff and data center employees. Manage relationships with both domestic and international business partners as well as technical personnel at client media points. Manage contracts with external business partners to implement, support and maintain the distribution platform. • Implemented Disaster Recovery platform for Distribution, including two additional hardware strings in a backup data center, with a cut over time of less than 3 minutes • Reworked the metadata structure for multimedia across all PR Newswire and entire customer base, supporting 70 different output formats • Projects to integrate client content with social media platforms including Twitter • Distribution of international content to new markets, including The Netherlands and Australia. • Implemented distributions of releases with embedded multimedia assets which increased the multimedia revenue by 17%.

Education

• Utica University

  BS, Computer Science

• Global Knowledge

  Certification, ITIL v3 Foundation Certificate

• Stevens Institute of Technology

  Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Information Technology

  2015

• Stevens Institute of Technology

  MIS, IS

• Stevens Institute of Technology

  Graduate Certificate , Project Management