Paul Watson

Businesses face critical challenges in many areas :

- Business and sales enablement

- Team mobilisation and workforce planning

- Delivery oversight and PMO

- Operational optimisation and automation

- Strategic reporting

Synekta is a specialist firm that has extensive experience of delivery and operations roles and functions in financial services and consultancy, and can offer a tailored solution that addresses these challenges through:

- A service menu approach; Focus effort where you need it the most

- Data-driven decision-making tools, templates and methods

A partnership with Synekta can deliver measurable improvements in operational efficiency, and sales & delivery performance.

Providing operations and delivery excellence consultancy on an interim part-time basis for Collaborative Elements.

Led operational risk management, quality assurance, PMO and business operations with an annual revenue exceeding £100M, focusing on governance, financial oversight, and process compliance. Led cross-functional teams in a global, matrix environment, providing COO cover.

• Served as UK Operational Risk and Quality Manager, reviewing client engagements, providing KPI-driven insights to reduce risk.

• Promoted the GFT delivery methodology, chairing steering committees, providing leadership, guidance and continuous improvement.

• Represented the UK in global working groups, driving the shift to a centralised data warehouse and enterprise-wide reporting.

• Championed data democratisation, shaping best practices, leading adoption, and providing access to high-quality data.

• Developed a strategic global solution for robust financial control, preserving £3.6M annually by tracking project deviation.

• First line of defence for contractual risk, reviewing 120+ SOWs annually, overseeing the end-to-end PMO governance lifecycle.

• Owned executive-level PMO reporting, preparing UK board-level governance packs covering delivery KPIs and OKRs, programme health, risk data, benefits and financials.

• Maintained a UK risk register, identifying emerging risks and supporting mitigation planning.

• Redesigned PM onboarding, induction and training, lifting compliance levels above 98%.

• Supported CMMI Level 3 accreditation, providing project evidence and methodology insights. Led the closure of identified control gaps.

• Built and led a high-performing staffing and operations team, including recruitment, mentoring and career development.

• Pioneered a cross-regional process to identify and resolve staffing risks, including updates to the staffing contentions policy.

• Protyped the use of AI for optimising business processes:

o Prediction of future delivery performance issues.

o Streamlining SOW and MSA reviews.

o Detecting anomalies and trends in project financial performance.