Deposits Program Partnership

CG helps bank speed delivery of core banking initiatives to support market share growth

Challenge: Too many strategic initiatives and no clear delivery path

The strategic technology services group of this Fortune 10 bank faced an aggressive agenda of business-sensitive projects, but lacked the internal program and project management expertise, controls, and delivery scale to meet its goals. After years of acquiring other banks, the client’s technology processes and systems were disjointed, intergroup communications were lacking, accountability – particularly with outside vendors – was low, and costs were high. The projects on the group’s plate were crucial to maintaining and growing the bank’s market share, and delivery delays would jeopardize the bank’s hard-fought pursuit of leadership in the markets they served. The client needed help managing its workload, organizing and augmenting resources, and sticking to its deadlines – and it needed help fast. 

The CG Solution: Rapid response meets proven management strategies

The client turned to CG to help gain control of its strategic project workload because of its proven program and project management leadership, experienced consulting team, and knowledge of the client’s business and technology infrastructure. 

CG jumped in immediately, working with the client to assess, organize, and consolidate a multitude of projects – representing more than a million man hours of work each year – that spanned new product/service development, system conversions, and critical maintenance. CG quickly established a system for on-boarding and assigning technical resources in order to get and keep projects on track and improve productivity. CG consultants took responsibility for the architecture, design, and analysis portion of many of these projects, enabling 70% of the development function to be sent to offshore partners, and saving the client time, money, and key resources. 

         From crisis to control: What began as something of a triage operation has evolved into
         an integrated and highly efficient program office that CG manages and continues to
         evolve for the client. Specifically, the CG team:

• Plays a key role in planning and design, budgeting, estimating work efforts, and identifying, assigning, and balancing project resources.
• Has established dashboards that provide complete visibility into projects, allowing client managers to track project status, team performance, and predicted vs. actual work accomplishments.
• Has expanded its role beyond the initial core projects to include end-to-end M&A conversions and the planning and delivery of regulatory compliance solutions and emerging mobile applications.
• Plans, manages, and executes projects to accommodate existing, new, and anticipated government regulations.  

Results: A highly productive and cost-effective partnership

The bank’s technology strategic services group was able to exceed all KPIs and meet demanding delivery deadlines for business-critical projects. Working with CG, the bank has been able to bring products to market faster, increase organizational productivity and system flexibility, and reduce total cost of ownership by more than 20%.

        Success Metrics

• Saved nearly $600,000 annually from increased productivity and better management of projects and resources.
• Delivered valuable savings of time and money – including an initial 1,000-plus man hours and $100,000 in resource build-up costs – resulting from CG’s fast and effective on-boarding program.
• Met goal of sending 70% of development work offshore, delivering significant savings, as well as time and scale advantages from a 24x5 development environment.
• Established forecasting capabilities that provide new levels of predictability, consistency, and stability – of budgets, resources, and results – for the delivery environment.
• Created shared accountability, guaranteed group productivity, and improved quality and communications.
• Improved system implementation quality, including several releases with zero defects.
• Increased system flexibility derived from CG’s design and architecture work.