A Roadmap To Digitization For The Financial Sector

FINANCIAL SECTOR

IT STRATEGY

BRIEF

Digitization brings new and complex challenges to almost every industry, including the traditional financial sector. Here are just a few examples: new virtual currencies, digital payment models and loans for which you no longer turn to the bank, but increasingly to the “crowd”. For our customer, the German subsidiary of one of the world’s leading financial institutions, it is essential to keep pace with the trend!

Thanks to its many years of experience with complex IT transformation projects, Mediaan Conclusion was able to help the customer set up an IT roadmap that closely follows the business strategy and leads step by step to future-proof applications and state-of-the-art processes in the areas of sourcing, development and operation.

Essentially, Mediaan Conclusion supported in the following areas:

Creation of an IT strategy based on the corporate strategy
Introduction of first agile working methods (Scrum and DevOps)
Significant modernization and streamlining
Creation of a sourcing strategy and implementation
Process optimization and cost reduction

THE CONCEPT

In response to the changing business environment, our customer has decided to implement a comprehensive IT transformation program. In addition to modernizing the core applications, this program included a significant reduction in the number of applications, a change in the sourcing model and ultimately a change in the process models in development and application operation, away from traditional working methods and towards agile models such as Scrum and DevOps.

CUSTOMER CHALLENGE

The program not only brought about a massive change in the technology used, but also required a strong willingness to overcome long-established and loved habits. It means to keep an open mind for new governance and to develop new cooperation models. In addition to that, it was crucial to build a bridge to close the interface gaps between IT and internal customers. Ultimately, the central challenge was to maintain the balance between technical and methodical innovations. Also making sure to encourage the willingness and ability of the organization to change, while at the same time achieving the expected cost optimizations.

MEDIAAN IN ACTION

The solution proposed by Mediaan Conclusion was initially based on three simple findings.

Structure follows Strategy – The starting point for the transformation plan was the development of an IT strategy derived from the corporate strategy. This strategy included not only the technical architecture, but also the sourcing model, the process modelsin development and operation, and finally the sunset planning for legacy systems.
Every IT project is also a change project– The Organization ChangeManagement (OCM) aspect was closely anchored in the transformation plan. This was expressed in the involvement of the management team (Guiding Coalition of Leader), the consequent stakeholder managementas well as in the execution of OCM workshops.
As much innovation as necessary, not as much as possible! – It was important to bring innovations without ignoring the established structures and maturity of the organization in dealing with agile models.

The implementation was made under strict stakeholder management across all levels of IT and the entire company accompanied.

RESULTS

Lower operating costs as well as future-proof applications and modern processes in the areas of sourcing, development and operation are the central results of the project. Thanks to the agile working methods introduced by us (Scrum and DevOps), the interaction between business and IT has also noticeably improved.

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