modernising to compete with innovative competitors

in the face of profound innovation, and the concerted encouragement of new entrants, banks need to become increasingly smart to compete. A major uk high street bank recognised this, announcing the creation of a new division with remit to transform the bank. But the question was how do you make it happen?

The IT Change, Business Change and System Operations function needed to modernise, become end to end in its service delivery and accountability, become agile in its development approach, and slim down its cost base in order to support the bank’s need to compete effectively. 

The Challenge

To continually compete, banks of the future must adapt and change with ever-increasing speed. They have the assets and the customer base, but with this comes a legacy of IT which is ever more out of touch with the demands of the new customers whose expectations are set in a digital world.   A new division was established emerging from a fundamental rethink of the overall structure of the Bank. Formed in response to the need for IT to move quickly and more cost effectively, the vision for the new division came with a challenging synergy target, a demanding timetable, a completely new approach and of course, a backlog of development requirements for the business. The concept was at the forefront of new thinking and ways of working, the question was where to begin?

Our Solution

This was wholesale change, affecting over six thousand permanent members of staff, their roles, positions in the organisation and locations of work. It could not be all done at once, but a key change was needed to signal the direction of travel and establish the right management accountabilities into which the logical design of the Division could drop. With the newly formed management team we:

• Built the Operating Model for the Division in line with the new ways of working

• Defined and agreed all senior roles and their new accountabilities

• Created an Organisational Design to accommodate a quick transfer of functions

• Designed and built a transfer tool to oversee the movement of thousands of staff

• Managed and facilitated the change process from design to announcement