Introduction:

This case study outlines our support for a leading UK financial services provider client in reducing the cost of its overlapping business and IT change delivery functions

Leveraging benchmarking data from several different industry sources, our analysis and parallel third-party savings program provided the client with a range of options and offsets to achieve their goals depending on how aggressively they wished to restructure their functions

As well as highlighting the nature of our support, this case study shows the value we can add in developing and challenging the practicalities of proposals generally

The Client's Challenge:

The client was progressing with an ambitious target state design and associated cost-reduction of its IT function with a leading IT consultancy. This was at a time of also adjusting to several parallel consolidation and outsourcing initiatives occurring at group and business unit level

Their challenge was finding a way to reduce duplicated change spend in both their business and IT teams in a way that would not be detrimental to their complex change agenda

On the one hand, they needed to carefully consider the viability of proposals to restructure teams. On the other, they needed more options and confidence in lower-risk options that would give them an alternative way to deliver the necessary cost savings

Our Approach:

Engaged by their IT consultants to bolster support for their IT target operating model (TOM) design and third-party improvement actions, we were asked to accelerate cost-improvement actions and analysis in particular areas

Our activities included:

• Validating and integrating cross-functional stakeholder requirements

• Supporting the lead consultancy in their IT TOM designs and definitions

• Conducting a functional benchmark, sizing and cost analysis of the change functions

• Performing third-party spend analysis and initiating a ground-up cost reduction initiative

• Challenging and scrutinizing costs for significant in-flight change activities, including data centre consolidation, network service outsourcing and other activities

• Driving the management of the cost reduction actions and tracking associated benefits across the procurement and third-party management teams

• Rapidly reviewing the implications of specific group-level shared services on the unit, recommending improvements to the business unit, CIO, CFO and legal counsel in support of their decision

The Result:

The outcomes were:

• A cost reduction proposal presenting ranges of possible cost reductions to the function, showing rationale and implications for each band to support the client’s consideration of how far it wanted to go

• A granular list of further cost-reduction opportunities from third-party contracts that would allow the client to partially offset that

• A third-party savings improvement process to identify, track and report progress to the CIO and CFO

• Firm recommendations on cost improvement opportunities across several major IT change initiatives

Tags:

#FinancialServices, #SolutionDelivery, #CostReduction, #Benchmarking, #Transformation