Areas Of Expertise:

• Project Management

Education:

• Bachelor of Science (Biology and Psychology), Graceland University
• Prince2 (Foundation & Practitioner)
• SAFEe SPC 5 (2023) Certified
• Prince2 (Foundation & Practitioner) 

About Eugene O'Connell

Eugene joined Seven Consulting's Melbourne team in October 2021. He is a detailed-oriented and self-motivated Project Manager with six years' experience primarily working for a major not-for-profit, postal service and a business that has consolidated numerous operators in the Funerals industry, transforming their digital space and ways of working. Experienced at collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver highly functional systems, products, and services.  

What Eugene brings

• Proven track record in managing complex relationships.
• Effective communication, and transparency with technical and business stakeholders.
• Ability to think analytically and independently.
• Good understanding of IT infrastructure, core systems and their integrations which is effective in working with teams to find creative solutions to complex environments.
• Strong ability to communicate technical concepts, risks and needs to business teams to understand the impact to operations and estimate project deliverables.
• Essential skills to operate effectively in highly complex technology environments, spanning diverse cultures and nationalities, across multiple groups and vendors

Client Feedback:

	Senior Portfolio Manager, Retirement company – 2025 "Eugene has been an asset to the team! While the project was already established, he has been able to step up and seamlessly take over from the exiting PM to ensure the critical path stayed on track. Eugene is professional in his communication, presenting and issue resolution style. Eugene has a great sense of humour and has already built great relationships with those he works with."
	Product Owner, Australian Company – 2024 "Eugene has a very pragmatic attitude and clearly demonstrates that he is focused on moving client outcomes forward. He deals well with ambiguity and doesn't get stalled in waiting for all the information / everything to be in place before starting his work. He presents well to stakeholders, and he has a good, measured, communication style."
	Lekshmi Mohan, CRM & Customer Data Manager – 2023 "I would highly recommend Eugene for any similar role in the future. He demonstrated exceptional knowledge and expertise in their area of specialisation and consistently delivered high-quality work throughout the project. Their collaborative approach and excellent communication skills helped to foster a positive working environment, and they were able to build strong relationships with team members and stakeholders. Eugene was proactive in identifying and mitigating potential risks and challenges, and they remained flexible and adaptable in response to changing project needs. Overall, I have great confidence in Eugene's abilities and believe that they would be a valuable asset to any project team."
	Head of Customer Care, Multinational provider of Funeral, Cemetery and Memorialisation Services – 2022 "Eugene is great with stakeholders and team members. Has a great style to close any gaps, has a positive attitude, calm, composed, and a professional team player. Eugene is an asset to the project!"

Key Clients:

• Coles Liquor Group
• AustralianSuper
• Australia Post
• InvoCare
• The Salvation Army
• Seven Consulting

Key Achievements:

As Project Manager for the Simply Liquorland Program at Coles Liquor Group, Eugene was responsible for the store transformations from Vintage Cellars and First Choice Liquor Market to Liquorland, Liquorland Cellars and/or Liquorland Warehouse in QLD, WA, SA & NT. Reporting to the GM of Transformation and Strategy, Eugene managed all relevant physical store changes and movement of stores to the Liquorland brand, aligning range and trade plans across all formats. This included building and shopfitting, external works, internal signage, merchandising and collaboration with other cross functional teams to implement store changes in line with the critical path. The program was completed on time, under budget and received the 'Store Support Centre Team of the Year' award recognising the teams work throughout the transformation.

As Project Manager for the Chilled Space Range Reset project at Coles Liquor Group, Eugene was responsible for the rollout of changes to the chilled macro space in all Liquorland stores to facilitate the expansion of Ready to Drink beverages. This also included overseeing the implementation of fixture changes in 153 stores to support the expansion across the country. Reporting to the Head of Range and Space, Managing a budget of $2.8m and a team of 5, Eugene was responsible for ensuring rollout of the range changes were completed on time and under budget (~25%) prior to handing over to business operations.

As Project Manager at Australia Super, Eugene addressed the APRA findings and aligned practices with CPS 230 (Operational Risk Management). This included embedding risk into strategic planning, change delivery, and execution. Working with a Program Director, Eugene reviewed delivery frameworks, governance, and roles, resulting in targeted recommendations and the design of metrics and reporting to support oversight. He also led the development of a Change Risk Management Standard, integrating it into delivery processes, roles, and risk systems in line with CPS 230 requirements.

As Project Manager at Australia Post, Eugene partnered with the Program Manager and senior stakeholders to undertake a root-and-branch review and assess the existing EPMO methods and practices. The engagement involved assessing current tools and processes, identifying improvement opportunities, and developing a business case and delivery roadmap. Eugene then led the implementation of key recommendations, focusing on enhancing prioritisation and portfolio tracking, and integrating non-capital projects into a newly introduced PPM tool (Shibumi) to improve executive visibility and data-driven decision-making.

As Implementation Manager for the Harmony Program at InvoCare, Eugene led the first end-to-end rollout of Skedulo, a scheduling platform used to coordinate funeral services across staff, vehicles, and locations. He managed cross-functional teams and vendors through a complex implementation involving integrations with Oracle ERP, CX and Microsoft Azure, enabling real-time data flow across operational and customer systems. Eugene also developed InvoCare's first Business unit Continuity Plan for the Funerals division, supporting enterprise readiness and alignment with broader system strategies. The project was delivered without any severity 1 or 2 defects and was recognised by executives as one of the most successful in InvoCare's history.

As Project Manager at InvoCare, Eugene was responsible for leading the Foundations Project under the Harmony Program. This included three projects focused on improving staff productivity and utilization through a new developed target operating model, productivity and cost reporting system and digital mortuary register system. Reporting to the Head of Funerals and Harmony Program Manager, Eugene was responsible for the implementation, monitoring and execution of the benefits realisation plan aimed at generating $5.93M of benefits over a 5-year period. Managing a $2.2M budget and 10 people across the projects, implementation also required ensuring the newly developed operating model, systems and processes were embedded into the funerals operations teams. The project was able to achieve ~$1.5M in OPEX reductions in 2023 for the organisation prior to handing over to business operations.

As Project Manager at InvoCare, Eugene led multiple initiatives to enhance the National Call Centre (NCC) as part of a digital program aimed at standardising CRM usage and uplifting operational technologies. Reporting to the Head of the NCC, Eugene's responsibilities included business case development, benefit realisation planning, and managing vendor selection and external technology partners. Eugene managed the implementation of telephony system upgrades and the introduction of a knowledge management system, aligning with broader operational and data systems. This created streamlined processes, enhanced data integration capabilities and a 10% reduction in internal call volume, 8% fewer abandoned calls, a 3% reduction in unattended leads, and a 35% decrease in time spent researching knowledge articles.

As Project Manager, Eugene led the delivery of an API integration between Memories, a digital obituary provider, and InvoCare's core Funerals CRM platform (Oracle). Reporting to the GM of Funerals Commercial, the project streamlined key operational processes by enabling real-time data exchange and automated account creation, reducing reliance on manual entry and improving workflow efficiency. This integration supported InvoCare's strategic digital objectives and enabled downstream improvements to data accuracy and timeliness with its broader system interoperability. This aligned with enterprise-level transformation goals and long-term vendor partnerships.

As Project Manager at InvoCare, reporting to the EGM of Digital, Eugene led the WeCARE First Contact Management project, introducing automated lead management into the funerals arrangement process. Leading a team of six, he managed the integration of all Australian branded websites with the core CRM (Oracle CX), enabling centralised customer data capture and interaction tracking. This was a foundational step in a broader transformation to standardise customer workflows and improve data-driven decision-making. The project streamlined digital-to-core system processes, enabling over 8,500 leads annually to be tracked and reducing frontline and call centre data entry time by 50%.

As Project Manager at The Salvation Army, Eugene managed the migration of the infrastructure and "on-prem" application services currently running across two data centres in Sydney and Melbourne to Equinix (Melbourne). He worked with vendor and technical teams to deliver disaster recovery capability for the organisation's data centres. He successfully achieved cost avoidance of maintenance and support costs for legacy data centres and integrated multiple vendor schedules per application migration into the overall timeline. He managed the roll out of change and communications for relevant stakeholders impacted by upgrades, migrations and testing to the on-prem data centre. Eugene was responsible for developing the migration and testing strategy plans for stretched VLANs and VMs, financial management of the project budget ($350K) including reporting and forecasting, and tracking, treatment planning and management of risks, issues, and quality. He oversaw the procurement, management of HCI hardware and software upgrades, network configuration, and testing between legacy data centres and Equinix. Eugene also oversaw the development and creation of application test plans required for post migration verification to the data centres to uncover, identify and document software problems and their causes.

As Project Manager at The Salvation Army, Eugene managed the consolidation of three legacy domains and the migration of application databases, server infrastructure, and active directory services into a newly built domain. He successfully consolidated three domains into one national domain migrating +10,000 users, 65 applications, 230 infrastructure servers, 40 databases and decommissioned 330 servers 3 months ahead of deadline. Eugene managed the decommissioning of legacy environments within planned down time and without disruption. He worked closely with vendors and technology teams to deliver national platforms for PKI/NPS and SQL database management from three disparate domains. He enabled SSO functionality to be implemented in future for applications. Successfully achieved $126K per annum in operational savings for the organisation with the removal of Citrix, consolidation of SQL databases and Quest licensing. Eugene achieved high customer satisfaction from end users and application owners following migration activities and delivered the project under budget and utilised savings to re-baseline and deliver additional scope ahead of schedule.

As PMO Analyst at The Salvation Army, Eugene Supported the PMO manager to monitor progress and prepare management information. This included financial forecasts, scheduling, dependency mapping, risk, and issue management in line with the department framework and stage gate processes across multiple portfolios. He assisted with project scheduling and business case development for large and complex projects including resource planning, facilitated regular review meetings and supported program / project managers in closing out actions. He was responsible for management of the governance and reporting tools, office registers and program / project repositories and artefacts in SharePoint. Eugene also assisted with planning for the mail migration to Outlook for the National Collaboration Project and active Directory Consolidation project (Phase 1) for user / machine migrations, supported remediation and stabilisation of project from red to green status and delivered releases against re-baselined schedule for NCP Pilot project.

As Project Manager (Fast Track) at Seven Consulting, Eugene completed the Fast-Track Program which is designed to enhance the core Project Management skills amongst the people who are experienced in their individual professional fields. During the Fast Track program, he has gained theoretical and practical knowledge on different aspects of project management by going through different sessions and exercises with domain experts. This program utilised his previous skills and knowledge whilst developing his skills and confidence level in using PM tools (like MS Project, JIRA etc.), techniques and soft skills. Eugene also had the opportunity to work as shadow senior consultants in actual project environments where he has been exposed to risk, issues, and constraints on a project and better ways to manage them.