LoBue: Real Resources: Success Story: Systems Design for Retail Operations

SUCCESS STORY: SYSTEMS DESIGN FOR RETAIL OPERATIONS

CLIENT:	Large Middle Eastern Bank
DIVISION:	Retail Banking, Financial Services Treasury Operations
CONTACT:	Deputy General Manager
MAJOR FUNCTIONS:	Systems design for retail banking and branch operations

SITUATION
One of the larger financial institutions in the Middle East faced significant competitive pressure, changing regulatory bars, deteriorating market share, inefficient processes, and unresponsive legacy systems, resulting in an increase in technology and operations costs and reduced profits. LoBue Associates was asked to assess productivity, service issues, and systems capabilities across retail, treasury operations, and financial accounting divisions, and recommend programs to resolve these issues. As a result of this project, a new retail banking system affecting over 240 branches, core treasury operations functionality, and bank-wide financial reporting was integrated with broad-based upgrades to the core general ledger and accounting applications.

LOBUE RECOMMENDATIONS
This assignment involved the management and oversight of dozens of software, hardware, and telecommunications contractors; multiple users from various lines of business; control and justification of key application customization; quality assurance; conversion and migration methodology; detailed benchmarking; and integrated implementation management.

REAL RESULTS

Managed the review and justification of core operating applications and hardware resulting in the elimination of $4,000,000 in costs and the identification of key performance benchmarks
Coordinated critical deliverables related to the identification, design and testing of the retail branch platform application and core operations functionality, prohibiting additional resource investments in excess of $2,500,000
Managed the financial accounting application business re-design, data integration, and interface enhancements, resulting in savings of over $1,000,000
Designed and developed an integrated project plan including 1200+ milestones, leading to the successful completion of software assurance tests, data conversion requirements, executive critical path awareness, performance benchmarks, and pilot and implementation schedules

The successful implementation of this system positioned the bank to realize a minimum of $7,500,000 million in savings.