Orn Valdimarsson

Draupnir Ltd. specialises in consultancy services to the banking and financial sector. Draupnir Ltd. is presently working on various IT projects with MasterCard Advisors (http://www.mastercardadvisors.com) and The National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia http://alahli.com.sa/). NCB is the largest Bank in terms of capital both in Saudi Arabia and in the Middle East. The projects are focused on Electronic Clearing Systems, RTGS, Electronic Payment and Settlement Systems, SWIFT Payment Systems and Loyalty Credit Card Systems. Orn is an accomplished entrepreneur, having founded Draupnir Ltd Financial Consulting Services and having been approved to work for as an independent consultant for MasterCard International and with Shariah – Islamic law in accordance with Islamic banking practice.
As Senior Consultant my prime responsibility at NCB is to provide the direction and ensuring the correct solution is both designed and deployed within the disciplines of Project Management. I am able to get involved at a specialist detailed area of expertise but I also operate very well on a general architectural level. As Senior Consultant I have a strong strategic/commercial focus to work on large scale national and individual bank projects. I have excellent overall knowledge of IT infrastructure including emerging trends. I am able to bridge the gap between business problems and technology/strategic solutions.
I am able to produce conceptual designs for multi technology solutions and present them in an inspirational manner. In my present position I am responsible for people/project management, leadership and time management. I have strong knowledge and skills in producing functional specification white papers in the realisation stage of project. The team at Draupnir Ltd. has extensive experience in back and front end financial solutions such as: National payment systems, SWIFT, RTGS, Securities Clearance, Reconciliation, Risk and Liquidity Management, UK faster Payments, BACS, Voca, Step, Target 2, SEPA, EBA, Chaps, CLS and POS. In my present role I report jointly to MasterCard Advisors and NCB. My responsibilities are as follows:
• Define high level change plans and the end-to-end solution architecture for complete projects.
• Define solutions that meet the requirements of a new business issues and problems, albeit within the constraints of a given business and technical frame-work.
• I am responsible for planning the work and objectives, analysis and design of objectives, assessing and mitigating risk, estimating resources, allocation of resources, organizing the work, acquiring human and material resources, assigning tasks, directing activities, controlling project execution, tracking and reporting progress, analyzing the results based on the facts achieved, defining the products and processes of the project, forecasting future trends in the project, Quality Management and Issues Management.
• Provide PM disciplines such as work breakdown structure (WBS) design principles as defined by PMI with the 100% Rule. This allows me to define work by the project scope and capture all deliverables – internal and external – in terms of the work to be completed.
• Define and design the WBS 100% Rule elements in terms of outcomes or results rather than by any action-oriented details.
• Provide the tools and techniques that enable the project team to organize their work to meet project constraints. I will use Project Management disciplinary, best practice performance which enables me to deliver under certain constraints, such as scope, time, and cost.
• Select new tools and new standards that may go beyond the project brief, I am capable of investigating unfamiliar areas and making a reasoned and risk limited choice of product or policy.
• Select and integrate business infrastructure products or components such as workflow or document management into a wider solution.
• Presenting the solution, gaining buy-in and commitment from all stakeholders.

Sector: Financial information and communication

Atos Origin is the third largest business and technology integrator in Europe and has a physical presence in most major and emerging economic regions in the world. Atos Origin was chosen by Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) to build SADAD Payment System infrastructure, after that it was also awarded the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) contract to help SADAD in managing the daily operations in order to reach the market faster and manage the balance of risks, costs, and capabilities. To this end, I was personally recruited by Atos Origin for my functional expertise to manage the development of a national B2C and B2B Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment platform called SADAD (www.sadad.com) for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. SADAD is the national bill pay consolidated platform and as such equivalent to BACS and Voca payments system in the UK. Orn served as Principal Solutions Architect of the Kingdom's central bank endorsed electronic payment hub where he designed and built a unique, successful electronic payments system. His mandate was to create a faster payments system where consumers can pay their bills via all available bank channels, such as Internet banking, ATM’s, Bank Tellers and POS.

As Principal Solution Architect of the SADAD project I provided leadership and direction regarding general business operations, information technology, and client services. I was also responsible for overseeing the delivery of products and services to banks and billers (e.g. telephone, water, electricity, and other product/service providers). The results of this effort is summarized in nearly 500 pages of detailed high level designs ranging from the applications to integrate, custom database schemas, detailed workflows and business processes, and RFP cross references. In addition, I also wrote 220+ pages of detailed XML specifications to which Banks, Billers, and SAMA develop their applications for proper integration, billing functional specifications and bank and biller on-boarding specifications. I was also involved in the Joint Operations Guide and Service Level Agreement between Atos Origin and SAMA.

Sector: Financial information and communication

As Operational Manager, Project Manager of Corporate Internet Banking Solutions and Webmaster, I implemented Kaupthing’s Internet Corporate Bank into a fully Internet service. I accomplished this by not only insisting upon excellence from the engineering team, but from new product development, Process Modelling, BPM, project management, product management, tech-pubs, quality assurance, and the professional services organizations. At Kaupthing I gained experience working in operational management and project management roles, specializing in Bank/Financial solutions. I was promoted to Webmaster in 2005.

My main duties included:

• Interfacing with clients’ and signing of client SLA agreements
• Providing expertise functional issues, including strategy, planning, and best practices in the Financial Sector
• Managing projects through full lifecycle and architect of large scale IT projects
• Identify and understand market trends regarding technology areas in the Financial Services Sector
• Design the technical solutions, supporting architectures and business processes to align with the client information and technology strategies
• Analyze and implement billing systems for Telco’s and utility companies
• Hiring, leading, supervising, training and developing staff
• Leading project teams and budgets, and successful completion of projects

I transformed Kaupthing’s Commercial Banking Services from a branched based service to an Internet based service. This involved major system and business changes. The restructuring focus was on process efficiencies and aligned to business practices and the technology solutions. My mandate was to have all commercial services on-line including; e-services, payments, bill presentment, B2B payment services, SWIFT (IBAN) transfers as well as other B2B functionality. I successfully delivered on this mandate and all of our projects were successful. I had the ability to test and learn and then export the winners quickly to address the powerful changes in customer behaviour that were transformed to serve our customers. As an example, there is a direct annual saving of $3 made by Kaupthing group on the roll out of Kaupthing’s Internet banking and development of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTSG) payment platform systems.

We also managed to cut 8.7% off all transaction processing costs in 2005 and Kaupthing is on track to knock a further 11% off in 2006. In 2005 more than 90% of all transactions were conducted through remote channels, including Internet, direct debit, ATM and telephone. Direct channel revenues in the period rose 29% from a year earlier, with online revenue up 70%.

In my position at Kaupthing Bank, I worked closely with companies (customers) on e-business billing solutions, product introduction, sales and marketing strategies giving advice and product adaptation to market needs. I headed up a multi-skilled team (which varied in size according to the project) and I was the key point of contact for the client from the initial business development through to delivery. I managed all of Kaupthing’s technology projects including team coaching and mentoring. I have the ability to deliver change and a full understanding of the full development life cycle. My duties included managing Kaupthing’s web sites as well as all Real Time Data Feeds, applications and connectivity. I have experience in the design & deployment of large scale Market Data solutions within investment banking. As advertised on the company’s web site, Kaupthing Bank has won a number of industry awards for being the best-of-breed solution in its product space as well as the best Corporate Internet Bank in 2005. In addition I was made responsible for the development and deployment of Kaupthing’s intranet which was successfully launched in December 2005 servicing 2.000 employees.

Sector: Financial information and communication