At Target State Consulting, we offer Virtual CTO and Business/Enterprise Architecture services that steer your company towards success. Through insightful business evaluations and modeling, we empower you to make strategic technology decisions that accelerate your journey to achieving your goals.
Our specialized areas encompass Business Architecture and Target Operating Model development, Incident Response Planning, RFP Planning and support, as well as Post-Incident or Implementation Reviews.
Unleash the full potential of your business – partner with Target State Consulting to embark on a transformative technology-driven journey.
Meet the Team
Ant McMahon is an experienced technology strategist and the key figure at Target State Consulting. He excels in turning intricate technological challenges into actionable strategic plans and is a well-regarded figure in the industry. Ant is currently a board member for Camp Quality and holds various advisory positions across a range of New Zealand organisations.
What distinguishes Ant is his skill in posing the right questions at the opportune moments, delving into the root cause of issues to ensure that solutions address the core problem rather than just the symptoms. He communicates effectively with all levels of an organisation, from customer-facing employees to board members, in clear, straightforward English, avoiding any sales talk, acronyms, or technical jargon.
Ant's extensive experience in commercial, corporate, and small business sectors makes him a curious and independent thinker who thoroughly explores all options before suggesting a strategic plan. He is committed to supporting the implementation phase, which often includes securing staff commitment, balancing expectations, and managing the disruptions brought by change—elements crucial to the success of IT projects.
Understanding the value of time and resources, Ant focuses on simplifying and clarifying technology. He develops and executes effective policies, processes, and strategies, allowing you to concentrate on achieving goals and delivering superior customer service, with the assurance that your technology is efficiently serving your needs.
Ant enjoys a strong reputation in New Zealand's tech community. He is the host of the popular podcast 'Biz Bytes,' a sought-after public speaker.
Away from work, Ant cherishes time with his family, enjoys being out on the water and walking his dogs.
Associates
01
Another IT strategy mastermind.
James is a mastermind in IT and cyber strategy and has delivered many successful transformations both large and small. With his analytical and strategy-first brain, he will see you staying secure and achieving your goals – however lofty.
James is a seasoned public speaker with an immense depth of experience in cyber security, IT operations and strategic alignment. He also has a great track record in governance and risk.
Having held senior marketing, product management, sales, strategy and chief information officer (CIO) roles, James takes a 360-degree view to solving complex technology problems, rather than adopting a technology centric view.
When he's not addressing boards or poised in front of a whiteboard, you'll find James in the surf, on a bike or supporting his family’s horse-riding activities.
02
Your Data Architect and Business Analyst
For over 15 years, Dirk has helped business leaders in financial services, sales and many more industries, make better decisions by getting to know their data.
Having studied Information Management, and Business and Competitive Intelligence in Germany, he found his sweet spot was making sense of organisational data. He helps businesses make data-driven decisions and maintain a competitive advantage based on a deep understanding of underlying trends.
He also dedicates time to helping New Zealand charities innovate their data management, processes, and reporting. Here he gets to deliver fun things like fundraising and demographic insights and build roadmaps for rolling out dashboards across teams nationwide.
Outside work, depending on the season, you’ll probably find him tramping or snowboarding somewhere elevated – he’s obsessed with mountains and volcanoes. Dirk’s also a musician and has played some wild gigs with some well-known bands.
"One of Ant's strengths is relating to owners in a visionary sense and talking to people who are on the ground...[Ant has a] wide understanding of different systems, processes and applications and can articulate where we're going and what the possibilities are...working with Ant has changed the way we make decisions about IT structures and support systems."
We hired Ant to support us with an important project after he was highly recommended by colleagues. Ant was responsive, speedy, super-helpful and helped us to make key decisions. We appreciated his broad experience, and his ability to hold a high level strategic view alongside expert advice on details. We will definitely be consulting with Ant again and are happy to recommend him.
"We don’t need a full-time CTO [chief technology officer]. Ant knows enough about our business he can deliver it virtually. He can translate things for us. During project management, Ant came into his own... Ant gets his head round your business and [took his time] understanding our context. He was really clear about pausing on investment into the app...Ant's inquisitive, curious and approachable - he's very easy to work with."
"Ant was really quick to understand the business model and our processes and IT structures."
"Ant helped us at the early stages of Aerotruth helping us to plan our technical infrastructure and ensure we built a product that would scale. Ant was great to work with and we really valued his support and contribution to Aerotruth"
"No question has ever been too silly. Ant's been accommodating and helped me understand. I've valued that he understands the charitable sector really well. He can look through the experience that he has with larger organisations and what's the reality for a small and mighty charity where you don't have teams of people that can come in and project manage an IT project"
"Having Anthony was really valuable – to lean in on his skillset – and his connections. He was able to provide impartial advice about the different strengths [of the providers]. It was important that we undertook a good due diligence process. Having Anthony there meant we had impartial selection as well, which is very important to us and [something] other not-for-profits [could benefit from]."
