Background – A Strategic Plan for Financial Services
ITDirections was engaged by a Financial Services organization with more than 23,000 clients, managing almost $8 billion in loan and lease assets with over 600 team members. The Client was looking for an overall assessment and plan of their IT situation. ITDirections assisted the Client with fourteen projects over the course of seven years, with the first one being a comprehensive IT Strategic Plan.
The Challenge – Technology not Supporting Business Strategy
After a thorough review of the IT environment as well as the business direction, the planning analysis identified that the IT situation was not aligned with the business situation. The business strategy was one of customer intimacy, with their clients as the key focus and priority of the business strategy. Yet, the IT environment had no business applications in support of the client or to manage the client interface with a single view of the client. IT spending was significantly (5%) below the industry norm with custom-built point-solutions at a low level of maturity with dated technology that was not scalable. There were many manual, non-standard, in-efficient business processes, yet the business plans included aggressive revenue growth, increased complexity and breath of offerings, and acquisitions.
The Solution – Recommendations and Roadmap
Recommendations and a roadmap were developed to mature the IT systems and address the gaps that existed in meeting the business needs and direction. A new foundation of vendor-supplied business applications were recommended with an enterprise-wide integrated architecture. A full-functioning CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool was recommended as the center hub of the future applications environment. A ten-step implementation process was outlined to manage the definition, selection, design, and implementation of the new application environment over a three-year process. Improvements were identified to mature the IT organization and IT processes to grow the organization to the next level. A position was defined and filled to provide additional IT leadership. ITDirections was engaged to assist in various steps of implementing the defined strategy and roadmap.
The Results – Transformed Organization
The Client has transformed their organization from one that was very low on the maturity scale to providing a competitive applications portfolio to handle the business needs as the company grows. They have built on the new core foundation to provide advanced functionality for their clients so they can support their business strategy of customer intimacy with superior customer service and support. The confidence and satisfaction of the business in their IT organization and environment has increased significantly, which was measured in follow-on assessments and planning efforts.
