STEVEN B. HICKS, CISSP

H: 520-***-**** / C: 928-***-**** / W: 480-***-**** / E: acrww4@r.postjobfree.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevebhicks

Citizenship: Naturalized US Citizen

PROFILE

Considerable experience across functional areas and autonomous business units during all cycles of business including, start-up, high growth, downturns and acquisition integration

Exceptional visionary leadership, managerial and employee-development skills

Excellent communication, presentation and motivational skills, especially adept at discussing complex matters and technologies, to varying degrees of detail, with a broad range of constituents

Battle-tested innovator with the skills and leadership to execute and deliver

Complex/long-term project/initiative leadership – directed and influenced management of projects, with durations ranging from multi-hour to multi-year, across functional groups, vendors, partners and stakeholders

Broad functional experience (IT, Marketing, Operations, Information Assurance, Risk Management, Project Management, Facilities, Quality and Sourcing)

Experienced in entrepreneurial, start-up, business unit and large corporate/governmental environments

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

TTP Enterprises, LLC. (fka. The Turning Point, Inc.), Chandler, AZ 2006 - Present

Chief Technology, Information and Information Security Officer

TTP Enterprises, LLC., a $20 million Software-as-a-Service provider of communications, data augmentation, data mining, sales generation and direct, online and social marketing services supporting national financial institutions.

Devised, designed and directed the development, implementation and on-going operation of a SaaS-based communications platform known as MACH3 (turningpoint.com/mach3-platform). Developed via Scrum-based Agile environment, in close consultation with all business units, spanning 10+ years. Generates a significant proportion of company revenue from annual subscriptions and tactical service usage. Full range of services available 24/7. Delivers 99.9% availability per year. Based upon the Microsoft stack in a cloud-based system architecture.

Devised and directed the development of an online web service API allowing clients and systems integrators to directly integrate our service with 3rd party systems. Promoted a continual flow of transaction data from our clients, reduced the need for bulk Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) processing, enabled bi-directional data synchronization, and ensured the confidentiality and integrity of data. Providing direct IT system integration greatly improved the stickiness of our service. Reduced the ETL workload: 50%. Reduced import errors: 95%.

Lead a company-wide team to completely overhaul all client management systems (Pre-Sales, Sales, Customer Service, Training/Support), processes and personnel utilizing Google Apps, Safesforce and MACH3, Voice-over-IP telephony, greater automation, re-trained personnel and re-engineered processes. Reduction of workforce savings of: over 60%.

Improved corporate websites, social networking, online/print training materials and 24/7 self-service functions reduced inbound calls: 35%. Reduced time to close: 20%. Efficiency of client-facing functions improved: over 60%.

Implemented base IT infrastructure and operational management utilizing commercial off the shelf and bespoke software systems, Enterprise systems, cloud-based services and homogenized hardware/software systems. Availability of business critical systems now exceeds 98% per year. Information worker efficiency improved: 40%. Reduction of losses through outages, theft, malware, data corruption, etc: 80%.

Bought data processing operations based in the United Kingdom, out-sourced digital print operations based in the US and in-house data input and post-production operations under one roof. Experienced superior communication and co-operation between IT and digital print production teams. Integrated USPS and FedEx carrier services to benefit from enhanced services at preferential rates. Reduced costs: $1 million a year. Reduced production errors: 90%. Improved quality: 30%. Reduced data input to print turn-around from 5 days to 15 minutes.

Further enhanced the digital print facility by implementing improved processes, staff training and opened new sales opportunities from enhanced MACH3 output options and, from unconventional workloads and from previously untapped sources. From $1 million cost center to a $ million profit center. Increased utilization from 40% to 85% (peak). Automated print job generation enabling 24/7 operations.

Established a dedicated Technology Center facility in Tucson, AZ which opened May 2014. IT workforce transformed from four full-time staff and contractors as needed, to eight full-time staff with a mix of specific specialized skills and DevOps, placing less emphasis on expensive contractor services and more on growing a small, highly capable and knowledgeable team providing agile and highly responsive IT capability. Improved overall effectiveness: 50%. Reduced operational costs: 20%.

As a CISSP, I serve as a trusted advisor on all matters relating to maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all the organization’s assets. Form cross-functional teams to identify risks and vulnerabilities, address privacy concerns, prioritize threat mitigation efforts, devise policies, procedures, baselines and guidelines, help spread awareness, implement countermeasures and ensure information security is built into every endeavor undertaken.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve assisted the company through its formative years as a small Arizona-based business. By focusing the executive team, re-engineering processes, adjusting priorities and directing resources to yield maximum return and impact, we weathered the catastrophic economic down-turn. By observing the changing regulatory and compliance landscape of our clients a three-year program of work was devised and executed to exploit the need for compliance management (SOX, RESPA, CAN-SPAM, PCI). The enhanced services resulted in 60%+ increase in revenues compared to pre-2008 and facilitated the sale of the business in Q1 2014.

Realities Ltd., London, England 2000 - 2006

Senior Partner, Program/Project Manager, Senior Systems Architect

Realities Ltd., an IT and management consultancy, offering “virtual CTO”, consultancy, system design and fabrication services to a variety of verticals (ISP, Telecoms, Financial, Insurance, Aviation, Communications, Social Media) at various stages of evolution.

Clients included: TTP Enterprises, LLC. (www.ttpenterprises.com), Safeonline (www.safeonline.com), British Aviation Authority (BAA, www.baa.co.uk), Metropolitan Police Force (www.met.police.uk) and Xit2 (www.xit2.com).

Contracted by the British Aviation Authority (BAA) to devise and develop an Intranet-based project management and time accounting package system. Considerable experience of government operations, procurement, policy adoption and trade union collaboration was gained during this project. The main objectives of the project were to reduce paperwork volume, errors therein and data entry, and improve time accounting, resource utilization and reporting. All objectives met, all deliverables implemented.

Contracted to perform Virtual CTO role within a startup (INDeX UK Ltd.) focused on returning recovered, stolen property to the rightful owners. Assisted in developing business plans, sought and secured initial funding, played an integral part in producing the initial web-based implementation, worked closely with London’s Metropolitan Police Force to define the dynamics of the service and sought to deploy a data entry workstation in London Police stations to catalogue recovered stolen property.

Contracted to perform Virtual CTO role within an online e-commerce insurance broker (Safeonline) based in Lloyd’s Building in London. Designed and built corporate network, firewalls, IPS/IDS. e-commerce platform, Intranet and various supporting applications including a public-facing rating system for insuring electronic risk. Met and surmounted considerable resistance to a young, energetic start-up being situated amongst insurance companies that were 100’s of years old. Integrated systems of bordereaux, the new with the old.

Contracted to perform CTO and IT team roles within The Turning Point, Inc. based in Arizona. Managed all aspects of company IT remotely, utilizing one local member of staff to build, install and manage physical systems while all others were managed remotely from the UK. Planning and budget meetings were performed as telecommuters. Company grew so rapidly and became such a workload and opportunity; I accepted the offer of working full-time for the company on a H1-B visa basis.

Demon Internet Ltd., London, England 1995 - 2000

Various roles from Developer, to Development Manager, Microsoft Services.

Demon Internet Ltd., was Europe’s biggest dial-up and fixed-line Internet Service Provider, serving over 100,000 UK business fixed-line, 250,000 UK domestic dial-up connections and a number of virtual ISPs. I joined as employee number 28 and left shortly after the sale to ScottishTelecom for £66 million, with over 3,000 full-time employees in five offices in three countries.

Distinguished myself as a capable and visionary leader. Gained progressively more responsibility starting as a junior developer and resulting in a [System] Development Manager, focused on Microsoft technologies and managing teams of developers and operations staff. My other roles included Internal Systems Development Manager whereby I managed 40 people in four teams: Procurement, System Development, Internal Operations and 24/7 Helpdesk.

A relevant accomplishment of note was the managed collaboration between Microsoft, British Telecom, Compaq, Network Appliance, and internal Telecoms, DNS, Operations and Facilities staff to build a virtual ISP platform offering a million POP3 mailboxes and a million FrontPage-enabled websites to the British public on behalf of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The service was free to use and paid for itself via (dial-up) call revenue sharing. The project took 10 weeks from inception to launch, generated £650,000 in revenue and attracted 400,000 users in its first year.

EDUCATION

(ISC)2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), 2015

Notary Public – Pima County, Arizona, 2015

Company-sponsored Management and Team Development Training

Projects in Controlled Environments, Version 2 (PRINCE2) certification

Bachelor of Science – Computer Science (2:1)

School of Information Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, England.

Continued studies to convert the BTEC HND into a full Bachelor’s Degree.

BTEC Higher National Diploma – Computer Studies (Software Engineering) (Pass with Merit)

School of Information Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, England.

Equivalent to an Associates’ Degree.

PUBLICATIONS

“Reinventing the call to action.”, Progress In Lending, August 24, 2010

“Solving The mystery of the dead cat.”, Progress In Lending, August 17, 2010

“Risky business? Beyond fear and hype.”, Progress In Lending, August 10, 2010

“Can the cloud deliver what’s needed?”, Progress In Lending, August 3, 2010

AWARDS

2013 Progress In Lending Innovations Award, April 2013

http://progressinlending.com/blog/2013/04/14/and-the-2013-winners-are/#

Top 50 Service Provider, Mortgage Technology Magazine, July 2010

Technology 10X Award, Mortgage Technology Magazine, October 2008

http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/dailybriefing/2008_207/-415710-1.html

PATENTS

Apparatus and Method for Enhanced Client Relationship Management

United States 12/484,068. Filed: June 12, 2008

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