Mark Chistian

Mark Christian

June 25, 2021

Consultant Profile

Overview

Mark is an experienced delivery focussed consultant who has performed over fifteen roles including CEO, Programme Director, Programme Manager, Platform Director, Head of Marketing Strategy, Project Manager, Service Delivery Manager, Business Analysis Manager, Software Development Manager, Solution Architect & Test Manager.

Mark has worked in the Financial Services, Digital Marketing & Healthcare industries as an independent consultant since 1997. He has worked for management consultancies, software companies and client organisations across many industry sectors in Sweden, Malta, Turkey, India, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Germany, USA, Belgium, France, South Africa, Australia & New Zealand.

He specialises in the setup of teams and projects to deliver complex business & technology solutions with teams up to 200 staff and $100m budgets and has the skills required to deliver critical business programmes within time, quality & budget requirements.

Experience

  • Change Management – 30 Years
    • Business Analyst
    • Project Manager
    • Programme Manager
    • Programme Director
    • Management Consultancy
  • Financial Services – 35 Years
    • Retail Banking, Investment Banking & Corporate Banking
    • Payments (Global banks & Fintech companies ie SWIFT, Fiserv & Temenos – 30 years)
    • Cryptocurrency – 3 years experience setting up cryptocurrencies, blockchain & ICO
    • Insurance
  • Information Technology – 40 Years
    • IT Infrastructure – Data centres, mainframe, server farms, desktop deployment and upgrades
    • Architecture
    • Operations Management
    • DevOps Teams
    • Call Centres
    • Software Development (40 years)
    • Software Sales (Temens & Fiserv)
    • Telecomms, Telephony & Networking (40 years)
    • Mobile Virtual Network Operator (Startup)
    • Business Intelligence – BI, Databases, Big Data & Analytics – SAS / R Developer
    • Web & Mobile Application Development (Java ME, C# and React Native frm 1999)
    • Architect & Developer – Technical hands-on experience
    • Cloud-based solutions (CRM, ERP, Banking, Document Management, Workflow – 20 years)
  • Digital Marketing – 20 Years
    • CRM – 20 years of developing new CRM systesm and implementing, upgrading & enhancing Salesforce Dynamics 365, Siebel, Oracle, Bitrix24, Zoho CRM, SugarCRM, and many other CRM software integrations ,
    • Sectors: Retail Electronics, iGaming, Events, Publishing, Nonprofit, Medial Products, Healthcare & Banking
  • Healthcare – 7 Years

Key Achievements

  • CEO for three MedTech startups generating $350m in pipeline sales. Roles performed include Programme Director, Sales & Marketing Director, Production Director, Quality & Certifications, Procurement & Operational Management.
  • Programme Director for AUS New Payments Programme. Mark was hired by Fiserv Australia as the Delivery & Launch Director for a key component of Australia’s $2bn NPP platform which he delivered to plan. The Australian Treasury New Payments Platform (NPP) is recognised as the most advanced nationwide faster payments system in the world ($2bn AUD programme).
  • Engagement Director at Temenos. Setup regional office for Eurasia region based in Istanbul, covering Turkey and ten surrounding countries. Support pre & post-sales and running T24 projects in Azerbaijan and Turkey including critical regulatory compliance project to prevent the closure of a Turkish Bank.
  • Programme Manager at Temenos, Fiserv / Swift, General Motors Bank, Lloyds Bank, Lehman Brothers, Old Mutual, JP Morgan & Royal Bank of Scotland.
  • Programme Manager at KBL (Kreditbank Luxembourg) delivering a large (€30m budget) core banking upgrade programme. Team of 100+ staff to upgrade 2500 customised programs from Temenos Globus release 12 to Temenos Release 10.
  • Lloyds Banking Group hired Mark to deliver a £33m SEPA EURO Payments programme using the Pega payments platform. Mark also delivered a complex $200m credit & market Risk Management platform for daily reporting to the UK banking regulator.
  • Programme Manager engaged by Skandia Life to merge two fund Supermarkets owned by Old Mutual in the UK (Skandia Multifunds & Old Mutual Celestia brand).
  • Programme Manager for Business data migration on the $700m JP Morgan Symphony programme.
  • Programme Manager for a start-up developing a bank operational risk platform ; Programme Maanger at Lloyds bank Credit & Market Risk programme.
  • Programme Delivery Manager of a £20m Mortgage product development for Dutch bank ING.
  • Professional Services Director at Banking Alliance supporting sales, marketing and the integration with channels, payments, cards, compliance systems.

Project & Programme Management

  • 30 years of Project Management reporting to sponsors, stakeholders, board’s, directors and CEO’s.
  • Over 20 years as a Programme Manager & Programme Director
  • Reputation for mobilising teams to deliver strategic business programmes, with budgets from £1m to £50m and team sizes of up to 200.
  • Programme Delivery Management
  • Stakeholder Management & Line Management
  • Prince2 project management in 1996 and MSP in 2012.
  • Managed both small and large programmes/projects
  • Attention to detail and a collaborative, supportive and hands-on approach.
  • Establishing PMO’s and implementing portfolio & programme management
  • Set up & managed more than ten Programme and Project Offices since 2001
  • Risk & Issue Management
  • Change Management,
  • Incident & Problem Management
  • Defect Management
  • Release Management
  • Environment Management
  • Supplier Delivery management

Financial Services

  • Investment, private, commercial, and retail banking
  • Mortgages, Pensions, Fund & Wealth Management
  • Risk Management (VAR, Operational, IT Risk)
  • Payment’s systems & platforms (SEPA, CHAPS, BACS, SWIFT, Faster Payments, Fundtech)
  • Core Banking systems (Temenos, Fiserv & 4 others)
  • Fund Management & Wrap Platforms
  • Asset Management & Custody
  • Real-time Analytics (Bank Risk Reporting)
  • Treasury & Foreign Exchange
  • General Insurance
  • Life & Pensions
  • Reinsurance
  • Compliance & Risk
  • Consumer & Corporate Savings
  • Card Products (Mastercard & VISA)

Information Technology

  • Development of commercial software packages & custom software for clients
  • Architecture (Business, Software, & Infrastructure)
  • Sharepoint Consultant – 2013, 2016 and Office 365 – Architecture, deployment, development, Integration Customisations (10 years) SharePoint
  • Lotus Notes Developer (10 years)
  • Introduce Software Development lifecycles
  • Waterfall, Agile, Prototyping & Scrum
  • IT Security Auditing – PCI & ISO auditing
  • On-Premise & Cloud-based package implementation
  • IT Infrastructure & DevOps (20 years+)
  • Code security scanning & analysis
  • Penetration Testing
  • Systems Integration
  • Data Migration, Data Security, Data Privacy
  • Databases, MI & Reporting, Document Management
  • Introduction of Governance and Controls
  • Processes to streamline delivery and reduce TCO
  • Extensive Project & Programme Testing (teams up to 60 testers)

Business Analysis & Process Management

  • Requirements Management – Traceability of requirements
  • Quality Management – Introducing controls to support quality deliverables.
  • Estimating – Introduce re-usable models for project managers.
  • Top-Down & Bottom-up estimating. Earned Value metrics. Benchmarking projects
  • Packaged Software selection and implementation
  • Business Change – Introducing Business and IT Change Management processes
  • Business Development – Launching new business entities.
  • Securing funding & company valuations
  • Business Intelligence, Business Process Management & Lean
  • Business Process Management (BPR, BPM, Six Sigma & Lean)

Business Development

  • Pre & Post sales (Software & medical products)
  • Hiring & Managing Sales teams
  • Due Diligence on investors, clients & suppliers
  • Forensic level investigations of attempted commercial fraud
  • Closing Deals from lead providers, commercial negotiations & pricing
  • Driving commercial growth through just in time sales strategies
  • Patenting & Trademarking
  • ISO 9001, ISO 13485, FDA-510k & CE-MDR certifications
  • Build a factory to create the largest safety syringe manufacturer globally

Education

  • 50+ Training courses attended in the following areas:
  • Health Healthchecks
  • Management Training (Part MBA)
  • Managing Successful Programmes
  • Prince 2 Project Management
  • Business Analysis
  • Business Process Analysis
  • Business Intelligence
  • CMM, Six Sigma & Process Design
  • Service Delivery ITIL
  • Database Management
  • Application Development
  • Web Developer

Employment History

Contact Details

CV / Resume

Summary Level

Summary – PDF Download

Summary – Word Download

References – See Linked In