Richard Talbot-Smith's Email Addresses & Phone Numbers

A professional individual with track record of success in multi-million pound projects. Leader and motivator adept at the translation of strategic business vision and requirements into the technical specifications required for development and implementation. Expertise in solution design, product / vendor selection, project managing multi-site on-shore and off-shore teams utilising both line and matrix management techniques and...

A professional individual with track record of success in multi-million pound projects. Leader and motivator adept at the translation of strategic business vision and requirements into the technical specifications required for development and implementation. Expertise in solution design, product / vendor selection, project managing multi-site on-shore and off-shore teams utilising both line and matrix management techniques and project recovery. Ability to traverse Business and Technical areas within an organisation to provide an overall view to Management. Specialties: Document Management, Data Capture, Forms Processing, System Integration, Software Architecture, Financial Services (Speciality Insurance, General Insurance, Credit Card, Unit Pricing)IT Management Consultant @ RunTime Systems provides a range of consultancy services to corporations on a contract basis and SME’s on a time & materials basis. Services provided encompass IT consultancy, support and the provision of hardware & software. RTS (UK) is a Microsoft Partner with experience in the provisioning and commissioning of HP mid-range enterprise servers, Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2010. Active Directory and RAID resilient hardware. From March 2005 to Present (10 years 10 months) Stockport, United KingdomSolutions Architect @ Engaged in the design and delivery of the tactical Combined Actuarial Reserving solution to enable XL and Catlin's reserving reports to be combined by Q4 2015. Engaged in the Intranet migration project, to enable Catlin's Intranet content and custom applications (based in the UK) to be migrated to XL's infrastructure in the US. This facilitates the Catlin Intranet GUI being made redundant as of January 1st 2016, and with the infrastructure being decommissioned not later than the end of January 2016. This enables significant cost savings to be made in infrastructure, license costs and support costs which are currently duplicated between the two legacy landscapes. Engaged in the on-going design and implementation of the global portal technology provided by Temenos and IBM to provide external access to XL Catlin’s Third Party Agents to the US based Guidewire Policy and Claims Management systems. Responsible for liaising with UK and US Solution Architects, SME’s and Management Teams to ensure implementation tracks and meets Business requirements. Responsible for ensuring internal and external design documents (System Designs, Technical Design, Infrastructure Designs) are complete and accurately reflect the design across the disparate technology vendors. From April 2015 to November 2015 (8 months) London, United KingdomSolutions Architect @ Managed the RFP processes (tender document & scoring matrix creation, supplier long list, vendor presentations etc.) for selection of the Global Portal Technology and WebMethods ESB Integration Partner ensuring that proposals were unambiguous and clearly stipulated the architecture that would be acceptable to Catlin. Engaged in the design of the global portal technology provided by Temenos and IBM to provide external access to XL Catlin’s Third Party Agents to the US based Guidewire Policy and Claims Management systems. Responsible for liaising with UK and US Solution Architects, SME’s and Management Teams to ensure internal and external design documents (High Level Design, System Design, Technical Design, Infrastructure Designs) are complete and accurately reflect the design across the disparate technology vendors. From August 2013 to April 2015 (1 year 9 months) London, United KingdomZensar / Catlin Transition Manager @ As part of the Managed Service Partner selection team at Catlin, I assisted in the engagement of Zensar to support Catlin's interests on either an on-shore or off-shore model encompassing SAP and Cognos in the first instance. Undertook the SAP Early Life Support on behalf of Zensar. During this period I was responsible for liaison between Catlin internal teams, Zensar UK Account Management, Zensar temporarily on-shored resources and the off-shore support team based in Hyderabad. Also engaged on behalf of Zensar to ensure that the Cognos Operational Readiness initiative is engaged to ensure a smooth transition from an on-shore to off-shore model. From July 2013 to August 2013 (2 months) London, United KingdomSolutions Architect @ Managed the RFP processes (tender document & scoring matrix creation, supplier long list, vendor presentations etc.) for selection of… - Cognos BI Managed Service Partner - SAP GL Managed Service Partner - SharePoint Managed Service Partner - Off-Shore Strategic Managed Service Partner … Ensuring that proposals were unambiguous and clearly stipulated the architecture that would be acceptable to Catlin. As part of the Managed Service Partner selection team, assisted in the identification and successful engagement of Zensar Technologies to support Catlin's interests on either an on-shore or off-shore model encompassing SAP support and maintenance and Cognos report development in the first instance. Responsible for the drawing up of the 3rd party Managed Service Agreement, Statement of Works and Work Package Agreement documents in conjunction with the Legal Departments from each company and the initial contract negotiations with the 3rd Party vendor. Engaged as the Solution Architect for the Global Claims Management System initiative to identify a suitable future replacement (taking into consideration the nuances of the London Market) of the incumbent claims administration platform. As part of the Solution Architecture Team it was my remit to work on a number of initiatives to determine the best approach and solution to a variety of Business Requirements and processes (e.g. Lloyds of London Messaging). From June 2012 to July 2013 (1 year 2 months) London, United KingdomSolution Architect @ Solution Architect to identify the replacement Health Claims Administration System for LBG. Solution Architect for the Board of Actuarial Standards (BAS) Statutory Money Purchase Illustrations (SMPI) initiative to ensure that illustrations take into consideration the life styling factors. Solution Architect for the PCI DSS Remediation initiative to identify the Insurance systems that held card PAN and CVV data to ensure the data was remediated on the impacted systems. Solution Architect on a research project to investigate a streamlined route to market for new fund launches (targeted reduction from 9 months per fund, to 6 weeks BaU activity) and fund maintenance via an Investment Fund Maintenance Hub initiative. Solution Architect with the LTSB high net worth UK Private Banking Wealth arena as part of multi-site team comprising of Subject Matter Experts, Business divisions, Analysts and Developers, generating the formal documentation for a number of Wealth Initiatives (Retirement Account – Planning & Income, Wealth Bonds and Consolidated Wealth Management Information Reporting). Responsible for presenting designs at the Technical Design and Strategic Architecture Forums. Engaged in the compilation of RFP documents for 3rd parties in relation to the Master Data Management initiative, ensuring that the technical elements of the proposal were unambiguous and clearly stipulated the architecture that would be acceptable within the Scottish Widows environments. Member of the 3rd party selection board that ensured all key requirements were identified and that the overall solution provided calculable ROI. Reviewed proposals from the Master Data Management market leaders - IBM, Oracle, Initiate and Siperian. Selected Oracle Seibel Universal Content Management as the preferred supplier and authored the End to End Design document detailing how Oracle Seibel UCM would consume feeds from the Lloyds TSB, Scottish Widows and HBOS estates. From September 2009 to June 2012 (2 years 10 months) Solution Designer @ As part of the Finance Transformation Programme I was responsible for the working with Deloitte in the investigation of Norwich Unions ‘As-Is’ application portfolio, recommending if elements should be re-utilised or retired as part of the programme whilst working with the Deloitte and Norwich Union SMEs in ensuring that data was supplied in a timely manner to the ETL staging areas. Reviewed the “As-Is” scheduling and monitoring within Norwich Union Finance arena to provide an accurate picture of the current methods and utilities Responsible for the overall solution design of the remediation of the data files supplied by the various policy contract engines into the finance transformation programme, recommending whether feeds were in / out of scope and determining how extracts could be made fit-for-purpose for the ‘To-Be’ environment without impacting BAU processing. Reviewed Unit Pricing application platforms (DSTi’s HiPortfolio & various bespoke software applications) within the NU Life operating company. Responsible for determining & documenting the complete ‘As-Is’ environment (Trading, gains & losses, liquidity, reconciliation, price distribution, tax etc.) understanding the current elements that were not scalable (for software, hardware or resource reasons), drilling down into inter-departmental business flows to establish if flow elements could be re-engineered, and determining any quick wins in terms of system / process improvements. Assisted the NU UK Information Technology Services in determining the most appropriate hardware platform (Sun Fire E2900 with Solaris 10 and Veritas Cluster Server, Network Appliance FAS3040C appliance cluster, 20 x 300Gb FC disk) for deploying HiPortfolio 3v5 to, taking into consideration 5 year anticipated fund growths, local failover and data centre failover scenarios. Engaged with NU UKITS and 3rd party data centre hosting partners (NTT Communications) in the final vendor selection process for the hosted solution. From June 2007 to April 2009 (1 year 11 months) York, United KingdomProject Manager @ Project Managed implementation at HBOS (Financial Services) of ReadSoft’s document automation (document & data capture, XML Capture & EBS system integration) software INVOICES & the Invoice IT (Oracle EBS Workflow, and Document Management System integration) product suites. Project Managed implementation of the ReadSoft Product set within SITA (Air Transport Communications). I was responsible for ensuring that a quality system was delivered to SITA by the UK Consultancy team, backed by the Danish and Swedish development teams. The core architectural platform was based in London UK, with Shared Service Centres based in Paris, USA, Geneva and the Pacific Rim. From June 2006 to April 2007 (11 months) Enterprise Architect @ Reviewed software application component deployment within AXA Insurance, Life & Health operating companies. Responsible for determining hard & soft benefits that could be delivered as part of a consolidation process. Responsible for proposing a Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) approach with incremental deployment to facilitate future business agility (EU cross border transactions) and reduce supplier dependency. Performed an independent review of the utilisation of the recently implemented AXA project management methology, ensuring that documentation had referential integrity and the appropriate departments had been engaged. Collated results, findings and recommendations into a management report on behalf of Architecture Governance department. From March 2006 to June 2006 (4 months) IT Consultant @ Subject matter expert in providing the Co-operative Financial Services with image processing and data capture expertise. Liaised with senior management, outsourced infrastructure teams, internal development teams and 3rd party vendors ensuring the proposed solution integrated with existing Co-operative Insurance Services (FileNet) and Co-operative Bank existing strategic platforms (Kofax Ascent & Documentum) Compiled of “Request for Proposal” documents, ensuring that the business requirements elements of the proposal were unambiguous, that the technical content clearly stipulated the application and infrastructure architecture proposals that would be acceptable, and ensured that other aligned areas such information security and procurement requirements were encapsulated within the document. Managed the Vendor selection process in conjunction with the Business and IT areas, ensured that all key requirements were identified and that the overall solution provided calculable ROI. From December 2005 to March 2006 (4 months) Development Manager @ Responsible for programme managing the full lifecycle of all Autoscore development initiatives to ensure account acquisition targets could be attained. Responsible for the overall management of 25 projects backed by a £10million development budget. From 2003 to 2005 (2 years) Solution Architect @ Liaised with MBNA Business & Technology Divisions (UK and US) and 3rd Party Vendors to research and identify the most appropriate technology solution to meet business requirements, including hardware, software, communications platforms, disaster recovery and system resiliency. Responsible for liaising with senior management within the business areas, assisting in the documentation (RUP Techniques generating use case surveys, integration diagrams & UML process flows, architecture & context diagrams etc.), collation and sign off of proposed system or process changes that impact technology. Ensured that the IT department fully comprehended the business drivers and proposed changes, managed the relationship between the IT department and the impacted business area. Act as the business areas technology contact with regards to aspects such as change management and issue escalation. From 2000 to 2003 (3 years) Project Manager @ Financial Services based role, working for organisations such as Barclaycard Managerial / Consultant role - high level analysis & man management. From 1995 to 2000 (5 years) Senior Consultant @ Financial Services based role, working for organisations such as NatWest, Alliance & Leicster, C&G etc. Technical Role - Primarily system analysis From 1995 to 2000 (5 years) Technical Consultant @ Financial Services based role, working for organisations such as NatWest, Alliance & Leicster, C&G etc. Technical Role - low level coding & analysis From 1995 to 2000 (5 years) Technical Consultant @ Financial Services based role, working for organisations such as NatWest, Alliance & Leicster, C&G etc. Technical Role - low level coding & analysis From 1995 to 2000 (5 years) Richard Talbot-Smith is skilled in: Solution Architecture, Integration, Change Management, Agile Methodologies, Outsourcing, Stakeholder Management, SOA, Business Analysis, Project Management, Enterprise Architecture, Requirements Analysis, Financial Services, Master Data Management, Business Transformation, UML