Management Team
Bruce Franks – CEO
Bruce has considerable Senior UK and European Field Operations leadership experience encompassing the Telecommunications and Electrical Utilities sectors. This was primarily at NTL (now Virgin Media), which has revenues exceeding £4 Billion per annum and is the UK’s largest competitor to British Telecom.
At NTL, Bruce set up the field workforce operation from a start-up in 1993 and was a principal change agent throughout the hectic Mergers and Acquisitions period in the following 10 years, rationalising multiple Scheduling and Dispatch Call Centres down to two. Bruce led national efficiency initiatives particularly around CPE and Materials Management Systems along with contractor negotiation and rationalisation.
As director, Bruce led the post-takeover operational turnaround of their London Networks and Field Workforce Operation reducing overall OPEX by 40% at a time of soaring customer growth.
Bruce’s last two years in Europe were focussed on business development roles in Germany and Switzerland where a tenfold increase in broadband retail sales was achieved.
Prior to the 19 years spent overseas Bruce practised as an Electrical Engineer on many large projects around New Zealand, most notably the Marsden Point Oil Refinery and the Kinlieth Pulp and Paper Mill expansion projects.
Bruce joined DNZ in August 2006 and has bolstered his leadership team while also pursuing a diversification strategy into metering field service contracting. Bruce has achieved a 40% market share of the Orion Network AMR deployment and is looking to grow that share further as well as becoming a significant deployment partner for other utilities
Diane Rayner – National Operations Manager
Diane Rayner is DataCol's National Operations Manager. She joined DNZ in 2007. Prior to this, Diane managed projects for seven major companies in the New Zealand energy sector. She has successfully delivered solutions for change management, customer services billing, credit control, call centre, business management mentoring, and management of business transformation projects. The majority of these projects have arisen from government reform of the electricity industry, and have required close attention to regulatory compliance issues.
Diane's contracts have involved process review, analysis and recommendations for business improvement, establishment of key performance indicators and service level agreements for customer services and billing processes, and training needs analysis.
Diane filled the role of Project Manager for four large and complex projects for one of New Zealand's major electricity retailers. These projects involved managing multi-disciplinary teams of seconded staff and contractors, participating in a Steering Committee comprising representatives from all electricity retailers, obtaining ISO accreditation for the company's business processes, and managing the identification, acquisition, and implementation of new software tools through formal RFI and RFP processes.
Subsequent to the successful completion of each, Diane performed the ongoing ISO process quality audits as she is a qualified and experienced ISO Process Quality Auditor.
Diane served as General Manager Customer Services for WEL Energy Ltd, where she was Executive Manager responsible for customer services billing, call centre operation, credit control, and revenue protection.
Diane also spent six months in the telecommunications industry in a Transition Management role. The objectives were to manage and transform an operational team in the Network Operations Centre. The key goal was to evolve and develop the business process and capability (people and systems) to ensure that service level agreements and associated performance levels were achieved.
Chris Spanton – Financial Controller
Chris Spanton is DataCol's Financial Controller, and has been with the company since 2006. Chris brings expertise in systems and financial control from a lengthy career in the United Kingdom.
Chris worked in medium and large businesses in the UK, focusing on process improvement and streamlining projects, along with financial control.
Michael Dennis – Business Development
Michael Dennis is DataCol's Business Development Specialist. Prior to Michael joining DataCol in 2001, he owned and operated a number of small businesses.
After joining Michael has filled a variety of positions in the company, including managing meter reading teams, managing first line support, assisting in designing, trialling and user training for SevenX.
As DataCol has expanded, Michael switched roles to focus on business development.
Ian Williamson – Senior Engineer
Ian is a senior RF Engineer with over 36 years’ experience in the field. He is a member of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Engineers, holds a New Zealand Certificate in Electronics and Computing Technology, a Radio Technicians Certificate, and a New Zealand Certificate in Finance.
As a registered Radio-Electronics Serviceman, Ian has worked in a number of technical roles in Australia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Norway and Italy.
Some of Ian’s major career achievements include the design and roll out of over 100,000 mesh radios for smart meters in Christchurch and Central Hawkes Bay, and the design and project management of Cisco wireless equipment installation as part of a complete SCADA system.
Prior to his role at DataCol, Ian was the RF Network Engineer for Arc Innovations Limited, operating and managing a network of 100,000+ data radios for AMI smart meters.
Ian has been a guest speaker at various industry conferences and currently tutors at CPIT’s School of Engineering.