Alex Istanboulian
Summary
Senior management professional, bringing strategic leadership and operational excellence to drive organizational success. Skilled in project management, team collaboration, and process optimization with keen focus on achieving results. Adept at navigating complex challenges, fostering culture of accountability, and adapting to evolving business needs. Known for strong decision-making, effective communication, and building high-performing teams.
Qualified [Desired Position] with proven track record in leading teams and driving operational efficiency. Demonstrated ability to implement strategic initiatives that enhance productivity and foster growth. Known for utilizing strong leadership and communication skills to facilitate team collaboration and achieve organizational goals.
Overview
23
23
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Manager, Channels Distribution
BMO Bank of Montreal
06.2022 - Current
- Led cross-functional teams to drive strategic initiatives and improve operational efficiency.
- Developed and implemented performance metrics to enhance team productivity and accountability.
- Streamlined processes through data analysis, resulting in improved project delivery timelines.
- Mentored junior managers, fostering professional growth and enhancing team capabilities.
- Collaborated with stakeholders to align departmental strategies with organizational goals.
- Spearheaded change management initiatives, resulting in increased employee engagement and satisfaction.
- Oversaw budget management, ensuring optimal resource allocation across projects and departments.
- Analyzed market trends to inform strategic planning and maintain competitive advantage.
- Provided strong leadership to enhance team productivity and morale.
Manager, Channel Strategy and Network Investments for Personal & Commercial Physical Channels
Bank of Montreal, Personal & Commercial Physical Channels
01.2016 - 06.2022
- Lead Strategic Investment Initiatives for Canadian Personal, Commercial & Wealth lines of business:
- - Create, build and execute a strategic 5 year road map that addresses the evolving and transformational direction of BMO’s physical network of branches, wealth strategy including capture of high net worth customers, ATM’s and technology.
- - Branch investment strategy includes determining optimal markets for openings, closures, relocations, reformats. Wealth strategy includes identifying BMO ‘One Bank’ co-location opportunities (Personal, Commercial & Wealth lines of business) in addition to identifying non-physical channel initiatives to help capture high net worth customer base.
- - Leverage outcomes from customer data, market research & analytics and performance indicators to support the roadmap strategy and prioritize projects for execution. Key accountabilities for project execution include; market analytics leading to investment prioritization, financial budgeting, determining & managing project scope, stress testing, maintaining a customer first approach and business casing.
- - Present project initiatives to key stakeholders such as Regional & Channels leadership in addition to Senior Executive committee’s for funding approval.
- - Collaborate and maintain relationships with partner groups across the BMO organization, to assist with building logistics and analytics of the strategy roadmap. Partner groups include: BMO Wealth (Nesbitt Burns and Private Banking), Corporate Real Estate, Human Resources, Commercial, Operations Risk, Change Management and Divisional Leaders (Division Heads, RVP’s and Divisional Operation Director’s).
- - Chair bi-weekly project management milestone meetings to ensure approved projects are tracking on schedule and remain on budget. In addition, proactively approach projects that are subject to timing delays or budgeting overages.
- Leadership Development:
- - Graduate of BMO's Leadership Development Program. This program incorporates BMO's best practices for performance assessments, coaching, customer-focused culture, team engagement and building collaborative networks with other BMO leaders.
- - Recipient of BMO’s Best of the Best Award for 2018.
- Review Risk Omnibus for Network Investment projects:
- - Work with Senior Risk Officers to review & recommend risk ratings for all and ensure projects are accurately reflecting both inherent and residual risk levels appropriately. The process is continually update to best reflect to latest changes and applications to project risk
- Led cross-functional teams to enhance operational efficiency and streamline processes.
- Developed and implemented strategic initiatives to drive organizational growth and performance.
Manager, Channel Strategy & Network Planning
Royal Bank of Canada, Channel Strategy & Network Planning
01.2011 - 01.2016
- Initiate strategic analysis for RBC’s branch network investment in the Greater Toronto Region (GTR):
- - Conceptualize business & competitive needs for RBC’s physical network distribution and lead project initiatives by providing market opportunities, business case reporting, product analysis, market share analysis, anticipated branch performance and long term benefits to the bank.
- - Collaborate & build influence with GTR’s Regional President & Vice Presidents as well as regional sales leaders to ensure; strategic alignment, provide business justification for branch investment and deliver short & long term expectations for the branch & market performances.
- - Provide key directives to real estate partners to ensure quality of premises, terms of the lease and timeliness of premise delivery.
- - Gather, integrate & interpret large data sets including; customer, real estate & product data
- Support RBC’s Business Financial Services unit to develop sales strategy for health care small businesses:
- - Provide analysis & recommendations regarding strategic markets to launch pilot program directed at specialized sales to small businesses in the health care industry.
- - Rank RBC’s market share & opportunity across Canada in the health care industry by utilizing data from statistics Canada and internal RBC small business customers.
- Provide insights and direction for cross-functional marketing initiatives:
- - Implement customer segmentation analysis to RBC’s Avion marketing groups for their “Out of Home” media strategy. This involves identifying markets to invest in with media buys by segmenting population clusters that have high propensity to acquire Avion cards.
Senior Business Mapping Analyst
Mobilicity, Marketing and Sales Division
01.2009 - 01.2011
- Responsible for providing analysis for both the Sales and Marketing divisions across major Canadian markets (Greater Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary).
- Primary analysis for the Marketing division and had two primary purposes: a) Consumer awareness and b) Customer retention.
- Secondary analysis for the Sales division
GIS Business Analyst and Professional Management Program Team Lead
Bell Mobility, Market Analysis and Intelligence
01.2007 - 01.2009
- Primary role assist with project planning for enhancing location strategy in Bell Mobility. Used GIS analysis to identify opportunity areas of penetration, competitor activity and customer profile analysis.
Credit Services Representative
Canadian Tire Bank
01.2003 - 01.2007
- Worked in Canadian Tire’s contact centre, responsible for customer care in addition to credit card collections. The contact centre was under the Canadian Tire Options MasterCard division.
Education
Masters - Spatial Analysis
Ryerson University
Toronto, Ontario01.2008
Honours BA - Human Geography
Brock University
St.Catharines, Ontario01.2007
Post-Graduate Diploma - Geographic Information Systems
Niagara College
St.Catharines, Ontario01.2007
Skills
- Strategic planning
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Operations management
- Cross-functional team coordination
- Data-driven decision making
- Documentation and reporting
- Data analytics
Accomplishments
Recipient of BMO's Annual Best of the Best in 2017 and 2021
Timeline
Senior Manager, Channels Distribution
BMO Bank of Montreal
06.2022 - Current
Manager, Channel Strategy and Network Investments for Personal & Commercial Physical Channels
Bank of Montreal, Personal & Commercial Physical Channels
01.2016 - 06.2022
Manager, Channel Strategy & Network Planning
Royal Bank of Canada, Channel Strategy & Network Planning
01.2011 - 01.2016
Senior Business Mapping Analyst
Mobilicity, Marketing and Sales Division
01.2009 - 01.2011
GIS Business Analyst and Professional Management Program Team Lead
Bell Mobility, Market Analysis and Intelligence
01.2007 - 01.2009
Credit Services Representative
Canadian Tire Bank
01.2003 - 01.2007
Honours BA - Human Geography
Brock University
Post-Graduate Diploma - Geographic Information Systems
Niagara College
Masters - Spatial Analysis
Ryerson University
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