Coeus Consulting helps specialist bank streamline digital processes
Advisors from Coeus Consulting have played a key role in a digital transformation, which has delivered a cash positive business in just 20 months. The work with a national specialist bank saw the firm’s professionals map out business capabilities needed to succeed, and highlight where the business could deliver improvements most quickly.
Coeus Consulting, a Wavestone company, is an IT advisory firm that empowers technology, business and procurement leaders to deliver strategic change. The firm has been recognised by numerous awards bodies, including the being named Highly Commended in the Technology Transformation category of the 2022 MCA Awards, for its work with Shell Energy.
The consultancy supports clients across multiple sectors, from helping financial institutions fulfil sourcing assessments, to assisting life sciences groups overhaul their service models. Recently, another similar project saw Coeus deployed for a specialist bank.
While digital transformation may seem common sense; delivering new ways of thinking and a viable approach to transformation requires a thorough understanding of an organisation and its culture. Unacceptable risk and excess cost of support and change had always hampered the organisation’s ability to deliver digital services to employees and customers. Underestimating this means that, according to research conducted by EY and the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, while 85% of senior leaders have been involved in two or more major transformations, almost 70% are unsuccessful.
When it comes to financial sector transformations in particular, Coeus believes too few organisations understand how the individual nature of financial businesses relates to digital changes. Too often, the client business is simply not as well understood by suppliers as the technical innovations they offer. Pre-determined solutions forced to fit a poorly defined problem… often mean the journey from legacy to digital can be needlessly painful and expensive. With no arbiter to ensure fair play, vested interests drive sales agenda and offer nothing in the way of objectivity or independence.
In this case, the bank, which is a national player, had many sites with significant process and systems duplication, complexity, and technical debt in its core consumer credit division and systems. This was in part as a result of a federated approach to IT across the group over many years. Coeus’ task was to identify the real problems and then prioritise the implementation of solutions. Years of no cohesive technology strategy, clearly articulated target systems architecture, and a piece-meal approach to delivery had left many up and down the organisation scarred and reluctant to grasp the nettle.
Making a difference
Identifying the many processes which were contradictory, or no longer fit for purpose, and tackling them within the context of digital transformation became essential to Coeus’ work – and to delivering real enhancements to the client’s Target Operating Model. In the end, the consultants delivered a clear definition of the end state, clearly defined requirements, a business case, and effective planning and prioritisation to deliver the boardroom vision.
Throughout the project, Coeus mapped the business capabilities needed to unify product lines and to propose an architecture roadmap that would allow sensible phasing of digital transformations. The firm’s capability assessment highlighted the areas where most improvement could be delivered most quickly and where it was business critical to employ solutions sooner rather than later.
In terms of the digital transformation, core customer journeys for the various business channels were reviewed and we produced target IT architectures for them which were accompanied by an investment and benefits plan in both IT and business units. This translated in key gains for the client – with Coeus’ experience, expertise and talents helping the specialist bank to deliver the initial £10 million transformation the business required, and ensure the business was cash positive in 20 months, ultimately putting it on target to deliver circa £49 million over the coming 3-5 years.
Commenting on the project, Rob Walker, a Director at Coeus Consulting, said, “This is a great example of Coeus successfully guiding the client in simplifying the technology landscape, ensuring they were able to improve processes and reduce costs substantially.”
