
John Davidson
Verified Expert in Engineering
Supply Chain Developer
Auburn, AL, United States
Toptal member since June 20, 2023
John is a dynamic strategic leader with a rich history of driving impactful digital transformations across diverse sectors. His 20+ year journey includes modernizing business apps, optimizing supply chains, and realigning IT with business needs. A professional known for a can-do attitude, John is adept at utilizing data for business process improvement, tackling complex legacy issues, ensuring regulatory compliance, and building agile teams.
Portfolio
Experience
- Business Intelligence (BI) - 20 years
- Software Development Management - 20 years
- Business Processes - 20 years
- Supply Chain - 20 years
- eCommerce - 15 years
- IT Strategy - 15 years
- Enterprise Architecture - 10 years
- Salesforce - 4 years
Preferred Environment
IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, Salesforce, Azure, Microsoft Power BI, Six Sigma, Supply Chain, Retail & Wholesale, Agile, Business Process Improvement (BPI)
The most amazing...
...projects I've worked on entailed building high-performing organizations, acting as a servant leader to inspire them to achieve amazing results.
Work Experience
Interim CIO/CTO
Davidson Insights LLC
- Provided, for a specialty retailer, the leadership of all facets of IT, including architecture, security, budgets, retail technology, infrastructure, Salesforce, and SAP.
- Shifted a client's traditional service desk into an outbound lead generation team using UCaaS, 3rd-party data, and visionary analytics.
- Created a digitally connected marketplace with consumer-facing mobile applications integrated with the Salesforce Sales Cloud.
- Created a digital roadmap for a unique unified experience for employees and customers made possible by an emerging omnichannel retail eCommerce model for a specialty retailer.
Senior IT Director
The Coca-Cola Company
- Led the team in maintaining regulatory compliance by providing a central repository for all compliance-related information, which helped mitigate risks.
- Streamlined and digitized the product lifecycle process and enabled significant efficiencies in the required management of materials, bill of materials (BOM), and recipes. Reduced time to market, improved management of resources, and reduced costs.
- Created and deployed a proprietary IT service management (ITSM) solution to unify all global service desks, including IT and business, and replace the expensive licensing of ServiceNow.
- Reinstated enterprise architecture (EA) as a practice and created an EA steering committee, governance review processes, an architecture repository, and an application inventory.
- Implemented custom analytics to track a 360-degree view of application inventory, which included architectural health, administrative licensing and renewals, cyber vulnerabilities, and incident trends.
- Addressed significant performance and throughput issues with Informatica's master data management (MDM) software.
- Enhanced Salesforce platforms, optimized sales and service, streamlined purchasing, integrated systems, and developed custom apps with scalable, cost-effective cloud solutions.
Global IT Executive
General Motors
- Migrated legacy applications to on-premise cloud infrastructure.
- Hired and mentored 120 people in a from-scratch effort to insource all critical IT functions.
- Created a data lake and advanced analytics to monitor and protect residual values for North American brands and models.
- Partnered with sales operations leaders and key dealerships to reimagine CRM, analytics, order management, sales forecasting, and other modern working methods.
- Set up and staffed a 250,000 square feet facility that served as an office for 1,500 IT professionals. It was a foundational component in insourcing talent and reversed 30 years of ineffective and bloated managed service providers.
- Partnered with Georgia Institute of Technology and Kennesaw State University as General Motors' executive partner and relationship manager.
- Elected to the board of economic development for the city of Roswell, Georgia.
Global Senior Director
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- Provided thought leadership to HP executive and strategy teams to create 3-year roadmaps describing a path to end-state capabilities with milestones for HP's global supply chain transformation.
- Standardized processes using the APQC framework, consolidated ERP, and enabled EDI messaging standards for greater inventory visibility and availability. This led to improvements in service levels and balance sheet improvements of over $100 million.
- Introduced the Agile paradigm to COTS products to shorten the development lifecycle, increase organizational scalability, and improve project delivery.
- Organized an executive advisory board to enforce architecture principles, measure the adoption of standards, and influence an architecture-driven delivery model across a 500-person IT delivery organization.
Senior Development Manager
Dell
- Led development teams that powered Dell's $19 billion software and peripheral eCommerce channel. Converged all global B2B and B2C channels in a single technology platform and eCommerce SOA framework with an annual budget of $17 million.
- Championed software development for eCommerce offering of computer spare parts, generating $2.9 million in revenue and $1.74 million gross margin during its first 90 days.
- Generated $45 million in annualized revenue by expanding the visibility of Dell consumer electronic products on external shopper sites.
- Was given a special assignment by the CIO staff to represent IT in a leadership team to determine strategic direction for order management, resulting in the 1st-year $21 million annualized OPEX reduction.
Experience
Omnichannel Strategy for a Specialty Retailer
As a consultant, I conducted field research, documented the tactical issues and desired outcomes, created a business case, and conducted the software selection for a modern cloud-first, mobile-first omnichannel point-of-sale solution.
IT Transformation
Power of Data and Analytics
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of Arkansas - Fayetteville, AR, USA
Skills
Tools
Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Dynamics
Paradigms
Business Intelligence (BI), Six Sigma, Agile, B2C, Change Management
Platforms
Salesforce, Azure
Industry Expertise
Retail & Wholesale, Lean Six Sigma
Storage
Master Data Management (MDM)
Other
IT Strategy, Supply Chain, Software Development Management, Business Processes, Enterprise Architecture, eCommerce, Business Process Improvement (BPI), Programming, Computer Science, Mathematics, Digital Marketing, CRM Systems, Point of Sale, ITSM, SAP, NetSuite, CEO, CIO, Strategic Planning & Execution, IT Governance, Data Architecture, PCI Compliance, Cloud, Analytics, Digital Transformation, Data, Mobile Apps, Data Warehousing, Data Analytics, Business Strategy, COO, Market Research, Financial Modeling, Business Development, Organizational Design, Sales Effectiveness, Sales Strategy, Performance Improvement, Roadmaps, Startups, System Integration, PMO, Business Process Re-engineering, Presentations, Growth Strategy, Digital Project Management, Chief of Staff, Coaching, Training, Data Analysis, Organizational Analysis, GAP Analysis, Structure & Organizational Design, Project Management Office (PMO), Data Governance, Organizational Change Management (OCM), Process Mapping, Enterprise Software, Product Strategy Consultant, Agile DevOps, Manufacturing, Executive Coaching, Geospatial Analytics
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring