Effective and efficient knowledge transfer was of the utmost importance to this financial sector stalwart
Our client is one of the world’s leading providers of financial services, with over US$20 trillion in assets under its custody. Following a strategic decision to outsource its IT infrastructure support, the bank’s US-based Project Management Office (PMO) sought a presence in APAC and EMEA.
To ensure appropriate governance, effective controls and project management needed to be applied to transition activities across the globe. Operating in 29 countries and with over 27,000 staff, the magnitude of the challenge ahead was vast, and the stakes were as high as they could be.
Balancing contractual obligations and risk with a brand-new IT strategy
Given the company’s significant international presence, it was vital that the bank not face unacceptable risk. Two main factors of this transition were of consideration: staff redundancies and the ‘big bang’ nature of the project, i.e., it was not carried out in stages. For both, effective knowledge transfer to the new global vendor’s IT teams was vital. What was equally vital was the sufficient validation that this vendor could provide the services required of it.
Engaged to act as conduit between bank and vendor, PTS owned the APAC and EMEA arms of the project
Working with project managers in Sydney and Hong Kong (for APAC) and the London and Luxembourg (for EMEA) PTS interfaced between the bank’s IT team and the global outsourcing vendor’s team. Our key responsibilities were varied and highly demanding. These responsibilities included:
- Tracking vendor staff onboarding and alleviating bottlenecks by prioritising and expediting the processing of background checks and assignment of entitlements (permissions) to align with programme dependencies
- Reporting on the progress of knowledge transfer (‘shadowing’ and ‘reserve-shadowing’ activities) to meet critical programme milestones
- Providing independent daily scrutiny of the progress and quality of the vendor’s transition teams across APAC
- Highlighting deficiencies, recommending improvements, and holding the vendor to account to ensure obligations were delivered on-time and to the required scope and quality
- Bridging gaps with our own team where possible where the vendor was unable to fulfil its obligations
Successfully transitioning 25 technology towers and sub-towers for 8 APAC countries
Utilising experienced PTS resources based out of Australia, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg, we augmented the existing capabilities of the US-based PMO to ensure that the APAC and EMEA regions received the necessary level of focus to guide the programme to a successful conclusion.
