Holding Ground Decision Intelligence
Unique Technology Due Diligence and Assessments By Career Practitioners
Holding Ground Decision Intelligence (HGDI) was founded in 2019 by technology career practitioners to provide strategic technology diligence and assessment services for investment companies and medium to large enterprises.
Assessment Focus Areas
Private Equity
- Due Diligence ahead of investment or purchase
- Post-investment (for portfolio companies):
- Validate proposed strategic technology investments
- Root-cause of issues related to delivery and/or quality
- Technology suitability for multi-entity rollup strategies
Enterprise Information Technology
- Viability & validation of strategic technology investments, alignment to Business goals
- Impediments to achieving stated platform transformation objectives
- Risk perspective (security, organization, delivery, digital transformation, vendors)
- Analyze and develop recovery approach for strategic programs that are missing targets
Technology Assessment Scope: Product, digital strategy, architecture, engineering, infrastructure & operations, data, SDLC/governance/process, security & privacy, financials, people & organization.
Product Assessment Scope: Fintech, Insuretech, Regtech, software development or products, technology infrastructure, security, data services, telecommunications.
Assessments Provide Full Technology Lifecycle Perspective
✔️ Completeness of the Technology Strategy and how well it is aligned with the Business Strategy.
✔️ Technology currency and scalability, compared with contemporary implementations.
✔️ State of resource composition, team dynamics, and the organizational operating model.
✔️ Effectiveness and forward-looking approach to Governance and Process, with well-structured feedback loops.
✔️ Areas at risk, and the potential for failure without time or resources to enable corrective actions.
Proprietary Assessment Methodology
HGDI uses an internally developed approach to evaluate People, Process, and Technology (against the Objectives):
For each relevant Technology Area, the following characteristics are examined in detail:
1) Presence of a well-defined Strategy, in conjunction with
2) Designs, Processes & Standards for executing the Strategy, and then
3) Clear evidence of Implementation Effectiveness
Each characteristic is scored with an A-F grade
The result is a highly effective assessment technique to determine:
- Alignment of the Business vision & goals with Technology delivery capabilities and mechanisms
- Technology and Operational maturity
- Viability of the Technical Architecture (agility, modern approach, ability to deliver)
- Susceptibility to competitor disruption
- Risks over time - technology stack, processes, organizational model
Evaulation Coverage
- Technology & Digital Strategy
- Business Model & Product Management
- Technology Architecture
- Software Engineering & Quality Assurance
- Governance, Processes & Methodologies
- Organizational Strategy & Structure
- Security & Risk Management
- Production Support & Operations
- Infrastructure & Enterprise Services
- Strategy Implementation
Engagement Approach
Key Factors Assessment - Short, high-level engagement that includes sanity checks and urgent risk assessments. This is a good way to rapidly understand if a technology platform or business is not set up for success without spending a lot of money and time.
Mid-Level Assessment - This work begins where the Key Factors Assessment stops, giving clients a deeper look at Technology, People, & Process. This is the sum of a more granular effort that shows where there may be gaps or problems that are not immediately obvious
Detailed Deep-Dive - incorporates findings from Key Factors and Mid-Level assessments. Delivering comprehensive discovery and analysis for each defined objective, as well as clearly defined actions to correct or mitigate problems found. All results are delivered in a detailed report with recommendations and a remediation roadmap.
Meet the Team
Managing Partner
David Bauer
HGDI Focus: business / technology strategy alignment, technology risk management, cyber security, infrastructure & operations, organization dynamics, growth & scale.
David has over 35 years of technology experience, with more than 2 decades in C-Level roles. He has held senior positions in strategy, engineering, technology infrastructure & operations, program management, enterprise architecture, and security. David was global CTO and Asia CIO at Asurion. He was a pioneer in information security, and one of the first CISOs and Privacy Officers on Wall Street. David held senior roles at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Merrilly Lynch, Bell Communications Research, and is currently a member of the IANS Faculty. Advisor to Digital Asset, Security Leadership Capital Fund, BYOS, DeepFactor.
Managing Partner
Phil Gilligan
HGDI Focus: business and technology strategy, product management, IT governance & SDLC, organizational design, and QA.
Phil has over 35 years of technology experience and has held numerous senior transformational C-level technology leadership positions within Financial Services including at Deutsche Bank, UBS, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, EBS/ICAP, and Moody’s Investors Service. Phil is highly regarded as a decisive, strategic, and innovative leader with extensive experience executing enterprise-level transformational programs and sourcing new technologies in support of strategic business initiatives. At Holding Ground Decision Intelligence, he specializes in business and technology strategy, product management, IT Governance & SDLC, Organizational design, and QA. Advisor to Digital Asset, ZScaler, Puppet, Modelshop and Fintech Studios.
Senior Advisory Partner
Whit Thiele
HGDI Focus: architecture, software engineering and code review
Whit Thiele is the founder of Bannockburn Developments Ltd. a software consultancy and product development company based in Canada. Whit has worked with a wide variety of legacy and current state of the art technology platforms and systems for the past 20 years. He possesses deep knowledge of enterprise architecture, software engineering, data, cloud, systems integration, transformation, UDM, AI/ML, eCommerce, Mobile, UI/Ux, CI/CD, DevOps, Microservices, XaaS. He has delivered major transformational projects for a diverse slate of clients including FICO, Wyndham, Infor, Comverse, Genband, France Telecom, Wolters Kluwer, Blue Cross, Pernod-Ricard, Vidyo, Cisco and more. At Holding Ground Decision Intelligence, he specializes in architecture, software engineering and code review.
Logistics Manager
Mia Petersen
HGDI Focus: client coordination, setting up interviews and collecting evidence.
Senior executive with 15 years of consulting and program management experience at prominent financial services and IT consulting firms, offering a unique combination of strategy, marketing, and IT expertise. Highly skilled at managing strategic project assessment, removing duplication, and driving cost savings. Managed global teams at Credit Suisse and UBS. Delivered technology market assessments for major clients such as IBM, CGI, Unisys and Citigroup. Specialties: Technology marketing, new market evaluation, competitive intelligence, IT strategy, strategy development process, technology governance, benchmarking and new technology assessment. At Holding Ground Decision Intelligence, she focuses on client coordination, setting up interviews and collecting evidence.