Shihab Shahriar

After success with multiple projects, I was chosen by company leadership to spearhead the multi-million dollar digital transformation effort that culminated in the creation of new product based teams, expertise-based chapters, and a center of excellence. To manage this monumental journey, I worked closely with leadership on the change management and coordinated efforts with IT, HR, and finance to ensure we align on new processes and practices for the teams. At the end of the pilot, I was appointed the lead for the Agile Center of Excellence, with a team of four reporting directly to me.

The onboarding process for a new institutional client to be able to list their company on the trading platform was completely manual, paper-driven, and took up to 4-6 weeks to complete. Apart from the long wait time for clients, this also involved significant manual efforts for internal operations teams.
The mandate of this project was to digitize the entire onboarding process for shorter processing times for clients, more efficient internal operations, and more dynamic storage of data internally. Working with the business leader and operations stakeholders, I identified the highest value features to be prioritized along with the ideal go-to-market schedule. I helped identify four different technology providers and vendors throughout the project and managed a team of up to 30, including vendor software developers and internal team members.
We delivered the MVP within three months and received the go-ahead for the entire program, which was delivered about a year later. I received accolades from leadership and clients on the overall management and delivery of this project.

Managed from requirements, design through to implementation, the launch of a brand new product that would introduce the trading of mutual funds at bulk in the trading platform for the first time in Canada. Worked with both business and technology stakeholders as well as external vendors to identify the correct implementation and go-to-market strategy. Coordinated efforts with legal and regulatory teams to ensure proper approvals were gained and filed with the securities commission in advance. Post-implementation, I helped onboard new clients to the system, working closely with support and development teams as well as business leaders.

As the leading stock exchange in Canada, keeping the trading platform up to speed with the latest technology is critical for ensuring the marketplace is fast, secure, and reliable for our clients. This means upgrading our then aging platform to a new one with new storage, network, and resiliency solutions. Spanning over a year and involving multiple phased implementations, I was one of three project managers who helped manage a project team of up to 80 people on software development, infrastructure procurement, and installation as well as client communications. The project was implemented without any major issues and continues to be in production today.

Following several less than favorable onboarding experiences for new clients to the proprietary iFast Mutual Fund accounting platform, a team was formed to build a new, consistent, and streamlined onboarding process. I was chosen as the executive recommendation to lead this program.
As a project lead, I helped relationship management teams with early-stage client communications. Once the deal was closed, I led a team of 15 business analysts, developers, and infrastructure experts to implement the solution based on client specifications while managing client communications, regulatory documentation, and financials. Over six months, we saw marked improvement in the onboarding process with the cycle shorted by almost six weeks and received high praise from our clients.