About Arsalan
Profile
Arsalan is an IT-Business Consulting Executive with 25 + years of top international experience at industry leaders such as IBM, DXC, Accenture, and Wipro, and in high-growth organizations with an exceptional track record.
Arsalan currently works at the global company and IBM spin-off ‘Kyndryl’ in the UK, as Global Director, Enterprise Architecture Consulting & Advisory.
Arsalan is a distinguished Enterprise and Business Architect (Certified by The Open Group), a highly experienced thought leader practitioner in in Digital Transformation and Enterprise Architecture, and an experienced and Prince II certified Program Manager. Arsalan has excellent consulting and architectural skills and experience to help distil strategic enterprise solutions that involve complex business, technology, organizational, and architectural aspects, and present them in business-friendly and “humanized” language.
Arsalan has an outstanding international track record across the globe in devising and leading pioneering and innovative strategic transformation initiatives and engagements , helping organizations achieve maximum business and operational impacts.
Previous Career Roles
- Global Head of Digital and Consulting | Esplendor Group- UK/Europe
- Head of Consulting Partners, Enterprise Architecture & Digital Transformation| Wipro UK/Europe
- Director CIO Advisory, Executive Architect | IBM UK/Europe
- Founder & Managing Director | ODC Netherlands
- Head of Enterprise Architecture Practice Europe | DXC UK/Benelux
- Senior Consultant | Accenture Sweden/Scandinavia
- Practice Leader for Object Technology Practice | IBM North America
Education & Qualifications
- Master of Science MSc, Information Technology, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
- Distinguished/Thought Leader Enterprise, AND, Business Architect, The Open Group, Netherlands/Italy
- Master Enterprise, AND, Business Architect, The Open Group, Netherlands
- IBM’s Technology University I & II (3 months), Atlanta, USA
- Prince II Project/Program Management, QA Institute, UK
- Togaf Enterprise Architecture, The Open Group, Netherlands
Other Professional Training:
Program Management, Could Technology (UK) | IBM Banking Architectural Framework IFW, IBM’s Insurance Framework IAA, Agile & DevOps, Sis Sigma/Lean Sigma, Architectural Thinking (Netherlands) | Business Analysis and Design (USA) | Business Practice (Finland) | Consulting Skills (Sweden) | Foundation for Corporate Processing (France) | Rational Suite & RUP Certification (Belgium) | Technical Leadership University TLU 1 and TLU 2 (UAE) | Client Advisory (China) | Industrial Engineering (Sweden) | 7 Habits of highly effective people, Financial Abilities (Mexico)
Affiliations
- Accenture: Leading Contributor (global methodology expert team), Object Technology, Chicago, USA
- DXC: Leader for Global Expert Group Enterprise Architecture/BPM, Dallas, USA
- IBM: Practice Leader Business & Enterprise Architecture Benelux, IBM enterprise architecture global expert board member
- Wipro: Head of Digital Transformation, leading member of the global EA Academy
Thought Leader Practitioner Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture, and Consulting
- Distinguished/Thought Leader Enterprise, AND, Business Architect with great reputation for being a trusted advisor, and for “getting results” not only as a leader, but also as a hands-on practitioner.
- Devised an own IP’ed Digital Transformation Framework “ePerspectives” as a practical business-driven business-language methodology for Enterprise/Business Architecture to guide digital transformation – the framework has been greatly acclaimed and successfully implemented at strategic enterprise level at leading European organizations with excellent results and executive feedback and testimonials.
- Head of Enterprise Architecture practice at IBM, DXC, …Started, led, and successfully developed, headed, and grew highly successful pioneering innovative and reputable and profitable business practices in Architecture, as well as Consulting, Digital Transformation, CIO Advisory, Enterprise and Smart/IoT, at leading Consulting firms in the UK, Europe, Americas, and Asia.
Achievements and Industry Experience
Banking
· At one of the largest global bank, led multinational teams that included senior architects and technical and business SME’s at a large leading global Investment Bank, devised an unprecedented innovative wealth management solution, presented and convinced the CEO, COO, and CIO and the executive management, secured and led the engagement that to successful completion with new follow up engagements in a new client logo.
· Successfully crisis-managed a high-visibility country-wide Retail Banking platform and service launch in a $300 M+ global integrated account at a leading global bank.
· Successfully crisis-managed and thereafter led a 3-way strategic and highly successful collaboration between
IBM, DXC and Mc kinsey in a 250 M integrated account at a global top 20 bank.
· Led other strategic engagements for leading banks in the UK (Lloyds, Credit Suisse, HSBC), Germany (DB, HDH), Denmark(Unibank), US (Statestreet Bank), Latin America (Banamex), and M.E (QNBN, QIB)…
Insurance
- At a top 3 global credit insurer, led large global teams in UK/DE/NL/US/IN in recovery of a highly strategic and complex enterprise-wide business and IT Digital Transformation Program in crisis for a global credit insurance leader. Achieved trusted advisor status with executive management including CIO, COO, devised and convinced of a new revamped Program Architecture and roadmap, led global expert teams and produced winning proposal, outcompeted and replaced incumbent System Integrators, raised enthusiasm leading teams across client business, strategy, and IT organizations, hence winning, and successfully spearheading the implementation in a new $90 M showcase engagement
- Led other insurance engagements valued over 300 M for leading Insurance companies in then UK (Winterthur/AXA, Netherlands (AMEV), Scandinavia (SPP), Belgium (RVS)…
Telecoms
· At BENELUX largest Telecoms company, directed a mission-critical billing transformation Program at a leading European Telco with scope of over one billion Euro annual invoices, which had previously failed by Accenture and Athos, led client business and IT executives and teams, achieved millions of cost savings by building self-financing business case with and gained consensus and conviction across Business and IT in a politically sensitive environment involving Accenture, Athos, and IBM and other parties, in a Program fully implemented to become a countrywide showcase and Nr. 1 success story.
· Crated an end-to-end showcase Holistic Digital Transformation demo and PoV with real industry artefacts from eTOM Telecoms framework. This covers the e2e spectrum from Strategic Objectives, Stakeholder Values, and KPI’s (Business Strategy), Value Streams & Process Models and Services, Customer Journeys, Business Capability Model (Business Architecture), IT Architecture, Resourcing, Heatmapping and 360-degree assessment (Enterprise Architecture), Capability-driven Transformation Planning and Solutioning (Portfolio Management/PMO), and Agile/DevOps, APR, Decommissioning (Solution Architecture). This platform not only serves as an excellent holistic Digital Transformation PoV, but also a great tool for learning practical Digital Transformation.
· Led other Telecoms engagements valued over 200 M in the UK (O2, BT, Vodafone), Germany (DT, T-Mobile), Scandinavia (Telia, Ericsson) France (Nokia), Telstra (Australia), QNBN (Qatar), Ziggo, Tiscali, KPN (Netherlands ), …
Government/Public Sector
· At UK’s largest governmental organisation, engaged on regular basis with the CIO and the Executive Business & IT leadership and gained enthusiastic sponsorship for my proposed Enterprise Architecture and Digital Transformation method and framework adoption which I , operationalised and institutionalized, leveraging which I led 4 successive and highly successful engagements phases over a year in a strategic Digital Transformation Program, which became a showcase acclaimed strategic initiative with unprecedented tangible results – with outstanding reception and feedback from client including published video interviews and testimonials with the CIO, and executive leadership, in a top reference account.
· Led other Governmental engagements in the UK (Ministry Of Defence, Cambridge Council), South Africa (Government Of South Africa IT Agency -SITA), Netherlands (Royal Army, City Councils, Harbour and Maritime Authority), Middle East (Smart City Dubai, Qatar MoD)…
Healthcare & HealthTech
Energy & Utilities
- At a leading UK Utilities & Energy provider, customised ePerspectives Digital Transformation Framework and operationalised it at Scottish & Southern Energy UK as the Digital Architecture and Transformation framework, implemented in Gartner MQ EA Tooling Leader Software AG’s “Alfabet” and “Aris” tools as best-practice.
- Led in several solutions and engagements such as Application Portfolio Modernisation, Solution Architecture as a Service (SAaaS) Business Process management and Enterprise Architecture tooling at one of the biggest energy companies.
- Led other Energy & Utility engagements in the UK (BP, Bristol Waters, STW), Netherlands (Shell, Essent), Germany (Uniper, Leoni), Sweden (SKF), Middle East (QP)…
Manufacturing & Technology
· At a global manufacturing leader in Belgium, replaced the Executive Architect and also took on Program Director role in a Program experiencing serious issues and successfully turned around a global Transformation Program leading teams across Belgium, Sweden, and USA, also regularly advised CIO and IT executives.
· Led other Manufacturing & Technology engagements in the UK (BAT, ASAHI, OKIDATA), France (Michelin, Continental, Renault), Germany (Rolls Royce), Sweden (SKF), Outukompu (Finland)…
Retail
· At UK's largest Retailer, he client aimed to establish an “Intelligent Trade Platform” (ITP) as a first of a kind implementation for providing its commercial teams an automated decision in “Competitor Reactive Pricing” (CRP) and “Smart Supplier Management” with predictive optimised analytics by modelling options and recommending the best course of action and improving efficiency through automation. Devised the Enterprise and Program Architecture, and managed a large multi-disciplined teams of businessSME’s and IT/Technical architects and PM’s in implementation. Guided Business SME’s in accelerated strategy distillment for the brand-new target business model, ensured widely dispersed requirement were gathered and consolidated “upstream business-capability-centric to serve as true business-driven product backlog requirements baselines, established project scope, and led accelerated Business Architecture current and target assessment workshops in value stream, Process/Org, CX and business capability modelling to define the target business operating model (TOM). I redefined and optimised the EA and Agile Delivery approach with more efficient DevOps delivery incorporated, harmonised the collaboration between Enterprise and Solution Architecture functions with an efficient SAaaS model (Solution Architecture as a Service) with best-practice intake, QA, TDA and resource assignment procedures. I led Program and onsite/offshore delivery teams on daily basis and managed the on-time delivery
and on-schedule service launch.
· Led other Retail engagements in the UK (TJX, Pentland ), Netherlands (Staples, Albert Heijn, Sara Lee), Turkey (Kellogg’s), Sweden (ICA), …
