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Simon Blum

Management Consultant - Director

Summary

Simon is a management consultant, an inspirational leader and has over a decade experience in consulting, business development and building and developing highly effective teams.

Currently Simon leads Nordcloud's Strategy Consulting and Sales Team. He is responsible for strategic engagements, business development and establishing a strong market presence for Nordcloud Switzerland.

Before joining Nordcloud, Simon was the service lead of Deloitte's Cyber Strategy & Transformation team, where he built a strong sales and delivery organisation and increased the team from 5 to 20 SMEs. In Deloitte Simon was known for his inspirational leadership style, the acquisition of crown jewel clients and the successful delivery of large scale strategy transformation programmes. 

With a background in entrepreneurship within the financial and aviation consulting sectors, Simon's key strengths lie in leadership, business development, strategy and building enduring relationships with pivotal stakeholders. His linguistic skills encompass native Swiss German, English, and Portuguese, enabling a global reach.

Work experience

June 2022Present

Director - Strategy Consulting and Sales

Nordcloud, an IBM Company

Simon currently leads Nordcloud Switzerland's Digital Strategy Consulting Service and its local sales division. He formulated Nordcloud Switzerland's "go-to-market" strategy and business development plan, and established successful joint ventures with Big4 companies within the country.

His strategic and sales efforts have resulted in a revenue increase from $3 million to over $12 million per year, and the creation of a $30 million project pipeline. Demonstrating noteworthy sales capabilities, Simon personally closed deals worth $5 million, contributing to the team's overall achievement of $16 million in closed deals.

Beyond his business development activities, Simon has efficiently led large-scale digital transformation programs from beginning to end. This includes strategy creation, implementation, and operations, with the latter provided as a managed service.

  • Swiss Social Media (July 2023 - ongoing): Engagement director of application modernisation project to reduce application run cost by 60% while maintaining performance and increasing scalability to leverage the full potential of public cloud.
  • International Manufacturer (January 2023 - ongoing): Engagement director of a global GRC initiative. The programme contains 2 streams, one for mapping and consolidating controls across 13 regulatory frameworks like NIST-800 and the second stream that builds a cloud bases solution to inventories, manage and assess products against the consolidated requirements.
  • Swiss Insurance (June 2022 - ongoing): Engagement director of an end-to-end digital transformation program with 10+ SMEs. The program includes all stages from strategy, migration assessment, migration, modernisation, optimisation and managed service for effective cloud operations.
  • Swiss Private Equity (April 2023 - 4 months): Engagement director of cloud migration project for 5 critical applications. The engagement was conducted with a team of 2 architects and 3 engineers and encompassed a landing zone review, an application assessment, migration and hyper care plus documentation including updating the run books. 
  • International Insurance (September 2022 - 3 months):  Engagement director of cloud security assessment that was focused on a well architected review of the clients google cloud, including a detailed review of the code base (IaC) for automated provisioning. 
June 2017May 2022

Senior Manager - Service Lead Cyber Strategy and Transformation

Deloitte AG

Assumed the leadership of Deloitte's Cyber Strategy & Transformation Service and restructured the service by developing a new strategy and operating model. Further grew the team to 20 SMEs, drove sales and increased revenues to 5$ million annually. Successfully managed several engagements with highest quality standards:

  • Swiss Technology (Oct 2021 8 months): Engagement manager of global OT/IoT strategy programme. Key responsibilities were to develop a business case for an OT/IoT global transformation programme to modernise production and operations to increase the efficiency and security of the global manufacturing capabilities. 
  • Swiss Technology (Jan 2020 28 months): Engagement manager of a global cyber strategy review programme for an organisation with 24 subsidiaries across the world. The scope included a strategy review, designing a target operating model and developing a transformation programme.
  • Swiss Insurance (August 2019 32 months): Engagement manager of information lifecycle management programme. The scope was to design a deletion strategy and operating model, as well developing and managing the transformation programme.
  • International Technology (September 2020 – 4 months): Managing 7 cyber SMEs in an information security governance and operating model project. The scope was to benchmark current governance practices to enhance the governance and operating model for an effective and efficient operation in a federated organisation.
  • Swiss Production (January 2020 6 months): Engagement manager for a cyber strategy programme with the scope of assessing the business most important assets, the threat landscape, the current state maturity and defining a target state maturity, which reduces the residual cyber risk to an acceptable level based on the business profile and risk appetite of the organisation.
  • International Technology (January 2018 – 18 months): Engagement manager and SME role for a global GDPR implementation programme. Managing a team of 18 GDPR SMEs across the world. Key tasks were developing a country roll-out strategy for GDPR implementation and drive the roll-out, harmonise the approach along countries and taking into account local legal requirements. 
May 2015May 2017

Management Consultant

NEXXUS Trust Ltd.

Provided consulting services to optimize operational performance and designed cetralized and federated target operating models.

  • Swiss industry (September 2016 - 3 months): Analysed, optimised and redesigned processes to increase efficiency and achieve operational excellence.
  • Swedish automotive industry (May 2016 - 3 months): Key role at the negotiations between SAAB and Tübitak, where Tubitak acquired the Saab 9.3 plant, dices and IP for the Turkish car industry.
  • Swiss banking (January 2015 - 4 months): Started a joint venture with Swiss Prime Site and NKF to establish a real estate investment offering via a SICAF fund for UHNI clients.
Jan 2012April 2015

Business Development Manager

NEXXUS Aerospace Ltd.

Served as a key member of the business development team charged with formulating strategic direction and building business development initiatives consistent with overall strategy. Travelling internationally to identify new business opportunities and effectively managing a territory spanning across Brazil and the Middle East.

  • Established strategic partnerships with Marenco Swiss Helicopters.
  • Taking a major role at negotiations with the Turkish government for a joint venture between NEXXUS, TAI (Turkish Aerospace Industries) and the government for building a helicopter transport industry in Turkey.
  • Negotiated and established strategic partnerships with key players in Brazil's aviation sector.
Nov 2009May 2011

Financial Advisor - Consultant

Swisslife AG

Managed a team of four members in consulting private clients in financial affairs including investments, pension planning and insurances. Established a strong portfolio of HNWI clients and received several awards in sales and  aknowledgments in best sales performance.

Sep 2008Oct 2009

Commander - Instructor

Swiss Army

Organised and managed the basic training course of Swiss Army recruits in the Infantry. Directly supervised over 220 soldiers. Served for three recruit schools as instructor and commander.

Mar 2005Jul 2008

Macro Progammer

Nestlé

Worked as a freelancer in the department of business warehouse as a macro programmer and clerk. Developed several algorithms to optimise data structures and identify inconsistencies. 

Education

20132017

Bachelor of Science with a major in Banking and Finance

ZHAW School of Management and Law

The first two years of studies provided foundations in:

  • Strategic Management and Marketing
  • Finacial Accounting and Management Accounting,
  • Business Law and Economics
  • Mathematics, Statistics and Banking and Finance

The third year of studies provided foundations in:

  • Project Management, Organisational Behaviour
  • Operations and Process Management
  • Financial Instruments, Portfolio Theory and Quantitative Methods
  • Corporate Finance, Risk Management and Tax Law

The last year of studies provided foundations in:

  • Banking management, Investment Management and Credit Management
  • Bachelor Thesis: Predicting Financial Timeseries in the Short Run with Echo State Networks (ESN).
19972003

University-entrance diploma / a-levels / Matura

Gymnasium Untere Waid

Secondary school with a major in Latin, math and applied mathematics. Rewarded for the best Matura thesis.