The bank needed to find a way to stop the bleeding.
Client: Multi-National Bank
Category: Strategy, Transformation, Quality, Infrastructure, Vendor, Knowledge Transfer, Program Management
This multi-year transformation program was initiated by the board of the bank and triggered because too many customer-facing systems were consistently failing. ETHITEQUE was called in understand why system outages were occurring nearly 100 times per month across a vast array of business operations, from their ATMs to their mortgage systems to personal banking, etc.
Very quickly, we realized that this was not a technology issue but a “people and process” issue that stretched across both Business and Technology practices, impacting their infrastructure vendor. ETHITEQUE defined the Enterprise Quality Improvement strategy and managed the execution of the plan.
The drive to improve the situation was led from the executive team but ETHITEQUE’s transformation strategy was to involve a working group middle management to feed into the strategy and drive the change. ETHITEQUE’s rationale to engage middle management was three-fold:
- During interviews leading into the development of the strategy, it became clear that many people in middle-management understood what the bank needed to do but did not have the authority to make the changes, themselves, and
- Engaging middle-management in a well-functioning working group kept ETHITEQUE informed of “on-the-ground” situations as they arose and so transformation plans could be adjusted to keep ahead of potential problems
- With the support of middle-management, there was a better chance that the transformational changes would “stick”
It was agreed that if we could reduce the monthly outages to 10 or fewer by the end of Year 3, our program would be a success.
Reduced outages by 87% within 2 years (1 year ahead of schedule)
Standardized quality management practices across business lines
Consolidated system change management / risk evaluation process at executive level
Strengthened capabilities of test environments and testing tools
Aligned hardware, software, and consulting vendors to bank’s new processes
It was agreed that if we could reduce the monthly outages to 10 or fewer by the end of Year 3, our program would be a success. We reached our target 1 year ahead of schedule!
By Year 2, our monthly outages came in at 9. This represented an 87% decrease in the number of outages per month since the outset of the program. This, and the fact that the enterprise-wise change processes that we had defined and implemented were still in effect over 10 years after the program had formally finished was evidence of the effectiveness of our people, process and technology change strategy.