Hilda Collis

Head Hunted in August 2022 by the COO of Diamond Trust Bank based in Eastern Africa as Chief Enterprise Architect, to support the bank in a move from traditional financial services and develop a new Digital Banking Platform to become a Technology Partner Company with a Banking license to attract FinTechs from across Africa. A 2-year contract expiring Nov 2024, to be extended by present consent for another 2 years.

Key Achievements – Digital Banking & Lending Platform Architecture

• Developed Digital Banking and Lending Platform Architecture in support of the bank's Digital Transformation ambition i.e., to become a Technology Partner Company with a Banking license.
• Ensured that the Banking Platform Architecture integrated with their core Banking and integration platform and with many Eco-System Partners.

Key Achievements - Enterprise Architecture Practice Establishment:

• Created the Bank’s Enterprise Architecture Practice and Review Board, establishing key governance principles and charters for the digital transformation journey.
• Formulated the Enterprise Architecture Policy, Charter, and Architecture Review Board Charter.
• Implemented governance principles across various Enterprise Architecture Domains, including Data, Application, Integration, Security, and Infrastructure, ensuring adherence through the EPMO and the Enterprise Architecture Review Board.
• Promoted continuous improvement culture with regular reviews of architectural approaches and industry trends analysis.
• Delivered successful enterprise-wide digital transformations, modernizing legacy systems for improved user experience.
• Put together strategic plan to keep solutions in line with company and industry standards.
• Reduced costs for infrastructure maintenance through implementing efficient cloud migration strategies.
• Drove standardization efforts for technology platforms, reducing complexity while improving overall maintainability across the organization.
• Evaluated emerging technologies for potential adoption into the organisation's technology stack.
• Aligned IT strategy with business objectives through proactive engagement with organizational leaders and understanding core needs.
• Streamlined business processes by designing and deploying scalable enterprise solutions.
• Worked effectively in Agile environments to maintain efficient project work.
• Ensured regulatory compliance, conducting regular audits and implementing required updates to systems.
• Designed solutions for modern and legacy applications.
• Enabled faster decision-making by developing comprehensive data visualization tools for executive teams.
• Mentored junior architects, fostering professional growth and knowledge sharing within the team.
• Enhanced collaboration between IT teams, establishing clear communication channels and documentation standards.
• Increased security measures with thorough risk assessments and implementation of best practices.
• Established performance metrics to measure success of architectural implementations, utilizing analytics tools for data-driven decision making.
• Improved application integration by creating robust APIs and microservices architecture.
• Developed application frameworks, standardized procedures, and managed delivery processes.
• Gathered, defined and refined requirements, led project design and oversaw implementation.
• Drafted conceptual and logical data models for high-level system planning tasks, optimizing each model to customers' needs and budgets.
• Migrated numerous legacy systems to newer technologies, reducing costs and enhancing efficiency of computing tasks.
• Attained efficiencies through implementation of paperless document approval system and new automated sales-to-delivery and order processing system.
• Developed and wrote recommendations for departmental policies, procedures, technical standards and guidelines.
• Led team development and assisted in project management coordination.
• Managed identification, protection and use of data assets.
• Authored full Center of Enablement (CoE) design plan optimized for governance and performance metrics sought by client.
• Complied with regulatory guidelines such as GDPR and Kenya Data Protection Act in design architecture, ensuring adherence to strict privacy and security laws.
• Optimized system performance by identifying and resolving bottlenecks in the architecture design.
• Managed vendor relationships to negotiate contracts and ensure timely delivery of products and services.
• Key Achievement - Solution Architecture Practice Establishment:
• Created the Bank’s Solution Architecture Practice.
• Compiled asset registers for Business Capabilities, Applications, Integrations, Infrastructure, and Data Entity Assets, with ongoing cross-mapping efforts.
• Developed an overall Business Capability Model using the Gartner MIT method.

Key Achievement - Solution Architecture Documentation:

• Documented the Solution Architecture for every application in the organization, detailing Functionality, Data Flows, Integrations, Technology / Platform, pain points, and required use cases for optimization.

Key Achievements - Strategic Initiatives:

• Developed an Omni-Channel Strategy and Roadmap.
• Collaborated with Mandiant (Google-owned) on a project to enhance the Bank’s network endpoint and access security as part of a Zero-Trust Cybersecurity initiative.
• Key contributor in establishing the Bank’s RPA Centre of Excellence.
• Formulated Business and Technical Reference Architectures for the Bank’s Integration Centre of Excellence.
• Co-authored the Data Strategy and conducted vendor evaluations for technologies and implementation partners in the Master Data Management and Big Data space.

Executive and Board Engagement:

• Provide regular self-authored presentations to the Executive Board every quarter, demonstrating the progress and impact of various initiatives.

Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) - open-access fibre-infrastructure and -connectivity provider

• Assisted DFA in establishing its Digital Transformation Journey & Digital Transformation Roadmap with guiding principles.
• Conducted a Digital Transformation Assessment to determine their Digital Transformation Maturity, to inform their overall Digital Transformation Roadmap.
• Compiled a register of all their Business Capabilities, Applications, Integrations, and Data Entities.
• Assisted them with their Salesforce Roadmap and Implementation from an EA perspective.
• Analysed and documented their existing application and integration landscape.
• Analysed their existing QuickBase low-code application landscape, to support the development of a detailed roadmap, to remove all tertiary applications developed by the business as shadow-IT initiatives.
• Provided ad-hoc consulting in the capacity of executive Enterprise Architect, and Digital Transformation Architect to conduct an overall digital Transformation Assessment for the Agricultural Research Council across 17 campuses, to assess their digital maturity and then develop an overall Digital Transformation Roadmap. Assessed their current technology landscape and EA practice, to document gaps and weaknesses to be addressed in their digital transformation roadmap.

Letsema Consulting: Professional Services Company

• Consulted through Letsema Consulting to the Biodiversity Institute of South Africa, to AGSA, the Auditor General of South Africa, to ARC, the South African Agricultural Research Council, and to SA Tourism, analysing their EA and Application and technical landscapes, in support of streamlining their legacy environments and assisting them with their Digital Transformation journeys. This included conducting Digital Transformation Assessments and developing Digital Transformation Roadmaps as well as establishing Data Management Roadmaps and in some cases establishing their EA practices.
• Put together strategic plans to keep solutions in line with company and industry standards.
• Aligned IT strategy with business objectives through proactive engagement with organizational leaders and understanding core needs.
• Evaluated emerging technologies for potential adoption into the organization''s technology stack.
• Drove standardization efforts for technology platforms, reducing complexity while improving overall maintainability across the organization.
• Worked effectively in Agile environments to maintain efficient project work.
• Ensured regulatory compliance, conducting regular audits and implementing required updates to systems.
• Designed solutions for modern and legacy applications.
• Barloworld Equipment: Caterpillar dealership based in South Africa
• Established a formal Enterprise Architecture Practice, with Architecture Review Board and EA Principles .
• Assisted Barloworld Equipment with their digital transformation journey to automate their servicing processes, improve their customer service experience and drive a holistic data management journey. Consulted with them across the Business, Application, Technology, Integration and Data / Information Architecture domains.
• Developed their overall Data Management Strategy, Approach, Data Management Policy, Governance Model, Data Architecture Models, Data Warehouse and Lake Reference Architectures and their overall Business Data Reference Architecture and Roadmap to drive this journey. The Data Strategy proposed an agile, iterative approach based on the future business use cases to meet the anticipated future business operating model to drive the Data Architecture and modelling aspects. The Data Strategy, Policy, Data Roles, and Operating Model were reviewed and rubber-stamped by Gartner with two minor suggested changes .
• As a key part of the EA team, developed an overall application strategy based on Gartner’s pace layered application model in support of the digital transformation Journey.

• Evaluated and assessed technology/process architecture completeness or suitability across all regions and countries that had previously operated in a federated autonomous and highly disparate manner.
• Built and maintained the Business Architecture capability and developed business capability/component models in support of value-driven, outcomes-based approaches at the corporate and business domain levels.
• Ongoing technology elicitation and assessments with key business stakeholders to understand business requirements and fit a solution to business needs.
• Designed and formalised a set of templates in a reusable and scalable manner so that these could be re-used to compare several potential and proposed technical solutions against each other statistically and objectively.
• Conducted and maintained a global application management portfolio audit across all countries and regions as part of the corporate governance requirements required by NTT, the holding company.
• Conducted and maintained a global audit in terms of which PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is held in all applications across the globe according to the American NIST standard, to understand any potential privacy and security risks of holding this information.
• Compiled and maintained business domain-specific data classification models (based on the IBM Financial Industry best practice standard) to understand all logical data entities and required data relationships.
• Built and refined a Global Operational Data Store, to hold all information from Tier 1 and Tier 2 systems, inclusive of the new global template-driven; ERP, E-commerce, SalesForce.Com, Service Management (ServiceNow) and Supply Chain systems to develop a single operational version of the truth in support of global business insights and reduce the burden of differing regions and business units on Tier 1 systems.
• Built an Enterprise Data Warehouse and business insight solutions i.e., data cubes for dynamic business intelligence solutions using the business tool of choice e.g., MS Power BI, Tableau, Qlickview. Driven by globally defined key performance indicators/metrics ensuring governance to avoid disparate solutions and duplicate effort.
• Drive out a Global Master Data Management strategy and programme which initially socialised the concept of master data as an asset across all the regions including assessment of the current state of processes and maturity as well as assessing appropriate technologies to build the business architecture (processes, master data rules) and define the associated technical and business roadmaps with cost estimates to ensure the technical on-boarding and socialisation and adoption of the appropriate tools.
• Supported the global harmonisation programme to migrate all the separate ERP systems across the globe onto one global template SAP ERP for enterprise information management.
• Understood and documented the global requirements for a global automated legal contract management solution, identifying potential solutions, selecting the appropriate solution, and implementing this from start to finish. This required designing and configuring all the workflow, reviewing obligations and milestone management processes associated with each contract type, with the solution built on the Microsoft Technology stack, using an Azure database and the latest Office 365 tools, e.g., SharePoint online, Word online etc.
• Conducted and maintained a global HR decommissioning audit in support of rolling out the global Workday Human Capital Management solution in support of a digital work experience for all employees across the globe. This also supported a strategic Payroll strategy to rationalise the many different payroll systems and the manual on-boarding of payroll data across the globe.
• Supported the digital journey of the company, and regularly reviewed the digital Information Architecture developed by an external digital consulting company.
• Developed and maintained an overall global high-level IT reference architecture roadmap, in support of future executive IT and business decisions, to illustrate how each business domain fitted the technology/application, infrastructure/integration and information perspective to provide high-level observations and recommendations.
• Promoted continuous improvement culture with regular reviews of architectural approaches and industry trends analysis.
• Delivered successful enterprise-wide digital transformations, modernizing legacy systems for improved user experience.
• Put together strategic plan to keep solutions in line with company and industry standards.
• Reduced costs for infrastructure maintenance through implementing efficient cloud migration strategies.
• Drove standardization efforts for technology platforms, reducing complexity while improving overall maintainability across the organization.
• Evaluated emerging technologies for potential adoption into the organization''s technology stack.
• Aligned IT strategy with business objectives through proactive engagement with organizational leaders and understanding core needs.
• Streamlined business processes by designing and deploying scalable enterprise solutions.
• Worked effectively in Agile environments to maintain efficient project work.
• Ensured regulatory compliance, conducting regular audits and implementing required updates to systems.
• Designed solutions for modern and legacy applications.
• Enabled faster decision-making by developing comprehensive data visualization tools for executive teams.
• Mentored junior architects, fostering professional growth and knowledge sharing within the team.
• Facilitated cross-functional workshops, aligning stakeholders on project goals and requirements.
• Enhanced collaboration between IT teams, establishing clear communication channels and documentation standards.
• Optimized system performance by identifying and resolving bottlenecks in the architecture design.
• Managed vendor relationships to negotiate contracts and ensure timely delivery of products and services.
• Increased security measures with thorough risk assessments and implementation of best practices.
• Implemented Agile methodologies to improve project management efficiency and adaptability.
• Established performance metrics to measure success of architectural implementations, utilizing analytics tools for data-driven decision making.
• Improved application integration by creating robust APIs and microservices architecture.
• Researched and evaluated available tools to determine proper method of developing artifacts.
• Developed application frameworks, standardized procedures, and managed delivery processes.
• Gathered, defined and refined requirements, led project design and oversaw implementation.
• Designed data models for complex analysis needs.
• Drafted conceptual and logical data models for high-level system planning tasks, optimizing each model to customers' needs and budgets.
• Complied with regulatory guidelines such as GDPR and POPIA Act in South Africa in designing data and application architectures, ensuring adherence to strict privacy and security laws.
• Established and secured enterprise-wide data analytics structures.
• Developed and delivered business information solutions.
• Managed identification, protection and use of data assets.
• Led team development and assisted in project management coordination.

• Participating in pre-sales engagements and RFI/RFP proposal building for Enterprise Information Management, Enterprise Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Performance Management, IT Strategy, IT Optimisation and Measurement
• Contextualisation, understanding, marketing and implementation of various IBM value propositions (EIM, EA and IT and Application Portfolio Management) for different sectors – focusing on the financial and financial markets sector and the mining and telecommunications industries
• Developed global business services offerings across sectors. This included working with the legal, risk, asset and deal hub parties to obtain the necessary approvals and authorisations, for costing, submission and delivery of such proposals.
• Driving and delivering on Enterprise Strategy, Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Performance Management
  engagements incorporating people, processes, skills and systems aspects.
• Assessing Business and/or IT performance and effectiveness using the IBM Component Business Model and IT
  Governance models and methods .
• Developing proposed Business and IT strategy and effectiveness solutions and migration roadmaps, incorporating the relevant business capabilities, components, processes and metrics for implementing and executing such proposals.
• Developed new business opportunities by leveraging existing networks and identifying potential clients.
• Utilized data-driven insights to inform decision-making processes, optimizing outcomes for both clients and the firm.
• Built long-lasting partnerships with key stakeholders, solidifying the company's reputation as a trusted advisor.
• Enhanced client relationships by consistently delivering innovative and customized solutions.
• Balanced multiple priorities while maintaining exceptional attention to detail, resulting in high-quality deliverables for clients.
• Managed complex projects from inception to completion, ensuring timely delivery and client satisfaction.
• Crafted compelling proposals that effectively communicated the value of our services to prospective clients.
• Led client presentations that showcased expertise in various industry sectors, driving engagement and interest in our services.
• Demonstrated adaptability by quickly learning new industries or technologies when taking on new projects.
• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to develop comprehensive strategies for clients, ensuring optimal results.
• Implemented best practices in project management to optimize resources and minimize risk exposure.
• Navigated challenging situations with confidence, employing strong problem-solving skills to find effective solutions under pressure.
• Networked with other professionals and organizations to expand contacts and opportunities.
• Collaborated with colleagues and support staff to maximize team efficiency.

• Developed an Enterprise Data / Information Management and Governance Strategy and Roadmap. This was done using the IBM Financial Services Data Classification Model to classify the JSE data landscape.
• Identified 350 Business Data Entities and around 2000 lower level data entities and clear business definitions and
  mapped these to the JSE application systems and physical application database models to highlight information gaps and overlaps.
• Identified the availability, usage and security and privacy criteria associated with each of these Business Data Entities.
• Developed Data Governance maturity assessment and roadmap using IBM, Dataflux and COBIT Data Governance Maturity models.
• Incorporated best practices from the IBM Data Governance Framework, COBIT and TOGAF frameworks.
• Assisted with implementing a new MIT trading system for the exchange.

• Consulted to two major mining clients in the Anglo plc group i.e Kumba Iron Ore and Anglo Platinum.
• Assisted in the facilitation, development, alignment and the dynamic execution management of their corporate and business unit strategies.
• Concluded two major deals with Kumba Iron Ore and Anglo Platinum based on the strategy execution method I developed.
• Used a balanced scorecard approach to contextualize and visualize their strategies in a way that clearly identified priorities and inter-dependencies between strategic objectives.
• Highlighted gaps in the execution of client strategy and ensure the strategic direction supported the implementation of appropriate business governance models e.g. King II and III, GRI, JSE SRI, 5 Capitals etc. to ensure the sustainability of the business.
• The deliverables comprised a Strategic Performance Measurement Framework (this included strategic and operational dashboards with priorities and inter-dependencies in terms of the measures and associated data required to source these dashboards and heat maps to show the availability and sources of the required data) and an Integrated Sustainability Reporting Framework (this included a Triple Bottom Line Value Driver Tree underpinned by the same performance measures and data used to source the strategic and operational dashboards).
• Would have consulted to these companies for longer but there was a down-turn in the mining industry at the time. These same companies contracted me further to assist them in defining cost cutting strategies and roadmaps at which stage I started looking for another consulting assignment.
• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to achieve project goals on time and within budget.
• Improved customer satisfaction rates through proactive problem-solving and efficient complaint resolution.
• Followed all company policies and procedures to deliver quality work.
• Developed strong client relationships through consistent communication and attentive service.
• Created and delivered presentations to internal and external stakeholders to showcase work.
• Built and managed relationships with key clients and partners to drive growth.
• Developed and implemented systems to track customer feedback and satisfaction.
• Led successful sales presentations to prospective clients, resulting in increased partnerships and collaboration opportunities.
• Generated reports detailing findings and recommendations.
• Provided reporting for forecast analysis and ad-hoc reporting in support of decision-making.

• Decided to spend more time with my children.
• Conducted various strategy and business management assignments across several manufacturing, retail and semi-government accounts. Assignments included the initial sales process, the account management process and deliverables / outcomes.

• Worked for this company for 13 years in various positions (i.e. Project Manager – Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank, Senior Projects Manager - Customer Accounting, Senior Development and Production Manager - Virtual Banking Channels, Senior Manager Data and Application Architecture before being appointed as Head of Group IT Strategy and Architecture.
• Was approached by the Retail Bank MD to facilitate strategic direction and alignment workshops across the Retail Bank, Private Bank, Wholesale Bank and Group Divisions (Group Risk, Internal Audit, Group Information Security, Group IT etc.) using the IBM strategic facilitation process and an outcomes based scoping and design method.
• The outputs from each two day workshop (across approximately 80 business and organisational units) were formalised and standardised using standardised templates and thereafter aligned to the higher level business unit or organisational strategies.
• Workshop outputs included a SWOT analysis, a mapping of the unit’s responsibilities against a standardised business function framework, a vision and mission statement, high-level goals, an intermediate objective map clearly indicating independencies between goals, critical success factors, key assumptions, a short-term (6 months) and long-term (12 months) action plan per critical success factor.
• The critical success factor plans were then also mapped back to the high-level goals and clear accountability was assigned per high-level goal and per critical success factor
• In the final position at SBSA, reported to the Group CIO and managed a team of 22 people. The scope of work included :
• Alignment between different business units’ business strategies and also with Group strategies (where relevant).
• Ensuring that all business and IT projects were aligned to the Business and IT strategy and architecture.
• Coordinating alignment opportunities between different business units’ IT programme / project objectives by highlighting functionality overlaps and identifying possible asset re-use opportunities, through facilitating Group IT Strategy and Architecture Programme / Project Alignment Workshops.
• Guiding the Group IT Strategy and Architecture area to enable re-use of assets and effective technology deployment through trusted enterprise frameworks, processes and patterns.
• Ensuring Group IT Strategy and Architecture support for the strategic direction of the Retail Bank and the rest of the Group.
• Implementing effective governance procedures to ensure compliance to the formalised Group IT Strategy and Architecture principles and standards.
• Establishing and managing the Group IT Project Office.
• Building an Operational Data Store and BI solutions to manage client interaction across all channels.
• Increased team productivity by implementing efficient project management strategies.
• Delivered exceptional results through the development of high-performing teams focused on innovation and excellence.
• Restructured underperforming departments to better align with overall business goals, leading to increased efficiency and output.