Overview
A complete overhaul of the IT systems for the finance, risk, and regulation functions of a major British high street bank was essential if it was to meet its goals of vastly improving service levels and reliability, while significantly reducing costs.
Meeting these tough targets, as well as delivering a series of key regulatory compliance programmes, was the challenge facing one of Novo Altum’s consultants acting as CIO for the bank’s finance and risk division.
Leading only a small team of people on a huge project, he was able to reduce IT costs, while increasing service availability to 95%, in addition to delivering the regulatory compliance systems on time and on budget.
The Challenge
Years of underinvestment in IT support for finance, risk, and regulation meant that service levels were poor, programme delivery unreliable and costs of IT ownership too high – all of which was causing significant dissatisfaction among stakeholders.
Seconded to the bank, it was clear to Novo Altum’s consultant that major system upgrades would be required to dramatically enhance the bank’s IT capabilities to improve support for these business areas. At the same time, a series of compliance programmes would need to be developed to meet the stringent requirements of international accounting and governance regulations.
The Solution
Novo Altum’s consultant could see that the key to a successful outcome lay in improving engagement between the finance, risk and regulation business areas and the IT function so that their requirements were clearly understood by all.
Having created an atmosphere of close collaboration, he was able to put governance procedures in place to steer IT investment and implement a service improvement strategy, defining a systems architecture that would deliver specific, defined capabilities. It was also important to establish a recruitment and training mechanism which would deliver sustainable change and continuous improvement.
Results
By stabilising the IT systems for the bank’s finance and risk functions, our consultant was able to achieve significant service level improvements, meeting the agreed KPI of 95% system operating availability.
At the same time, the capability to deliver and manage an IT investment portfolio was put in place, and cost reduction targets were met. Further, all the required regulatory compliance programmes were implemented on time and on budget.
