Achievements & Projects

Achievements & Projects

BRAD FOSTER

ROLE / LOCATION / DOB
Web Developer / Manchester / 31August 1984

SKILLS

Computer software
PHP Storm, Netbeans, Dreamweaver, XAMPP, LAMP, IIS, Ubuntu, Centos, SBS & Active Directory, GIT, Photoshop, VMWare, VBOX
Other
SEO, DNS, IPV4/6, PCI, SSL
ECOMMERCE, API, REST / Languages & Libraries
HTML/5, CSS/SASS, XML, PHP, MYSQL, JAVASCRIPT (JQUERY/UI/MOBILE), BOOTSTRAP
Frameworks
MVC: Symfony 3, Code Igniter, Laravel
Tools: NPM, Composer, Yeoman, Grunt, Jenkins, GIT, Magallanes.
EMPLOYEMENT
Feb2012 – Present
121 Customer Insight Ltd
Web Developer
Taking over as the lead developer in a busy Manchester call center who develop all software in house and offer bespoke software to clients.
Jul 2008 – Feb 2012
Zen Internet Ltd
Technical Support Consultant
Working on the service support desk for an award winning ISP offering 3rd line support to business and corporate customers. I specialized in web hosting but had in depth knowledge of all products from broadband to dedicated servers. / EDUCATION
Hopwood hall college
A Levels (IT, Physics, Maths, Phsycology)
AVCE ICT covering web design, programming, systems and networking.
ABOUT ME
I’m a competent web developer who follows best practices and always looks for innovative new ways of creating web applications.
I’ve been developing websites for many years as a freelancer but I’ve also worked in a professional environment dealing directly with clients and management while managing and collaborating with a small team.

ACHIEVEMENTS & PROJECTS

Zen Internet

While working for Zen Internet I had extensive training in their broadband and web hosting products. In the 4 years I worked there I worked my way up from 1st line technical support and onto the service support desk as part of the web hosting team. My role was to help to configure & maintain servers while keeping everything patched and secure. I assisted business and corporate customers with various hosting issues.

Freelance Work

I do freelance web development at I’ve made successful websites for many local businesses and helped them reach top google ranks to drive up business. I’ve worked on e-commerce stores doing credit card integrations using paypal API and WorldPay. Also providing analytics and hosting services.

121 Customer Insight

121 Customer Insight is call center that offers lead generation and appointment setting services. A lot of their business comes from insurance companies. I joined in Feb 2012 as part of the IT team, in 2013 I was promoted to senior developer and in 2014 I was made lead developer. I managed many projects from the initial discussions with clients to testing and training on completion.

Call center quality monitoring software

One2one used a 3rd party system to monitor agent call quality. I built and in house version to do the job better and save money. It worked well so they decided to sell the product to other call centers and it became Quality Tracker.

Call center attendance system

Staff records were previously kept on spreadsheets. It caused issues with file sharing when 2 people wanted to update the files at the same time. I made a web based attendance system which eventually expanded to include reports, staff details and bonus information.

New intranet for staff and management

Instead of sending emails around the company and having lots of staff meetings. I built a company intranet for HR and management to use as central point of contact. It was set as the staff homepage and allowed them to post company news and upload documents and many other features.

Call recordings

The Avaya telephony system required an expensive license to play back calls using software called contact store. I created some .NET scripts to convert the call recording files to MP3 and allowed playback via a GUI on our existing system. This helped save £1000’s in Avaya licenses.

Inbound email system

I developed methods of parsing inbound emails to import them into the calling system so we could offer a call back service for clients where we could monitor their website contact forms and chase up hot leads right away.

Mobile CRM for field sales (smartprospector.com)

I developed a mobile CRM for a large insurance company so sales reps could work on touchscreen/tablets remotely. We decided to resell this software and it became smart prospector.

Customer Service System (NPS)

We became the first company in the UK to be accredited with an NPS, Net Promotor Scorecertification. I built some NPS software to work alongside the NPS methodology and we started performing custom satisfaction calls as another revenue stream.

Automation

I developed scripts and systems to help automate many internal processes meaning we needed much less resources to get things done.

  • Automated queries and data analysis.
  • Automated data/file imports and exports
  • Automated emails, template system.
  • Automated reports, real time monitoring
  • TV display statistics and performance.

Database Optimisation

As a call center we went through large amounts of data. I developed processes to archive data and restructured various databases to make the systems faster using normalization, caching, and query improvements.

Server/Network Admin

With my experience in webhosting I doubled up as the server administrator so alongside developing I was responsible to patching, security and configuration of the web server and hosted domains, SSL etc.

Call Centre Systems

I recently set up a new company selling and the Call Centre Systems mentioned above.

Overall

I’m a fast learner, self-motivating and I like a challenge. I’m not afraid to try out new technologies and I’ve never come across a project spec I couldn’t handle.

I take pride in my work and prefer not to take shortcuts, following best coding practices. I’m always thinking of methods to improve existing processing and I’m happy to implement them where I can.

I have most experience with Code Igniter having used it for longer but have recently learned and prefer Symfony 3. I see myself as a full stack developer able to configure servers, deployment methods and version control, database setup and maintenance, coding and API setup with responsive front ends using bootstrap and jquery.

References can be requested by contacting either

  • Zen internet Ltd
  • 121 Customer Insight Ltd (Now Amber Capital Ltd)

Contact Info

  • Mob: 07814401867