Mark Kozak-Holland is a Senior
Business Architect/Consultant with HP Services. Mark specializes in helping
organizations evaluate how emerging technologies can impact their business
and build a business justification. Mark has over 20 years of systems
integration and services experience gained internationally in all phases of
project development from conception to implementation.
Mark delivers seminars for project
manager, business executives, and decision makers. Mark has been invited to
speak to organizations, businesses, at major project management conferences
including Project World, and PMI chapters.
Mark's topics of expertise include
a project case analysis of the Titanic, and how Churchill used business
intelligence, knowledge management, and information portals to drive agile
processes that helped Britain
win the war against Germany
in WW II.
Mark is very passionate about
history and sees its potential use as an education tool in business
today. As a result, he has started to
develop a “lesson-from-history” series, which is for
organizations applying today's Information Technology (IT) to common business
problems. It is written for primarily business and IT professionals looking
for inspiration for their projects. It uses relevant historical case studies
to examine how historical projects and emerging technologies of the past
solved complex problems.
The series looks at historical
projects and then draws comparisons to challenges encountered in
today’s projects. It outlines the stages involved in delivering a
complex project providing a step-by-step guide to the project deliverables.
It vividly describes the crucial lessons from historical projects and
complements these with some of today's best practices. It makes the whole
learning experience more memorable. The series should inspire the reader as
these historical projects were achieved with a less sophisticated emerging
technology.
Mark published his first book
titled "On-line, On-time, On-budget - Titanic lessons for the e-business
executive" in 2002. The book explains in layman's terms how to deliver
an Internet project successfully using Titanic as a case study. Mark’s
second book titled "Churchill’s Adaptive Enterprise: Lessons for
business" was published in July 2005.
Mark has authored many white
papers, writes magazine articles regularly, and speaks often at conferences,
and meetings at chapters and organizations.
Resume
Since 1990, as a
consultant he has delivered hundreds of consulting engagements across major
service industries (Finance/Insurance, Retail/Distribution, Telco,
Government, Oil/Gas, and Healthcare). At a business level these engagements
have included corporate strategic planning, visioning, organizational
development, business transformation, re-engineering assessment, CRM,
decision support (Business Intelligence), and business availability. At a
functional level these have included scoping requirements for systems
integration, solution assessment, functional change management, application
migrations, major implementations and operations management.
Career profile
Mark has worked for HP, IBM,
Compaq, Tandem and SHL Systemhouse.
HP Consulting and Integration Services (2005 -): position Senior Business
Architect/Consultant. Part of the Enterprise Application Services practice.
Mark helps organizations evaluate how enabling portal and business
intelligence solutions could impact their business, by developing a business
case, defining a vision and strategy, and creating a design.
He worked on the following
projects:
-
Enterprise Corporate Portal for a
Telco. Developed an enterprise business case across the organization’s
business units. Identified primary wants and needs, value propositions
for target audiences, and cost-justification.
-
Enterprise Application Architecture
Assessment and a strategy for application modernization for a cluster in
a provincial government.
-
Sales enhancing tool for a Furniture
Manufacturer. Gathered requirements to create a RFI and following vendor
responses completed a simple business case to support a project to
integrate the tool into the current environment.
IBM Global Services (2000-2005): position Certified Senior Consultant. Part
of Portal and Content Management practice, and Innovation Centre. Mark helped
organizations evaluate how enabling portal and other e-business technologies
could impact their business, develop a business case, define a strategy, and
enhance existing business processes to the customer. He worked on the
following projects:
-
Enterprise Corporate Portal for a
major Oil company. Developed a strategy and business case based on
business opportunities spanning the upstream and downstream business.
This provided executives with an alternate view and resulted in a Web
redesign project to transition site to a true enterprise portal.
-
Enterprise Employee Portal for a major
Financial Institution. Developed a business case and strategy and the
design of an on-demand dynamic workplace for employees.
-
Framework for Portal Project for a
Provincial Government. Lead for designing, developing and implementing a
portal starter kit for ministries to use in the design, development and
implementation of a ministry portal.
-
e-business Portal Strategy for
Provincial Government. Led a business discovery which developed a vision
and strategy to link the wants/needs from 3 ministries and 4 depts down
to business scenarios and profiles for target audiences.
-
Led an e-business strategy for a
Caribbean Island Government with the Prime Minister and Cabinet
exploring business areas of opportunity enabled by e-business across the
island nation state. Opportunities were qualified by economic and social
value in terms of improving the quality of life, and government service
provided.
-
Corporate Employee Portal for a
Canadian Fast-food Retailer. Led a discovery for defining a portal
strategy and evolving a corporate Intranet portal along with an Extranet
franchisee portal. Defined the business requirements for departments
/franchisees, business processes impacted, and changes required.
Identified organizational changes in roles, skills, and structure. A
short business case was determined for payback.
-
Research engagement for a Provincial
Government Ministry to optimize the Ministry's strategy using Customer
Value Management. The deliverables included a positioning paper
highlighting the client's value proposition to small businesses in the
province and recommended business strategy adjustments.
-
Led a Business discovery of business
opportunities for the Assembly of First Nations enabled by a high speed
comms. infrastructure interconnecting 635 tribes across Canadian
provinces and territories. Identified e-business opportunities, a
business case and sustainability model for investments presented to the
Federal Technology and Finance Ministers in Ottawa ahead of the Federal
budget.
-
Led a business discovery to redefine
product/service offerings for a Corporate Travel company. Put forward a
strategy to segment the client base and present multi-optional products
customized accordingly. The strategy factored use of multiple channels
to enhance a positive user experience. A short business case and score
card was created.
-
Led a Business Discovery for
Electronic Data Presentment with a major Financial Institution.
Responsibilities included determining whether the EDP strategic program
was unique with no overlaps to similar projects within the bank, and
ensuring the program met the bank’s “brand promise” initiative and
strategy of the Internet Banking Division.
-
Led a business discovery to identify
key business issues in strategic areas for a major Electronics
Manufacturer. It established a value proposition and created a set of IT
measures and processes including IT Baseline Service Levels and IT
Operations Processes. This was followed by a Benefit Impact Analysis and
a project for mapping processes and redefining workflow.
-
Led a business discovery for a major
Office Furniture Manufacturer to provide Fortune 500 clients with custom
Internet sites for procuring furniture on-line. Defined a business case
and requirements for departments by which functions /features were
ranked. Changes in organization (roles, skills) and process were also
identified.
Compaq Services (1997 - 2000): part of a worldwide practice responsible for
the business development of Business Exploration and Systems Integration
projects across geographies. The program was focused on working with
corporations in defining business requirements, creating initiatives, and
formulating projects for developing and integrating business solutions. It
received high praise from customers and was used internally for strategic
planning sessions.
-
Program development - led it
through its integration into the eBusiness roadmap. Mark assessed market
opportunities and helped to develop specific campaigns.
-
Collateral development
– created service delivery kits, sales/marketing brochures, and
industry frameworks for banking, and insurance; and horizontal solutions
in Customer Relationship Management, Business Intelligence, and Supply
chain.
-
Sales – supported
pre-sales initiatives ranging from RFP responses to direct customers
sales and was involved in over 100 opportunities.
-
Delivery – resourced
and participated in many Business Exploration projects globally. He
developed and managed a partner augmentation program for delivery.
-
Education/training - set
up/delivered for consultants (18 classes in 2 years). Covered
As-is/To-be modeling, business cases, future scenario planning, and soft
skills.
He worked on the following
projects:
-
Led a business discovery that
developed a “direct-to-market e-business model” for the in-bound division of
a major US Telemarketer. Determined an opportunity to allow the client to go
direct to corporate clients with various marketing initiatives. Defined role
of emerging technologies in the new business model which helped CSRs
recognize in-bound callers and consolidated intelligence to make effective
offers. Over a year showed a pay back of $20m in new revenues and $10m in
profits. This was followed by a second business discovery with outbound.
-
Led a consulting team for a
leading European manufacturer of equipment and services to the professional
farming community. Identified and scoped two e-business initiatives -
“Effective interface to the customer”, and “Strategy for dealers”. These
initiatives provided opportunities for up/cross selling customers, and
increasing dealer dependency on the client through value based services
presented through a data mart. A business payback to investments was
identified at 50:1.
-
Led a business discovery to
define business opportunities related to the sharing of customers across
subsidiaries for a major US Financial Institution. The objective was to
understand how each interacted with its customer base through channels and
touch points, and determining the current products offered. Opportunity
areas were developed relative to new product/channel combinations and
maintaining a consistent brand image across channels with a business case.
Following implementation of a solution a ROI was realized within two years.
-
Led a business discovery for
agent analysis for a life division of a major US Insurer and exploring how
the insurer could better leverage its agents against a growing competition
of online Discount Brokers. This required completing a requirements exercise
to examine questions like in which regions are agents the best producers,
what are the leading practices, which products are cross sold, and what is
the overall impact on retention figures. A short business case was
determined for the initiative and a pilot was implemented to verify the
findings.
Tandem
Consulting Services (1989-1997): Since 1989 Mark has worked with the Business
Exploration program. His strong cross-industry consulting, mediation, and
facilitation skills positioned him as a part of a worldwide delivery team.
Mark’s position before the Compaq merger was that of a worldwide DSS
program manager cross-industry.
He worked on the following
projects:
-
Led this multi-phased business
discovery for a major Financial Institution. Initially focused on creating a
strategy for client profitability through improved channel and product
allocation. Further requirements led to the creation and implementation of a
marketing automation project, and the eventual deployment of a CRM solution.
This achieved a first for the bank, a consolidated view of the client driven
by profitability. The $500,000 return, just from the first iteration of the
project, offset the cost of the project.
-
Developed a strategy for
independent intermediaries with a leading Dutch Insurance company. Driven to
engage the 750 independent intermediaries across business units the
engagement identified two initiatives – “Best Intermediaries” and “Stronger
Relationships”. The former required analysis of current intermediaries,
profiling and segmentation, leading to selection and right-sizing. The
latter on increasing value to the intermediaries so that they would choose
to work with the company, increasing their loyalty. The project resulted in
increasing annual revenues with just 300 intermediaries.
-
Led 18 month project at a
Financial Institution that established an unprecedented 24 month
availability record in a extremely dynamic environment, resulting in the
public recognition and awards for the project.
-
At an Electronics Retailer led
two business explorations for both the retail (merchandisers and buyers, and
retail stores) and repair depot sides of the business.
Previous experience (1983-1989)
Tandem
UK, 1987 - 1989. Analyst,
specializing in the support of major systems integration projects,
application delivery and implementation into production.
SHL Systemhouse Inc.,
Toronto, 1985 -
1987. Working in a systems integration environment, responsibilities
included analyzing customer requirements, development, integration and
implementation of high availability solutions on Tandem systems.
Alpha Computers,
Calgary, 1983 -
1985. Support Analyst for PCs and applications.
Awards
and recognition
-
Winner at OCTAS, a
competition honored by the Fédération de l'informatique du Québec for
most innovative IT project. This is a major occasion in the province of Quebec:
http://www.fiq.qc.ca/evenements.htm#laureats
-
Received the Tandem
Excellence award for the development of the corporate Business
Availability Service, deployed globally.
-
Compaq Services recognition
for the development, evolution, and promotion of the Business Discovery
program.
Education
B.Sc. with Joint
Honours degree in Computer Science and Statistics 1980-1983 (University of Salford, UK).
Positions
Current President of Whitchurch-Stouffville Soccer club 2001- (membership
1100).
