COVID-19 has brought about unprecedented change in customer behavior and market risks, especially for financial institutions. On one hand, the disruption has spurred innovation while on the other it has demonstrated the need for re-assessment or re-prioritization of long-term strategies and digital portfolios, calling for an acceleration in transformation efforts.
Financial institutions must act now to stay relevant and capture opportunities or risk their very survival.
In this article, we take a look at some of the key challenges that financial institutions face during their transformation efforts and suggest 6 easy to implement solutions to these problems.
Key challenges during transformation
As with any collective effort, most of the issues encountered during transformations are internal:
Business buy-in: Transformation programs experience significant issues due to local businesses rejecting what is seen as a ‘corporate template’ and therefore not suitable for their needs.
Loss of control: Local legacy systems, processes, and ways of working result in dilution of the global templates undermining original objectives and benefits.
High costs: 60% of global delivery projects exceed their budgeted costs even at the earliest stages of the project
Delays: Global projects are expected to be delayed by 1/5th or even half of the original estimated time due to unexpected local requirements, poor governance, or a weak design
Solutions to expected transformation challenges
Escaping the mindset of ‘one size fits all’: At Infosys Consulting, we develop regional templates and group countries to use relevant, local, and disparate applications and technologies.
Stakeholder buy-in and establishing benefits: Stakeholder buy-in is gained at the start of the transformation project rather than the approval or sign-off stage, ensuring that they feel invested and involved in the journey. Detailing the business benefits also goes a long way to influence and guide the design of the project and measure its success post-deployment.
Global design agreement: Investing resources in the design phase to engage corporate and local users through an effective business governance model is key. This avoids local deployment conflicts during the rollout phases, keeping everyone aligned.
Automate and accelerate: We implement repeatable deployment playbooks supported by a comprehensive tool kit. This lets us accelerate, automate, and remove the risks involved in the repeatable deployment tasks, saving time. The team can focus on higher-value business readiness activities.
Deliver at pace: Our approach allows rollouts to progress at speed through mechanisms that manage delivery risk, significantly improving the project momentum and maximizing returns.
Tools and accelerators: Our experience during various global engagements across multiple sectors has helped us to develop tools that help in planning multi-country deployments, identifying localization requirements, managing delivery, and governing global templates. To ensure relevant global rollouts we have an alternative approach to “traditional” transformation methods.
Want to learn more and get started your transformation journey? Contact our experts below.
Bhav Patel
Principal, Infosys Consulting
Bhav has 15 years’ experience in capital markets and management consulting and is part of our banking and capital markets team. He has worked across operations and middle office and extensive experience in developing target operating models for organizational change for various financial services clients. He has managed a diverse client portfolio of engagements ranging from regulatory change, full business and technology transformation to managed services. Bhav specializes in advising financial institutions in defining their future strategy and has a keen interest in automation within the sector.
Punit Sawhney
Associate Partner, Infosys Consulting
Punit has over 20 years of management consulting and digital integration experience with sales, delivery and change leadership skills to achieve business outcomes for large and complex enterprises. He is a digital transformation expert and has managed multiple country rollouts, enabling business change initiatives globally. He is a member of the EMEA financial services leadership team and leads a number of portfolios across regions.
