Project Description
Alisdair Brown
Senior Program Director
Areas Of Expertise:
- Portfolio & Program Management
- Business & Technology Transformation
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Financial Services
Education:
- Certificate IV in Project Management, UNE Partnerships
- Business Studies, Deakin University
- SAFe Program Consultant, Scaled Agile Inc.
About Alisdair
Alisdair Brown is an experienced Senior Program Director, GM and Transformation Executive who joined Seven Consulting’s Melbourne Team in September 2018. Alisdair is a technology transformation executive leader with extensive global experience resolving complex business challenges for Financial Services ‘blue chips’ often as result of M&A activity.
A Transformation Leader who has the ability to see the ‘Big Picture’ and loves solving problems combining his intimate knowledge of technology with a strategic business acumen that drives results to create sustainable growth and a competitive edge. Prior to joining Seven Consulting, Alisdair held Head of Technology roles with ANZ Bank.
What Alisdair brings
- Seasoned Program Director with a track record of delivery across multiple large-scale programs in Financial Services.
- Broad and deep understanding of business & technology transformation, including strategy, people, process, and change.
- Operational leadership expertise across the Technology landscape
- Executive stakeholder management and program status reporting. Budget management, resource planning, estimating, issues and risk management.
- Ability to build and grow a high performing team.
- An understanding of waterfall and agile development methods.
Key Clients:
- Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC)
- ipScape
- Vault Cloud
- Alinta Energy
- ANZ
- Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)
- National Australia Group (UK)
Key Achievements:
As Head of Transformation at HSBC, Global Enterprise Infrastructure (EI), Alisdair was responsible for definition, mobilisation and delivery leadership of 154 initiatives to deliver the objectives of their strategic ‘Powered by Cloud’ program and a bankwide regulatory program both impacting platforms and services across their global data centres supporting all business divisions and their customers. Within a 15-month period of engagement Alisdair was able to deliver multi-million $ savings, automated multiple processes reducing TOIL across and ensuring sustainable FTE savings, implementation of new strategic internal cloud platforms, and refresh of program delivery capability. All of above was achieved through collaboration with colleagues across technology and business functions, leveraging relationships developed with 3rd party partners and the coaching and mentoring of both my program management team as well as other colleagues.
As a Program Director Consultant, Alisdair undertook separate reviews of both ipScape and Vault Cloud IT Service Management processes to improve service levels and customer confidence. One organisation delivered in an Agile manner while the other did not. Following engagements at both organisations which involved interviews with numerous stakeholders as well as a review of requested documentation, the findings and subsequent improvement plans were accepted by both companies.
As Interim GM Enterprise Technology at Alinta Energy, Alisdair was responsible for the design of the new Enterprise Technology function and the operational management of all service delivery, operations, platforms and commercial management supported by Technology across Alinta’s operations in Australia and Manila. Within 3 months Alisdair was able to deliver and maintain P1 and P2 SLA for Incidents for the first time in 18 months. By the end of his assignment Alisdair had achieved ‘Green’ status for all service SLAs. A first for Alinta Energy. Both while maintaining top quartile benchmarked Employee and Customer Satisfaction scores. Alisdair also progressed a Professional Services RFI, re-shaped relationship with the primary managed services provider to enable modernisation of ITSM platform and started negotiation of Enterprise Agreement with principal Cloud services provider.
As Program Director Technology Transformation (Engine) at Alinta Energy, Alisdair converted the findings of a previous ‘Big 4’ Consultancy review into a mobilised portfolio of 20+ projects to transform the entire operating model of Alinta Energy Technology i.e., systems, processes and people. Seven of these projects have already been completed within 6 months of mobilisation. Most significant programs established (and partially delivered) were the Cloud Datacentre Strategy & Migration and End User Experience and Collaboration programs. This activity occurred during a significant period of organisational and regulatory change.
As a Program Director Consultant, Alisdair undertook a post-implementation assurance review to help ANZ Executive understand why a complex, multi-year payments program had faced significant delivery challenges, that culminated in an implementation that impacted the program’s objectives and associated benefits. The analysis involved interviews with 38 stakeholders and review of 29 sets of documents. The final ‘lessons learnt’ report and improvement action plan were accepted by ANZ.
As Head of Technology Enterprise Workplace & Collaboration Delivery at ANZ, Alisdair recovered a failing program, delivering a strategic best of breed SaaS cloud service management capability, using Agile techniques, to digitize the ways of working and replace the existing legacy solution. He led $150m XP to Windows 7 program, completing upgrades to 60000 desktops impacting all ANZ staff in 34 markets including deployment of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure across the Group. Alisdair increased staff satisfaction scores and reduced IT issues, while increasing staff engagement scores, through the creation of a Tech Bar model in 6 HQ locations.
As Head of Infrastructure Delivery Transformation at ANZ, Alisdair restructured and re-established a 5 Year, $560m platform modernisation program of work to upgrade all ANZ’s business critical applications and services. At peak the Enterprise-wide program had 100 remediation projects running concurrently across all ANZ geographies and business divisions. Alisdair established an Offshore Delivery Factory, helping to reduce the average cost of the Remediation project from $1m in FY14 to $100k in FY17. He achieved 90% offshore delivery. He created an Implementation Centre of Excellence leveraging Kepner-Fourie principles reducing significant production change failures. He introduced Risk Based Testing, which reduced average test cost to $50k per project and established a Server Decommissioning service to remove redundant server estate at scale.
As Head of Infrastructure Delivery Transformation at ANZ, Alisdair took ownership of a failing Cloud and Automation Services program, reducing average build time for Windows servers by 64% and Linux by 37% through the deployment of standardisation, virtualisation and automation.
As Head of Infrastructure Delivery Transformation at ANZ, Alisdair mobilised the largest portfolio of infrastructure projects in ANZ at that time to remediate several operational risks by Australian and Asian Banking Regulators, across multiple geographies and platforms some requiring resolution within 3 months. He established a significant internal executive stakeholder governance framework to ensure ongoing understanding and agreement of all aspects of delivery. Separately he conducted a delivery assurance review of the failing program to integrate new Wealth Australia business into ANZ systems following the purchase from ING.
As Head of Technology Enterprise Workplace & Collaboration Delivery at ANZ, Alisdair incepted a $40m Campus program to design and fit out technology for ANZ’s new HQ extension. Alisdair also delivered the expansion of ANZ Data Centre’s in Melbourne, to support their Cloud strategy and enabling Data Centre as a Service – virtual, pre-provisioned, standardised compute, storage, and network capability within new purpose-built Data Halls. He deployed Skype for Business, Microsoft Hubs and provided access to YouTube for all employees, increasing collaboration and reducing business travel.
As Head of Payments Solutions IT at Royal Bank of Scotland, Alisdair led the implementation of a new Payments and Core Banking platform to support NL Transaction Banking clients following the ABN Amro acquisition. He established a $200m program over 18 months involving 200 staff and 3 vendors. He implemented the new ACI Payments engine supporting TB payment flows and new NL Swift Hub and SEPA Direct Debit legislation.
As Head of Payments Solutions IT at Royal Bank of Scotland, Alisdair led the Global Transaction Banking M&A Technology team from the consortium of Banco Santander (Spain), Fortis (Belgium) and RBS during ABN Amro acquisition and successfully achieved an agreement from the Consortium Executive for their GTB business separation plans. Alisdair was selected by former Director Group Technology, to advise Bank of China regarding the replacement of their Core Banking platform.
As Head of Infrastructure Projects at RBS, Alisdair led the program to set up a Managed Test Environment (MTE) and initially ran the new service. The MTE service improved time to market and quality of deliveries, while removing multiple redundant environments, associated roles and processes. He led the recovery of the Ulster Bank Desktop Deployment program, following intensive engagement over several weeks with internal and external stakeholders, the new desktop service was delivered as planned with minimal service disruption. He introduced the first RBS offshore Infrastructure delivery engagement from India using a strategic partner.
As Program Director at RBS, Alisdair led the integration and re-structure of 200 disparate Technology staff from 4 subsidiary business units requiring consideration for necessary staff reductions while maintaining service.
As Program Director at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Alisdair was invited by the Group Technology Director to recover delivery of a new strategic home loan product for RBS Retail. The program was forecast to be unable to meet its timeline and budget commitments. Alisdair completely restructured the program and delivery design. He mobilised a new team of 100 internal and external staff working jointly with business stakeholders and delivered the $20m program in 8 months. The new product was successfully launched across the RBS and NatWest Retail channels.
As Head of Channels Delivery at National Australia Group, Alisdair led all Channel related developments for NAB in Europe, which at the time included Branch, Telephony, Mobile and Internet solutions. His team was spread across 3 locations having been created after NAB acquired banks in UK and Ireland. Many major projects were delivered, including the European Customer Contact Centre set-up, initial Internet Banking deployment and new middleware solutions to integrate with core banking systems.
