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Neil Mann, Management Consulting Expert in Singapore, Singapore
Neil Mann

Management Consulting Expert in Singapore, Singapore

Member since June 15, 2022
Neil is a versatile strategic digital leader with over 20 years of commercially focused multinational management experience across sectors, including financial services, natural resources, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), and hospitality. He has extensive global expertise in driving digital innovations to deliver growth in a range of businesses across cultures. Neil joined Toptal as he enjoys the variety of new roles, projects, and companies.
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Career Highlights

Education

Select Certifications

Case studies

Expertise

  • Advisory
  • Blockchain
  • Change Management
  • Digital Transformation
  • Innovation
  • Leadership
  • Management
  • Thought Leadership

Employment

  • Founder

    2022 - PRESENT
    Future Horizon
    • Developed educational material on emerging technologies for a learning and development platform.
    • Creation and delivery of an innovation seminar for leaders of a blue-chip BPO organisation.
    • Ran interactive workshops to demystify disruptive digital technologies for a global executive network.
    Focus areas: Advisory, Blockchain, Change Management, Crypto, Digital, IT, Risk, CEO, Due Diligence

  • Board Advisor

    2020 - PRESENT
    LogChain
    • Dispensed strategic advice for this logistics and supply chain blockchain startup.
    • Served as a trusted advisor to the CEO and COO, both of whom are founders.
    • Provided counsel, perspective, and challenge on crucial matters, such as risks, options, priorities, and issues.
    • Acted as a bridge between the industry founders and key delivery partners.
    • Designed and developed the Day-1 digital strategy blueprint for the platform.
    • Supplied technical assurance for the critical initial MVP, which was essential to enable seed funding.
    • Severed relations with an outsourced partner who was not delivering against agreed metrics.
    Focus areas: Startups, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Strategy, Thought Leadership, Innovation

  • Digital Center of Excellence Manager

    2021 - 2022
    Kearney
    • Provided expert knowledge and skills on how a digital center could be leveraged as a competitive differentiator to deliver business value.
    • Served as a senior digital subject-matter expert, providing specialist and detailed digital knowledge to teams working on key global client projects.
    • Led sales initiatives and billable engagements tenaciously, which included team management, client liaison, and ensuring quality on-time deliverables.
    • Mentored junior consultants on digital knowledge and consulting skills.
    • Founded a distributed ledger technology (DLT), a special interest group community to harvest and harness global intellectual capital from across the firm.
    • Produced an industry 4.0 digital strategy for a leading ASEAN agri-commodity player, moving them away from traditional analog processes and making them more robust, efficient, and competitive.
    • Generated multi-million annual cost savings for a global beverage client by undertaking a post-merger integration due-diligence exercise and recommending partners, contracts, and streamlining services.
    Focus areas: Digital, Digital Transformation, Innovation, Change Management, Strategy, Due Diligence, Advisory, Thought Leadership, Mentorship

  • Principal Advisor for Digital Strategy and Transformation | Contract

    2019 - 2021
    Rio Tinto
    • Served as chief digital officer appointee to bridge gaps between IT and commercial departments, including sales and marketing, marine and logistics, and procurement.
    • Provided oversight and governance on digital change projects by challenging norms, assumptions, approaches, choices, and timelines and creating more fit-for-purpose solutions where necessary.
    • Sought “win-win” collaboration proactively and used a results-focused mechanism to rebuild confidence in “how, when, and why” digital change projects were executed.
    • Enacted right-sized governance mechanics to balance speed of solution delivery with strategic organizational considerations, i.e., supportability, affordability, integration, and standard compliance.
    • Created clarity, consistency, and credibility for the pragmatic delivery of digital initiatives.
    • Acted as an expert in delivering the initial releases of a key bespoke commodity trading and risk management platform, reimagining commodity trading for Rio Tinto across their products.
    • Served as a thought leader for the commercial digital platform concept to drive business change by consolidating the application landscape, rationalizing data usage, and empowering business end users.
    Focus areas: Blockchain, Trading, Strategy, Innovation, Digital Transformation, Risk, Procurement

  • Consultant for Trade and Transaction Reporting Operations | Contract

    2018 - 2019
    Morgan Stanley
    • Tasked to rectify trade reporting inconsistencies identified during an audit. Had a middle office “change the bank” role.
    • Remediated all outstanding over-the-counter (OTC) derivative obligations, including forex futures, equity, currency, and interest, for the Japanese Financial Services Agency (JFSA) regulatory compliance with frequent CFTC and DTCC interactions.
    • Drove the team to resolve and deliver quality solutions for all prioritized items using Agile and refinement of operational processes to reduce future risk.
    • Partnered with trading, operations, and technology teams across multiple jurisdictions, including HKMA, ASIC, and MAS, to regularly share best practices and align on consistent ways of working.
    Focus areas: Compliance, Risk, Governance, Regulations, Trading, Derivatives, Process Improvement

  • Global Enterprise Architect

    2018 - 2018
    NGDATA
    • Incentivized greater and more frequent credit card spending for a notable global bank by delivering a flexible real-time personalized customer-centric solution that involved increasing return on investment (ROI) from the use of big data.
    • Increased the customer engagement and share of wallet for a large multi-brand Thai retail conglomerate with a weighted and trigger-based omni-channel cloud-based marketing capability.
    • Built new partnerships, owned the pre-sales cycle, and created solutions for clients worldwide.
    Focus areas: Partnerships, Presales, Technical Analysis, Design, Thought Leadership, Solution Architecture

  • Corporate IT Director

    2013 - 2017
    Marina Bay Sands
    • Managed and was held accountable for initiatives across complex integrated resorts worldwide, including Singapore, Macau, Las Vegas, and Pennsylvania.
    • Led the team to deliver the first enterprise-grade anti-money laundering (AML) implementation within a casino by adapting a leading AML product to meet the unique regulatory requirements.
    • Drove the cross-functional team to achieve fast implementation of industry-level obfuscation software for the correct balance between representative data for testing and ensuring regulatory compliance.
    • Delivered an ERP solution to remove manual processing and increase inventory availability. Collaborated with global cross-cultural teams and varied technical disciplines.
    Focus areas: Projects, Strategy, Gaming, Costs, Digital Transformation, Compliance, Risk, Governance, Advisory, Change Management, Profit & Loss (P&L), Budgeting

  • Program Manager of Wealth Management IT | Contract

    2012 - 2013
    UBS
    • Delivered all the “change the bank” digital workbooks for UBS Wealth Management Taiwan.
    • Improved visibility for business stakeholders on critical metrics, such as budget, timelines, risks, and variance.
    • Identified synergy opportunities for Taiwan to leverage existing solutions from Hong Kong and Singapore.
    • Created a bespoke China strategy for UBS Group Technology.
    • Met a challenging OpEx-reduction target for APAC commercial vendor sourcing.
    • Delivered consistent pre-contract due-diligence oversight across the matrixed organization.
    Focus areas: Wealth Management, Vendor Management, Program Management, Profit & Loss (P&L), Change Management, Digital Transformation, Sourcing, Strategy

  • Technical Architect | Contract

    2011 - 2012
    BHP Group
    • Served as an expert for an innovative geospatial collaboration platform for mineral exploration.
    • Created a strategic digital roadmap, including a first approval to evaluate the use of the cloud within the company.
    • Led the analysis, evaluation, and selection of vendors during the sourcing process.
    • Delivered a conceptual design and proofs of concept before the handover to the implementation partner.
    Focus areas: Design, Strategy, Budgeting, Innovation, Digital Transformation, Advisory, Sourcing

  • Senior Management Consultant

    2006 - 2010
    Gartner
    • Provided objective and independent recommendations to clients on different topics, such as strategy, sourcing, audit review, best practice, and go-to-market.
    • Advised throughout all stages of the project lifecycle from direction setting to critical delivery of initiatives at c-suite executive levels.
    • Led the team formulating the IT strategy for a Pan-European blue-chip retailer owned by private equity with a turnover of around £900 million. Got my recommendations accepted and an eight-figure budget for the transformation approved.
    • Delivered a due-diligence market scan and analysis exercise on a proposed future security technology architecture for the UK government.
    • Devised an IT strategy for a transportation client that included a £40 million cost model, a strategic roadmap, and direct recommendations.
    Focus areas: Strategy, Advisory, Innovation, Digital Transformation, Change Management, Costs, Risk, Remediation

  • Management Consultant

    2005 - 2006
    Accenture
    • Led the business case formulation for a J.P. Morgan data optimization initiative, reducing significantly line-of-business (LOB) costs and improving business continuity capabilities.
    • Served as a migration manager for the high-profile RBS data center consolidation program, delivered ahead of schedule and under budget.
    • Headed the ABN AMRO global application classification project and reduced costs by millions by enabling less critical data to be moved to lower-cost tiers.
    Focus areas: Change Management, Digital Transformation, Risk, Advisory, Costs

  • Technical Consultant

    2003 - 2005
    Schlumberger
    • Designed a modular, scalable, and robust process framework for all projects' effective and efficient migration to the business-as-usual operational support managed service.
    • Led a desktop migration for British American Tobacco (BAT), achieving 125% of the agreed deliverables on time and under budget by six figures.
    • Got assigned as a consultant to an insurer at their headquarters, assisting in their digital transformation for their 3,500 staff across the United Kingdom.
    Focus areas: Advisory, Digital Transformation, Costs, Change Management, Risk

  • System Engineer

    2000 - 2001
    BT Group
    • Participated in a twelve-month industrial placement undertaken in order to complete the third year of a university course. Contributed to a web-hosting platform with a user base of a few million.
    • Managed manual testing by planning test schedules, preparing test scripts from documentation, executing tests, reporting problems, tracking resolutions, changing requests, testing regression, and creating test reports.
    • Assumed responsibility for testing the primary credit card billing system Geneva, the new email system, and the FRIACO software.
    • Worked in a pressurized environment with tight deadlines in a small team.
    • Seconded to another team as an advisor before the high-profile multi-million-pound FRIACO product was introduced into the live environment. Found numerous complications.
    Focus areas: Networks, Testing

Other Experience

Education

  • Executive Education Diploma in Blockchain Strategy Program
    2022 - 2022
    Saïd Business School | University of Oxford - Oxford, United Kingdom
  • Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science
    1998 - 2003
    Robert Gordon University - Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

Certifications

  • Chartered Information Technology Professional (CITP)
    JUNE 2016 - JUNE 2026
    British Computer Society (BCS)
  • Chartered Engineer (CEng)
    JULY 2009 - PRESENT
    Engineering Council

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