A prominent European bank with global interests and a large presence in emerging markets recognised a serious need to address its eCommerce international transaction banking capability, servicing both Financial Institutions and Corporates.
The Challenges
The client understood the marketplace to be fiercely competitive and due to the significant customer and user-base of its services, there was a need to act fast in order to affirm market share and maintain and grow the customer.
The profile and reputation of this service offering meant a great deal was in the spotlight for the client (internally and externally) making this an extremely sensitive change initiative.
Changing the existing operating model required significant organisational change: business process, technology architecture, cultural change and a buy-in from various contributory panels of expertise and board members.
Extensive due diligence, planning and re-design of the eCommerce front-end had to be engineered in order to deliver a competitive, functionally rich, scalable and customer-oriented solution that would become conducive to future growth for both the client and the customers. In achieving this, the delivered solution had to accommodate future change efficiently so that a dynamic response could be actioned as and when geographical pressures dictated.
The client had limited resources at its disposal to contribute to the analysis, planning, design, build, implementation, testing and rollout of the project. The client also had an ambitious revenue target set against the delivery of the customer solution.
Key Challenges
- High risk and high impact project requiring a cultural change within the organisation
- Complex operational changes required a large level of stakeholder co-operation
- Extensive management and technology consulting had to be performed in limited time
- Large scale rollout across circa 120,000 customers
The Brickendon Solution
- Brickendon Consulting were engaged to deliver a high profile and critically strategic transaction banking solution that would meet the scope remit and go beyond; delivering a flexible platform for future growth and expansion, accommodating internal and external changes
- The services supplied by Brickendon meant that immediate and insightful industry expertise were deployed onsite with a clear articulation of the business and technical environment, along with the competitive services and functionality offered by global peers. This later reinforced the approach to the client’s business strategy, project scope and design planning
- The Brickendon Model had three key stages
The Brickendon Model
A collaborative approach was fostered throughout the project. Key stakeholder groups across the client were proactively included with a highly visible and transparent level of communication. The specialist knowledge of the Brickendon Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) meant that, in record time, a complete design, proof-of-concept and delivery roadmap with critical milestones, risks and concise dependencies were presented and accepted by the client.
Analysis: The Brickendon team methodically identified the revenue uplift opportunity that should be realised upon delivery of the proposed solution, with a view to further strengthening the client’s competitive advantage. A rapid and intensive period of analysis was performed with parallel project planning and design, including gap analysis and competitor analysis.
Design: The detailed level of competitor analysis and assessment of rival services and solutions in the wider market place provided an indicative benchmark for the client to exceed.
Implementation: The new eCommerce solutions were successfully rolled out. Industry standard test processes were implemented, including test environment management and a professional test approach which complied with the internal standards of the client. The choice of delivery model implemented was agile and iterative, capturing subtle nuances early on and throughout the Software Delivery Life Cycle (SDLC), ensuring development budget was optimised and controlled.
Progressive development releases further instilled confidence across the client and amongst a core and diverse set of international customers.
Client Benefits
The benefits of the new eCommerce solution and revised operating model included:
- The client succeeded in meeting all of the planned and desired delivery targets throughout the lifecycle of the project; both services to the customer and revenue generation uplift
- The new front-end and operational solution represented a fresh step forward for the client and a clear message to the market and endorsement to customers that servicing the customer and offering the very best of breed is paramount
- The client is now better equipped to identify and monitor future customer flow and use this information intelligently to build better customer activity profiles, allowing greater tactical planning and future Management Information System (MIS) strategy