Management Team

Gary Williams

Gary has worked in the computer industry for more than 25 years. Having joined Ferranti International in 1984 , he went on to join MicroCompass in 1992, a commercial software house as Head of IT. With the growth of MicroCompass Gary managed the implementation of over 40 FE colleges taking them through Incorporation of 1993 with education specific ERP application. Amongst his roles over his career, Gary brings a wide array of key skills to Crimson including:

IBM AIX Support Professional competency
ISO9001 certification Quality Management
Infrastructure consultancy with UK Government bodies
Financials software development
Project Management of retail, private and public sector CRM and ERP solutions

Being a founder member of Crimson, Gary is responsible for project and change management for all CRM and GP implementations and is a qualified Microsoft Certified Professional. Gary has been involved in over 100 CRM implementations including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Siebel CRM. Gary is currently engaged with a number of clients reviewing the impact of performance management techniques in UK education market.

Lee Parton

Lee has worked in the computer industry for more than 20 years having gained a BSc with Honours in Computer Science from the University of Wales, Swansea in 1993. Lee initially joined MicroCompass a commercial software house, in 1993 as a developer straight from university. During his development career, Lee has worked on a number of key business software applications. Within 5 years of joining MicroCompass he became a lead analyst and his skills sets grew to take on a variety of development methodologies including waterfall, scrum and agile. Lee was tasked with managing a new team to deliver and manage CRM tailoring a commercial Siebel and the then Microsoft solution to the HE/University and FE College markets he has been working with Microsoft CRM since the beta of version 1.0 of the product, thus bringing a great deal of experience and product knowledge to the Crimson portfolio.

Being a founder member of Crimson, Lee is responsible for development and implementation services and has worked on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product since its inception. Lee is has also qualified as a Microsoft Certified Master for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and has been involved in over 100 Microsoft CRM implementations. Lee has recently enjoyed heading the redevelopment of our current applications with the move to CRM 2011 and the emergence of SharePoint 2010 as a sophisticated development and delivery platform.

John Drew

John has worked in the software industry for over twenty years, with extensive knowledge of Public sector ERP solutions. Having completed a 7 year Commission in the Royal Navy John joined Radius PLC in sales and marketing before joining MicroCompass in 1992.

During his time at MicroCompass his contribution in over 15 years established the company as one of the key suppliers of ERP solutions to post 16 education from small land based colleges to red brick, Russell Group universities. Within ten years John became Business Development Director of the company and established a customer portfolio of over 250 public sector bodies. His role not only encompassed the management of customers and staff but importantly managed the strategic partnerships, with key vendors including UnifAce, Siebel, Oracle and Microsoft.

With the acquisition of the company John moved to Tribal Group PLC and he continued working heavily with Microsoft, creating a new Microsoft business unit which included the formation of a business team to implement, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and Dynamics AX, across a wide range of Tribal’s public sector clients.

As the company’s newest Partner John brings a host of skills and experience to Crimson not just in sales and marketing terms, but with an extensive array of industry relationships and knowledge.