Implementation of New Business Area – Facilitating the Initial Steps
Today, we often see large companies in the financial sector moving into new business areas like clearing of new financial products or managing pension products for customers. There can be several reasons for this move, but in many cases the company needs to get at quick and relative thorough picture of their options on how to support this new area from a business, compliance, operational and IT point of view.
By Michael Bønnerup, Manager & Christina Wibe Petersen, Junior Consultant I 9th April 2018
Triangular Scoping Process
Now, if we only look at the operational and technical demand for support there are several ways to proceed and secure coverage.
In some cases, rearranging operation-specialists within the company or developing new IT is required.
In other cases, outsourcing is the way to go and thereby the focus should be on collaboration with potential business partners or vendors.
The question is “how” or more importantly “when” to take the decision on how to move forward when both customer satisfaction and time-to-market are crucial for success.
Figure 1 – Methods for ensuring business decision.
We believe that a quick (10-12 days) triangular scoping process can facilitate the decision and increase the company’s chances for a successful implementation by concentrating on the following three areas:
- Potential options in the market
- Operational requirements
- Required IT infrastructure
Further, we also believe that this process will empower the company in future decision-making processes as the internal awareness in relation to own capabilities increases.
1. Scoping the Potential Options in the Market
Considering Business Partners or Vendors
The first thing you should ask yourself as a company is, if there are any potential business partners or vendors that operate or support the area that you are moving into.
If that is the case, such opportunities should be investigated. This investigation can be conducted very fast. However, it is important that the investigation and the associated evaluation are done based on a structured basis.
Possible business partners and vendors should be evaluated on the same parameters ensuring a viable decision base. Parameters like complexity of implementation, future operational burden on the company, customer satisfaction, scalability and cost can be used in the evaluation.
When the evaluation is complete, the different ratings on parameters can be incorporated in a matrix which enables a better overview.
Figure 2 – Comparison matrix of 5 possible solutions rated on different parameters. The solutions could for example be a specific vendor, business partner, outsourcing, an in-house solution etc.
2. Scoping the Operational Requirement
While scoping the potential options in the market, it is equally important that an effort is made in understanding the operational requirements and the potential burden these requirements can introduce.
Some of these requirements can be handled on a more manual level, while others must be handled by IT to ensure scalability and minimize risk.
Time-to-market and the required expertise
There are several ways to acquire the knowledge needed but if time-to-market is key, then the right experience within the domain is essential, i.e. instead of doing the required research from scratch, it is advised to look for the right expertise outside of the organization.
By involving external specialists within a well-framed area, focusing on key-events and validations of these events in the business area, the required high-level overview is achievable within days and not weeks.
3. Scoping the required/possible IT infrastructure
Mapping the infrastructure and flows
As mentioned, the operational requirements go hand-in-hand with the IT infrastructure to ensure scalability and minimize operational risk. Therefore, alongside building the required understanding for operational events and the belonging validations, we suggest that a high-level map of infrastructure and flows is drawn up.
Figure 3 – Example of a simple flow diagram.
This is helpful for two reasons:
First, a simple map showing steps and potential dependencies facilitates a better understanding between stakeholders.
Second, it is a lot easier to identify gaps in the flow of data and information downstream. In addition, a high-level diagram can be useful as a foundation that facilitates a description of each identified step.
Ensuring the Overview and Moving Forward
At the end of the day, this approach (triangulation of information) will ensure a high-level overview of not only external and internal possibilities, but also the required actions necessary from an operational point of view, for ensuring a future scalable business area i.e. this approach will facilitate the required business decisions for moving forward.
