Digital Advisory

Mark Reed · Fractional CTO, CIO and Head of AI

Technology that earns its place in the plan.

I work with CEOs and COOs of mid-market companies as their technology and AI leader, a few days a week. I sit on your leadership team, I'm accountable to you, and I stay for as long as it's useful.

Thirty years, three continents, from Sydney trading floors to Bath start-ups. My job, mostly, is translating between the board and the engineers.

Email me See my work

Mark Reed

Where I help

Selected outcomes

If any of this sounds familiar, email me. I read and answer every message myself.

Email me

How I work

Start small.

A short diagnostic, usually two to three weeks. I talk to your people, read the numbers and look at the systems. You get a plain-English view of what's working, what isn't and what I'd do first. If that's all you need, we stop there.

Then a few days a week.

Typically one to three days a week, on monthly rolling terms. I'm part of your leadership team, not a consultant at a distance.

The first 90 days.

  1. Day 30 I've listened, diagnosed and told you what I found.
  2. Day 60 We've agreed the plan and the few things that matter most.
  3. Day 90 The first results have shipped, and the team can see how the rest gets done.

Independent.

No vendor deals, no commissions, no reselling. My only interest is your outcome.

What I don't do.

I don't write your production code, run code reviews or hand you a sixty-page deck. I'm most useful at a whiteboard with your team.

Built to leave.

The aim is a team and an operating model that don't need me. When that's true, I go.

Thinking about it? A short email is enough to start.

Email me

Things I believe

  1. Buy if you can, build if you can't. Most companies should build only what makes them different.
  2. AI adoption is change management. It works when people pull it in because it helps them, not when it's pushed at them.
  3. Governance in the right amount, at the right time. Enough to protect customers and the business, never so much that nothing moves.
  4. Change usually stalls in the middle. At Commonwealth Bank I learned that investing in the people closest to the work gets things moving again; the rest of the organisation follows once it sees results.
  5. Most teams are better than their processes. Fix the system and good people do the rest.
  6. Someone has to translate. Boards and engineers want the same things more often than they realise. I've spent my career explaining each to the other.

Background

I trained as an engineer at the University of Bristol, wrote software, then joined PwC in 1997 as the firm's 'internet guy'. In 2001 I moved to Sydney and spent nearly ten years at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, finishing as CIO for Institutional Banking and Markets, with a spell in Edinburgh along the way.

Back in the UK I ran IT change at Nationwide and Lloyds Banking Group, then co-founded MyLife Digital in Bath, a consent and privacy software company. Since then I've been CTO at Clausematch, a RegTech business, Group CTO at Swoop and Condor Ventures in adventure travel, and CTO at Zapmap, the UK's EV-charging map, with advisory work through Digital Advisory in between.

I'm Canadian, British and Australian, and I live in Bath.

  1. 2026 Zapmap CTO
  2. 2024–2026 Swoop and Condor Ventures Group CTO
  3. 2021–2023 Clausematch CTO
  4. 2019 onwards Digital Advisory Consulting and fractional CTO
  5. 2015–2019 MyLife Digital Co-founder and CTO
  6. 2012–2015 Lloyds Banking Group CIO Markets; Technology Change Director
  7. 2011–2012 Nationwide Building Society Chief of Staff, IT
  8. 2001–2010 Commonwealth Bank of Australia CIO, Institutional Banking and Markets
  9. 1997–2001 PwC Principal Internet Consultant
  10. University of Bristol BEng Computer Systems Engineering

Things I build

I still build software. Designing and shipping my own apps for iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac keeps my judgement current: I know what AI-assisted development can and can't do because I use it every week.

Tell me what's going on.

A few lines is enough. I'll reply myself.

LinkedIn

I'm based in Bath and work across the UK, in person when it helps.