Experience. Expertise.

When​ it's time to bring in outside expertise, you want to get just that: expertise. We back up our architecture practice with decades of experience leading architecture teams and complex system initiatives at companies like Apple, IBM, Liberty Mutual, PayPal, and Capital One (to name a few) Hablutzel Consulting was founded by Bob Hablutzel, a seasoned architecture leader who has managed to stay close to technology while taking more and more strategic roles in companies. Bob started his professional career at Apple, where he quickly took the lead consulting position for a 17 state region. In that role, he had the unique challenge of selling Apple custom solutions in the enterprise market, and gained invaluable experience in both the application of technology and in understanding the needs of CxO leadership. From there, Bob transitioned into private practice focusing on custom application development and training. He worked with a variety of companies including Medtronics, Jostens Learning, Quaker Oats, Ameritech, Northwest Airlines, and others. He also took leadership roles in startups including Bowstreet (acquired by IBM) and Web Credit. This period of Bob's life ended when one of his long time clients, Liberty Mutual Group, asked him to come on board to take on their first ever Chief Architect role. In this role Bob dove deeply into the business of technology, consolidating multiple systems into three core platforms and significantly reducing costs and downtime. He left this role due to a family relocation, and joined IBM to lead their financial services enterprise architecture team. In this role Bob helped define the enterprise architecture methodology and insurance business capability mapping, work that earned him the prestigious Chairman's Award for Technical Excellence. In addition to this work, he spend 2 years in IBM Software Group establishing a global consulting practice for key business enablement products. He also participated as the technical expert for multiple "red teams" on troubled projects. His time at IBM led him to an engagement at eBay / PayPal. He quickly recognized the potential of the PayPal business as a standalone entity, and joined the company shortly before the PayPal IPO. At PayPal, he first focused on creating a truly global scale infrastructure platform that seamlessly handled the explosive growth of the company while at the same time eliminating costly and embarrassing outages. Following that, he took on establishing the overall enterprise architecture team across all the lines of business (including PayPal, Braintree, Venmo, Xoom, PayPal Credit, and others), and was responsible for technology integrations and defining the strategic platform architecture.  Tiring of a bicoastal commute, Bob joined Capital One in order to establish their internal architecture practice. He again established an architecture team from scratch, growing his team from 2 architects to 20 individuals spanning enterprise architecture. He took this opportunity to further refine his federated approach to architecture, leaving most of the architect community aligned to product teams while growing central oversight, establishing practice norms and standards, and creating common standards around business capabilities, data architecture, technology platforms, and the overall solution portfolio. Throughout his career, Bob has been focused on cultivating talent and creating teams. His passion for this led him to being deeply involved in the diversity, belonging, and inclusion teams at PayPal and Capital One, and is in part the reason for returning to private practice. Bringing your team to the next level is at the heart of everything we do.