Rylan Govender

Astute and enterprising energetic digital change driver, IT programme and project manager, strategist and consultant with 20 years’ experience providing world class leadership in developing IT strategies, Digital blueprints, architectures and transformational business solutions, delivery frameworks and execution strategies to diversified companies in the banking, telecoms, technology and consulting sectors and Health sector in global companies.

I was most recently the portfolio lead for the CFO’s office at MTN driving the digitization portfolio to grow sales, reduce fraud, automate decisioning, improve reporting and transform billing and credit risk within MTN SA.

Previously, I was most the project lead at Life Health Care Hospital Group SA where I disrupted the nursing and employee health services business through interventions that drove down costs and improve scheduling efficiencies for nurses in hospitals. 

I have received multiple accolades within Nedbank SA, ABSA SA and the Development Bank of SA for outstanding performance.

Extensive experience in programme, project management and business analysis for both business process, systems, data and change management. I am knowledgeable and skilled in performance and business management with proficiency in business case development, 

large scale software development projects, full life cycle project management, project portfolio management, transformation programs and enterprise architecture strategy.

Excellent Management, Business Intelligence and Leadership skills characterised by the establishment of long-term relationships, comprehensive product knowledge, superior client services and stakeholder management skills.

Enterprise Portfolio Manager (MTN)

• Responsible for the management of the Billing and Credit Risk Portfolio within the CFOs Office
• Supporting IT to ensure projects are scoped and in-line with “accelerate 2025” strategy for execution.
• Projects managed for delivery had a significant focus on Fraud risk, credit risk and Billing risk that enables strong business cases when executed.
• Lead a team to broker a multi-billion book buyout with a local bank as part of MTN’s strategy to leverage the debtors book.

Senior Project Manager (Life Healthcare Group)

• Responsible for the delivery of Nursing Excellence projects related to the Kronos application Advanced Scheduler functionality.
• Supporting the Nursing Excellence business to achieve their business case against projects.
• Recently lead the application support team to restore the organization after a sever cyber-attack and data breach. All systems had to be re-built and restored from ground up. This was achieved in 3 months.
• Lead a team to build the business case for Data Classification as part of the alignment to POPIA – this is still in progress. 
• Lead a team to remediate the Deloitte Audit findings which will enhance the organization security and practice protocols accordingly.

Digital Lead (CitiBank SA)

• Contract position to assist Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions to digitize. Improve business process through automation and re-engineering, create more robust solutions for operating in a straight through manner and enhance their customer experience using technology available. 
• Part of the role involves setting up quick wins for immediate benefits realization. 
• Converting paper/manual ways of working to more streamlined and automated ways supported by technology.
• Supporting the regulatory office to digitize the corporate onboarding process to enable the FIC Amendment 2 as well as to digitize document administration and automation to cater for POPIA and GDPR. This includes updated corporate reports and client letters with consent clauses (opt In/Out options), re-addressing google Ad Words and ensuring all third party contracts within the SA Branch is updated to cater for the regulatory requirements.
• A key solution being the replacement of Orbiflow with eFlow over Flexcube which caters for Digital signatures and eStatements which replaces paper statements and wet ink signatures. This is a massive step forward for the SA branch in digitization aligned to risk and compliance requirements.
• Projects delivered focuses on the businesses of liquidity, cash, payments and receivables as well as operations.
• Working closely with Technology and Business to ensure strategic alignment and digital strategy adoption is realized which promotes benefits realization.
• Part of the role also involves direct client engagement to ensure client experience is of the highest priority. Working closely with the Global Sales Teams to also promote digital solutions as a value driver for deal making.

Vice President – Digital and Distribution (Barclays Bank)

• Responsible for the strategic development of the book of works for Digital to take the bank to new heights.
• Responsible for the end to end solution delivery of those projects scoped for execution.
• Responsible for all client engagements and relationship building with the client.
• Forging partnerships with other areas of Business-like Business Banking and Retail to leverage solutions into WIMI to innovate and transform the customer facing business.
• Supporting all solutions and strategic developments in-line with all regulatory risk and compliance requirements.
• Working very closely with the Compliance, Risk and Legal teams to ensure that all measures and scenarios are catered for to ensure key risks are mitigated from a reputational, operational, regulatory and strategic perspective. Notifications, disclaimers as well as privacy statement acceptance options were developed to meet compliance needs.
• Every project delivered were subject to in-depth security penetration testing using external vendors as well as in-depth data privacy assessments using the ABSA Conduct Risk assessment framework to ensure breaches have a low probability. 
• Development and adoption of the Digital Strategy.
• Financial management of the Digital Enterprise include Business Case Benefits realization management.
• Project engaged:
• RoboAdvisor
• Owner of WIMI on absa . coza
• Online Quote for AIC
• Online Claims for AIC
• RoboAdvisor 2.0 with automated portfolio balancing
• New ABSA Investment website enhancement
• Agile methodology delivery
• Managing all Scrum Ceremonies
• Managing Blockers
• Delivery planning with Product Owner
• Managing Sprints and Documenting all interactions
• Vendor management through the scrum teams

Senior Manager – Financial Services (Accenture SA)

• Responsible for the origination of projects within FS through client value propositioning and solution journeying.
• Responsible for the end to end solution delivery of those projects landed within the client.
• Responsible for all client engagements and relationship building with the client.
• Understanding the Accenture target strategy and aligning this to client expectations in order to win opportunities.
• Supporting the client’s strategy through Accenture tools and talent in order to help the client achieve their vision.
• Build the necessary support capabilities within Accenture FS in order to ensure successful project delivery in the
• Management Consulting and Technology projects.
• Project engaged:
• Cyber Resilience Assessment to lower the impact of security breaches– Nedbank Group Risk
• Robotics Process Automation Services Pilot to enable backend staff to move to client facing advisory roles – Nedbank Corporate Shared Services
• Bank Expansion using the Digital Bank model aligning to global regulatory practices – Rest of Africa Channels

• SAFe Agile Scrum Master (2022) - Scaled Agile Academy
• Post Graduate Diploma: Strategic Programme Management with Honors (2012) - Cranefield College (Cambridge University Standard)
• Finance for Non-Financial Managers (2010) - Johannesburg University of Finance
• Advanced Diploma: Programme Management (Strategic) (2010) - Cranefield College (Cambridge University Standard)
• Financial Modelling with MS Excel (2010) - Front Foot Academy
• Project Management Fundamentals: PMBOK (2006) - Damelin SA
• Bachelor in Information Technology with Honors (2002) - Durban University of Techology
• National Diploma in Information Technology (2001) - ML Sultan Technicon