Case Studies

Making Work Flow ~

The Challenge

After a number of false starts, a large Finance Department in a Tier 1 High Street Bank, requested help to understand and reduce significant delays to its month end reporting process.

The Solution

The implementation of a pan-Finance work flow platform linking multiple teams and processes across the month end cycle. Real time dashboards and task traceability providing users with an early identification of issues, blockers and associated owners. Extensive work flow data and metrics providing the information needed to identify persistent blockers and recurring issues (sub-optimal processes, technical limitations, logistical delays) to be taken forward as part of a month end book of work for remediation.

The Benefits

An immediate reduction in the cost of operations and the time taken to complete the month end process as different areas onboarded their end to end processes.

An ongoing reduction in the cost of operations and the time taken to complete the month end process driven by using data driven insights to make positive, continuous and meaningful change.

Implementation of an Operating Model and Work Flow tool to change the operational mindset, to a Change Mindset focussed on making continuous improvements to the month end process across Finance.

Changing the Change Process

The Challenge

The Research Department in a Tier 1 Investment Bank needed help understanding, unravelling and reengineering its change process.

The Solution

The introduction of a collaborative, agile approach to change, based on a new and fully transparent JIRA workflow, bringing the Business & IT teams together to discuss, estimate and prioritise change.

The Benefits

A three fold increase in the number of product backlog tasks delivered.

Business driven decisions and prioritisation for change based on close interaction, visibility of information and knowledge sharing with IT.

A simple solution for a complex problem.

Making Sense of Data

The Challenge

The Business Finance Department in a large High Street Bank was struggling to make sense of large sets of complex data, across all of its Global Businesses, in spite of dedicated data analysts and the use of a powerful IBM BI platform.

The Solution

Two assessments identified two solutions to the data issues at play here.

The first solution, identified as part of the finding of an Operational Assessment, was a rapid undertaking to remove the vertical silos within the existing Operating Model. These were replaced with horizontal silos, promoting end to end knowledge and ownership of the data journey.

The second solution, identified as part of a data assessment, resulted in a recommendation to combine overlapping (and often conflicting) dimensions of data into singular sources of data that could be understood and used across Finance.

The Benefits

An immediate reduction in rules, allocations and adjustments to financial data as stakeholders assumed ownership of and understanding of the end to end journey of financial data, per business area.

A newly empowered and happier workforce, with the ability to manage, analyse, present and make changes to data.

A C-level proposal to work towards an end to end, unified view of data, to remove the industry, costs and delays associated with the existing data model.

Test Express

The Challenge

A High Street Insurer and Asset Manager required assistance to quickly address issues within the end to end testing function of a large scale asset migration programme, posing a significant risk to meeting delivery per the time lines imposed by UK regulators.

The Solution

Rapid design and delivery of a programme wide Testing Operating Model, providing standardised metrics and semi-automated templates that grouped and categorised test cases according to work stream, tranche delivery and artefact.

The Benefits

End to end programme buy in for use of a dedicated and centralised test tool. A unified, consistent and transparent view of all test planning, progress with rapid access to structured, top to bottom test metrics.

Completion of the final piece of the ‘programme plan jigsaw’, using test metrics to determine, drive and manage the detailed programme plan to delivery.