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A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By Temenos Preparing Banking Platform Transformation Neglecting Planning, Governance, and Training Is A Recipe for Disaster April 2012

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Page 1: Preparing retail banking system

A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By Temenos

Preparing Banking Platform Transformation Neglecting Planning, Governance, and Training Is A Recipe for Disaster

April 2012

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Table Of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Do You Know Core Banking And Banking Platforms? ................................................................................................................... 3

Business Needs Are The Key Motivator For Banking Platform Transformation ....................................................................... 3

Banking Platform Transformation Is A Journey That Needs Safe Navigation ............................................................................ 8

Most Banks Gained Significant Benefits From Third-Party Support .......................................................................................... 11

Key Recommendations ......................................................................................................................................................................... 15

Appendix A: Methodology................................................................................................................................................................... 16

Appendix B: Supplemental Material .................................................................................................................................................. 16

© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com. [1-JO13WU]

About Forrester Consulting Forrester Consulting provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders succeed in their organizations. Ranging in scope from a short strategy session to custom projects, Forrester’s Consulting services connect you directly with research analysts who apply expert insight to your specific business challenges. For more information, visit www.forrester.com/consulting.

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Banks are looking to better

support their business plans

– not to play with fancy

technologies.

Executive Summary

Today’s banking platforms and related core banking systems often have evolved over years, if not decades.

Many banks have found that their banking platforms can no longer cope with regulatory requirements and their own business needs. Consequently, these banks find themselves forced to emerge on a journey to transform their business applications landscape — and often the very manner in which they do business.

While some banks are fortunate enough to have internal experts available with rich, deep, expertise in how to prepare and run an initiative to transform a banking platform or an entire bank, most do not have such a foundation to build upon. This report reveals how banks in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America have successfully prepared banking platform transformations and the benefits the new banking platforms provided.

Forrester conducted in-depth interviews with 15 executives in managerial, directorial, and C-level positions at banks that have already finalized their banking platform transformation or are very close to finishing the project and identified a few crucial ingredients for transformation success.

Key Findings Forrester’s study yielded three key findings:

• Business reasons are the key motivator for most banking platform projects. The lack of IT capabilities, such as insufficient data recovery capabilities or aged core banking technology, plays a key role in driving banks to begin banking platform renewal projects. But business motivators — such as supporting a new business strategy or gaining a single view of the bank’s financial status — are the primary drivers of such projects. Mere replacement of core banking capabilities is rare. Often, both IT and “replacement” drivers are directly linked to business motivators.

• Major risk factors focus on aspects internal to the bank. A few risk factors, like the technology risk that comes with each new solution, are outside of the direct control of a bank and its transformation team. But most of the identified risk factors — the lack of a clear set of business objectives, poor governance, unavailability of the right skills, and weak communication — are internal to the bank.

• Successful transformation initiatives do not shy away from thorough planning and preparation. All of the executives interviewed led successful projects; many of the projects were very successful. Common elements of these projects include a strong focus on communication to the business; the education of key executives; the collection and rationalization of business requirements; governance; and the training of bank staff.

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Do You Know Core Banking And Banking Platforms?

Decades ago, banks started to use core banking systems to support, for example, passbooks, interest calculations on deposits and loans, customer records, and withdrawals. Many of those early core banking systems were homegrown; some of these early systems are still operational even today. Other core banking systems were off-the-shelf solutions. However, they have been customized, extended, modified, and patched so many times over the years that they are anything but off-the-shelf today. These changes not only created maintenance and upgrade risks and eventually cost increases, but also challenges when it comes to the term “core banking” itself: The number of definitions of “core banking” is likely higher than the combined number of banks and vendors. To combat this, Forrester has introduced the following two definitions:

• Core banking has a comparably narrow definition. Core banking is “an (important) subset of a banking platform that includes deposits, credit, loans, product configurators, and related basic client data.”

• Banking platforms include many more business applications. Banking platforms are a comprehensive, but basically modular and preintegrated, set of banking applications designed to cover traditional areas like retail and corporate banking. This software enables collaboration between different modules (and thus also between the distinct business divisions) and covers many, if not all, of the functional requirements of today’s banks.

Business requirements that the old banking platforms had never been designed to cope with have compelled banks to implement an increasing number of functional and architectural patches that made maintenance complex and costly. In some cases, banking platforms became virtually impossible to maintain. This is one of the reasons why Forrester compares these banking platforms to baroque castles, which were originally built centuries ago and have been heavily modified over hundreds of years. To extend the metaphor, imagine that the current owner is planning to install a central heating system without detailed knowledge of all the historical changes to the building — or even lacking a blueprint of the building’s current layout. This would be significantly more costly, take longer, and be less effective than doing so in a modern building — and a modern building is likely to come with central heating as standard.

In such an environment, it does not come as a huge surprise that many financial services firms discuss the need to transform their banking platform. Some banks may prefer the term “banking transformation” to “banking platform transformation,” as the change typically comes with IT and business components. However, this report focuses on planning and preparing banking platform transformation.

Business Needs Are The Key Motivator For Banking Platform Transformation

The shape of today’s banking industry is massively influenced by a highly challenging and fast changing environment: Mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, and divestments are constantly creating new business scenarios. In parallel, banks need to increase revenues, create new products, reduce time-to-market/time-to-money, get ready for the industrialization of banking, serve more and more demanding customers, and cope with an expanding array of — in some cases multinational — regulatory requirements while also managing costs. European and North American banks identified related issues as top drivers for the transformation of their existing banking platforms (see Figure 1). The 15 executives that we interviewed at 15 banks in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America talked about very similar motivators for implementing a new banking platform and transforming their application landscape (see Figure 2):

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Figure 1 Today’s Banking Platforms Need To Support Top Business Drivers

Source: Q3 2010 Global Financial Services Architecture Online Survey

• Business reasons are the major key motivator for banking platform transformation. Ten out of the 15 interviewees cited business reasons as one of the main drivers of their transformation project. Typical reasons included a change in bank strategy, a single view of the financial status of the bank, and more efficient support of business processes.

“Create products and services to be first in the market to drive new functionality and new revenue.” (CIO, North American bank)

“The previous system was not able to deliver on new business requirements in any sensible cost range.” (Director of enterprise architecture, major European bank)

“Standardization of business processes, faster time-to-market for branches and products, and streamlining of reporting from international branches to the bank’s HQ were key business needs.”(Deputy IT director, European bank)

“Business executives had identified the mandatory need for a harmonized multicountry operational model, more flexible and faster product definition, and a single view of the customer”. (Head of core banking transformation, major Asian bank)

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Figure 2 Interviewees’ Objectives And Expectations Can Be Clustered Into Five Groups

Base: 15 executives from banks in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America

(multiple responses accepted)

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester on behalf of Temenos, March 2012

• A lack of IT capabilities and core banking itself are also key motivators, albeit with a gap. Eight executives named IT challenges as a further strong motivator; examples ranged from complexity and cost to scalability and reliability. Four executives also told Forrester that their drivers for transformation included addressing a particular area of core banking. In particular, those who positioned core banking as the sole driver focused strongly on replacing their existing solution because it was outdated or too risky to use.

“The shareholders and our board were very concerned about disaster recovery and needed to mitigate risk to ensure continuing business.” (Head of IT, North American bank)

“The legacy platform did not scale and was not able to tie together the facilities of dealing with the customer on a holistic scale.” (Regional chief operating officer, European bank)

“We needed the new platform to keep the lights on, as the existing legacy system was not up to the requirements anymore.” (Chief architect of core banking transformation, European bank)

8

5 5

4

3

Business agility Customerexperience

Aged technology Cost efficiency Market shareincrease

“What are your key business objectives and expectations for banking platform transformation?”

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• Business and IT motivators are often two sides of the same coin. For most interviewed executives, business drivers were the key motivator for transformation — but some also recognized that business and nonbusiness drivers can be interrelated and that new business requirements can stress the capabilities of existing IT infrastructure or an existing core banking solution beyond their capability to deliver.

“It depends how you look at it. It was certainly about the business side needing new capabilities, but it was also about the inability of the existing solution to deliver. So it was probably both business and IT.” (Business lead of the transformation initiative, North American bank)

The need for banking platform transformation is even broader than the key motivators and ongoing activities of the 15 interviewed banks indicate. Baroque castles in banking cannot cope with the stream of dynamically changing business requirements that banks have to deal with; this lack of agility threatens many banks’ businesses. Forrester’s most recent Global Financial Services Architecture Online Survey clearly identified the desire of the majority of financial services firms to renew or transform their banking platform (see Figure 3).

Figure 3 The Majority Of Financial Services Firms Have Begun Or Have Plans To Transform Their Application Landscape

Base: 80 IT decision-makers in financial services

(percentages do not total 100 due to rounding)

Source: Q3 2010 Global Financial Services Architecture Online Survey

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More recently, Forrester’s Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2011 revealed that software supporting industry-specific processes is one of the five key application categories driving change in this context (see Figure 4). Conventional wisdom has traditionally guided firms to “buy first, customize second, build third.” Consequently, many IT organizations’ objectives quoted that exact mantra. However, detailed business requirements more often than not cause banks to focus on custom-built software and heavy customization of existing software. Today’s business demands and technology trends make firms modify this approach to support greater flexibility, speed, intelligence, and ease of use. The result: Financial firms have moved slightly away from “build” and are showing a stronger strategic focus on “buy” (see Figure 5).

Figure 4 Five Key Application Categories Are Driving Change

Base: 556 enterprise software decision-makers responsible for packaged applications

(percentages may not total 100 due to rounding)

Source: Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2011

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Figure 5 In-House Development Is No Longer The Major Source Of Functionality

Base: IT decision-makers within financial services organizations

(percentages do not total 100 because of rounding)

Source: Q3 2010 Global Financial Services Architecture Online Survey

Banking Platform Transformation Is A Journey That Needs Safe Navigation

Most business and IT executives are well aware that banking platform transformation is a long journey that involves multiple challenges and risks. Forrester’s research has identified a number of key risks, including purely or mainly IT-driven initiatives, the haste to deliver as quickly as possible, a mismatch between corporate mentality and sourcing decisions, and scope increase. Some may perceive these risks as hypothetical, but they do exist and they are huge. Forrester’s research also points to a number of major projects that have stalled in recent years. The bank executives we interviewed were well aware of these potential challenges and risks in their particular project environments, as well as how to mitigate the risks (see Figure 6):

• Many risk factors are internal to a bank. A few risk factors are outside of a bank’s direct influence. Examples include the technology (and thus the new banking platform) not living up to its promise in terms of performance, reliability, and flexibility. However, most of these risks are related to internal bank factors such as weakly defined or changing requirements, weak governance, weak top management support — and thus insufficient sponsorship — and poor training. Project length varied wildly — from 12 to 60 months, depending on the factors just mentioned as well as bank size, project complexity, and corporate culture. In addition, respondents described a period of informal planning preceding the commencing of the project.

“Leaving out discussions which took place before [within executive management], and only including the discussions with the vendors, the project took about 15 months.” (Deputy IT director, European bank)

“From the time the executive board decided to do the project to implementation, it took about three and a half years. There were five to six years of research beforehand to identify [the banking platform vendor] and [the transformation service provider.]” (CIO, North American bank)

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• The interviewees represent a more than averagely successful group. Our interviews show an above-average number of entirely successful transformation projects — nine out of 15 projects were on time and within budget. However, six interviews showed serious deviations from plan, such as budget increases averaging 75%.

“We needed about 25% more time than expected. However, we perceive the nearly doubled budget as much more serious.” (Head of core banking transformation, major Asian bank)

“Our project ran more than 40% longer and required three times the budget.” (CIO, North American bank)

“There was a lot of internal ‘spinning’ and agreeing on the platform and key decisions. Agreeing on what the user really needs vs. the requirements gathered was troublesome and took time.” (Regional chief operating officer, European bank)

While a few of these six projects showed minor budget overruns in the 10% to 20% range — thus reducing the average significantly — budget increases can be enormous. In parallel, projects were extended by up to 18 months, meaning that they delivered between 25% and 40% of the planned time behind schedule. However, all 15 transformation initiatives in the scope of this report were eventually delivered. So the question is: What made these initiatives so successful? What key steps or measures did the interviewed executives take to mitigate these risks?

• A focus on a few key areas helped to mitigate risk. The projects used dedicated internal transformation teams to plan and prepare the transformation, drive governance, and take care of communication, education, and training. Project leads stressed the need to retain intact teams as far as possible. This included retaining experts for the “old” solutions and business experts for the entire duration and a couple of months beyond. Furthermore, the teams considered continuous education of their top management about status of the project and the impact of requirements decisions, as well as thorough training of their future users, as vital for risk mitigation and the overall success of the initiative. The project teams also leveraged the know-how, skills, and methodologies of third parties such as banking platform vendors, systems integrators, and consulting firms (transformation service providers or TSPs) to support banking platform transformation.

“During the four years of transformation, and for some time after the end of the project, we considered an experienced and stable transformation team to be the guarantor of our success. Fortunately, we succeeded in retaining this team for the time of the project — with the exception of the transformation leads.” (Head of core banking transformation, major Asian bank)

“We would help internal and external people move onto or out of the project. For those involved in the project, we have a bonus structure to ensure we keep those involved for at least six months after the project.” (CIO, North American bank)

“Educational sessions and close discussions with business peers to understand thecontext of detailed business requirements and explain the impact on the project, plus internal training and deselection of consultants.” (Director of enterprise architecture, major European bank)

• Key activities supported risk mitigation and established a firm foundation for transformation. Project teams invested heavily in planning and preparation; all of them worked on this phase for a number of months. One

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bank’s planning and preparation took 12 months; another bank analyzed the market for several years prior to the start of the project. Nine of the 15 interviewees indicated that they are happy with the amount of time spent on planning; those that were not happy would invest more time to achieve a better understanding of their business requirements. Most banks covered typical project planning on their own. This stands in contrast to more transformation-oriented planning (excluding the vendor selection phase and, in some cases, business requirements collection): Here, nearly all banks used external help in form of TSPs or the banking platform vendor itself. This approach provided better insight into banking platform capabilities as well as prebuilt methodologies and templates that supported, for example, business requirements analysis and gap analysis — thus creating a firm basis for transformation governance.

“Maybe we didn’t expect that much planning (10 months), but before the project started, there was one year of talks with [the banking platform vendor], to set expectations.” (Deputy IT director, Asian bank)

“We should have invested way more time in collecting, understanding, and analyzing business requirements — as well as to check with our business peers that what we compiled was what they really wanted. This would have saved us a couple of times and avoided nasty surprises.” (Head of replacement initiative, North American bank)

“We were on the low side of planning time. We might have been faster with more planning, could have avoided a few iterations, and should also have spent more time on discussing business requirements that needed ‘exotic parameterization’ [of the off-the-shelf banking platform]. Changing requirements also wasted some time.” (Director of architecture, European bank).

• Communication, education, and training further increased the chances of success. Most banks worked on three key streams to keep their transformation program on track. They established a program to communicate messages regarding the objectives, goals, next steps, and business value of the initiative to their entire bank. Thus, they tried to ensure that the business was involved. They also focused on educating their top management about the status of the initiative and created awareness about the impact of key new and changed business requirements as well as top executive demands on the project. In addition, most transformation initiatives invested in training of transformation teams and end users — in some cases heavily. Overall, these activities were aimed at inspiring bank employees for transformation, empowering users ahead of the solution’s going live, and enhancing the strength of governance processes by increasing top executives’ understanding and support of banking platform transformation.

“[Our approach to mitigating risk included] educational sessions and close discussion with business peers to understand the context of detailed business requirements and to explain their impact on our project, plus training of internal resources.” (Director of architecture, European bank).

“Our key risks included a somewhat fuzzy scope and growing stakeholder appetite.” (Business lead of transformation initiative, North American bank)

“Governance [processes that were one of our tools to mitigate risk] did not work. We exceeded time and budget.” (Head of core banking transformation, major Asian bank).

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Figure 6 Top Risk Factors For Banking Platform Transformation

Base: 15 executives from banks in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America

(multiple responses accepted)

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester on behalf of Temenos, March 2012

Most Banks Gained Significant Benefits From Third-Party Support

Twelve of the 15 interviewees were able to confirm that the transformation project met the business objectives they had set out. One further interviewee whose project had delivered first functionality for some business units on time and on budget was highly optimistic that his project would continue to deliver as planned. Finally, two executives told Forrester that the transformation initiative had not fully delivered on defined business expectations and objectives.

“Customer experience is still fragmented — but other objectives have been met.” (Head of replacement initiative, North American bank)

“There may be some compromises. Timeline, budget, and scope — not all requirements will fit in this triangle.” (IT director, North American bank)

5

4 4 4 4 4

3 3 3

1

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These examples show that overall the interviewed executives drove transformation initiatives that were successful far beyond the average. All of the 15 interviewees told Forrester that they used support of one or more third parties, such as the banking platform vendor or a TSP. Eleven interviewees said that working with a third party decreased the risk of their transformation initiative, one said the risk remained “unchanged, with a slight imbalance toward decreased risk,” and none of them found that the third parties they worked with increased the risk of their transformation initiative.

“Working with these companies mitigated risk. We had not done this before, [and the third party] showed a clear road map and planning capabilities. It did a pre-study that estimated timelines and work effort — and it worked.” (IT manager, major European bank)

“[The risk] decreased via third parties, although our business team managed to increase the risk and eventually to increase time and money necessary to deliver.” (Head of core banking transformation, major Asian bank).

The interviewees identified several key contributions of third parties like banking platform vendors and TSPs:

• Formal planning with third parties is aimed at validating and adding structure to several project phases. Banks appreciated the robust out-of-the-box capabilities that came with many, but not, all third parties they worked with. Examples include providing mature and robust methodologies and templates; defining and agreeing on project roles and responsibilities; collecting and analyzing business requirements; commencing a gap analysis; delivering cost estimates for implementation and potential extensions and customizations; establishing governance; designing detailed implementation and integration plans; designing quality assurance, cutover, and testing plans; and defining metrics to measure business value and eventually align this transformation road map with business objectives.

“[We started] with a gap analysis, including a cost estimate of extending the system to cover all business requirements.” (Director of enterprise architecture, major European bank)

“Due to the moving target, we used multiple vendors for a more accurate gap analysis. One vendor for our current state, another for the future state, and a third for the gap analysis.” (CIO, North American bank)

“ [We needed] detailed implementation and migration planning (a phased approach), including integration and parameterization.” (Director of enterprise architecture, major European bank)

“The external party [the banking platform vendor] drove the entire project in a way that not only fulfilled our strategic business goals and objectives, but also delivered (in one country) ahead of time.” (Lead of transformation program, Southeast Asian bank)

• Transformation know-how and experience was a key benefit to the transformation projects. Banks recognized knowledge of and experience with the new banking platform as one of the key benefits when working with a third party such as the banking platform vendor or a TSP. However, they also noted that banks need to be cautious and install procedures to control the quality of third-party staff and replace third-party resources if and when necessary. Know-how came in the form of robust capability alignment, project management skills, transformation methodology, and deep technology and business application knowledge. In addition, banks valued third-party know-how when it came to parameterizing off-the-shelf-banking platforms and leveraging out-of-the-box capabilities of a banking platform (e.g., predefined business processes and banking products).

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“We used the skills and the know-how of the solution provider for the detailed planning of the solution as well as a sounding board for our implementation plans.” (Business lead of the initiative, North American bank)

“External specialists helped us in each and every phase by guiding us, helping us to identify the crucial aspects of preparation, and sharing their know-how. They also leveraged the out-of-the-box capabilities of the banking platform: ‘bank-in-a-box.’” (Lead of transformation program, Southeast Asian bank)

“Actually, [the TSP] did not provide that much know-how: While it claims to be a prime partner [of the banking platform vendor], it did not have a fully experienced team in place.” (Director of IT, European bank)

• Training was a further key building block of transformation success. Many, but not all, banks used the banking platform vendor’s capabilities to train some staff using a train-the-trainer approach. One bank did not go that path and insisted that the banking platform vendor would provide direct training for all their employees on the new banking platform. Overall, this emphasis on training is no surprise, considering that the interviewees identified insufficient training and unavailability of sufficiently skilled resources as one of the major risks.

“[We] sent all the potential trainers to [the banking platform vendor’s] office for training.” (Head of transformation project, Asian bank)

“We invested heavily in training; [we ] did not use a train-the-trainer approach.” (Lead of transformation program, Southeast Asian Bank)

• The projects did not use an excessive amount of customization. Ten of the interviewees stated that they had no need — or a manageable need — for customization to meet their requirements. Specific business requirements and integration issues drove the need for customization in other banks above 20%. Some banks attributed this comparably low amount of customization — which is still far away from the customization frenzies in some organizations — to their governance procedures and, in a few cases, to their banking platform vendor and its “will to say no in the face of irregular requirements.”

“We focused on using as much out of the box as possible and went for parameterization and extensions for the rest — avoiding customization.” (Business lead of the transformation, North American bank)

“Integration with the external environment was needed and customer data capture needed extensive changes. Also, workflow elements were not embedded in the solution and had to be added.” (Regional chief operating officer, European bank)

• Demonstrated experience allows third parties to take real ownership of transformation projects. A few of the interviewed banks also leveraged third parties for more than just support. One bank did not consider the skill sets necessary to run a transformation program to be part of its core competencies and thus went for a third party with proven experience in the space. Other banks found that solid partnerships — in particular when it comes to new business functionality — can help them protect the budget and manage the size of their investments.

“The bank decided that its core function was banking, not technology. By choosing [a TSP], we had a single point of contact for all our technology needs and so technology decisions were made and implemented faster.” (Head of transformation initiative, major Indian bank)

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“Initially, we wanted to go without customization. Then, business requirements came up to support mobile and multichannel as opposed to mere Internet portals. This led to serious customization. Fortunately, the vendor took most of the custom build cost.” (Head of transformation initiative, North American bank)

“[The banking platform vendor] had other organizations watching; they invested heavily, as they had a lot of skin in the game and needed to ensure success. The other third parties did not have the same understanding of getting the job done.” (CIO of a North American bank)

However, in spite of the benefits that the executives of 15 banks in Asia, Europe, and North America identified, significant risk is still present due to sheer scale of many transformation projects. Thus, success can rely deeply on the nature of the partnership.

“We learned by doing and prevented the worst. The third parties helped us, but could not prevent us from the impact of rushed selection and preparation.” (Head of replacement initiative, North American bank)

“The third parties helped us to decrease overall risk, although neither [the banking platform vendor] nor [the TSP] were perfect. They are humans, after all. But without them, we would not have been as successful. It was about partnership, not a contractual relationship.” (Director of IT, European bank)

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KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on Forrester’s research background and the interviews carried out in this commissioned study, we recommend that companies preparing a banking platform transformation project follow the steps below to provide a sound foundation for successfully starting and executing banking platform transformation:

• Invest heavily in the planning and preparation phase. Successful transformation projects don’t save time here just to double pay later. Robust and mature approaches are mandatory to defining and agreeing on project roles and responsibilities, collecting and analyzing business requirements, researching and selecting vendors and solutions, commencing a gap analysis, delivering cost estimates for implementation and potential extensions and customizations, designing detailed implementation, integration, and quality assurance plans, establishing governance, defining cutover and test plans, and defining metrics to measure business value and align the transformation road map with business objectives.

• Continuously communicate, educate, and train. Business participation is crucial; purely IT-driven transformation projects are just another recipe for disaster. Communicate what you are doing why to keep your bank’s business and IT employees on board. Keep in touch with your executives to educate them on the impact requirements and decisions have on your transformation initiative and to ensure their sponsorship — to protect the destination of your transformation journey and gain support for the necessary governance procedures. Train your business and IT users more than just sufficiently. Well-trained users are a serious investment; however, they will typically make more effective use of your new banking capabilities and will thus better leverage the investment.

• Realistically assess the readiness of your bank and your transformation team. A transformation initiative needs the right amount of resources with the right skill sets and know-how at the right time and in the right location. Be realistic about existing capabilities. If you feel you don’t have the right staff in place to plan, prepare, govern, and train — and, later on, execute — then look for support. Leverage third parties that can help you with robust and mature methodology and templates and have skilled and experienced personnel that can enable your team to move ahead and get trained on the job and knowledgeable trainers who work with well-defined training programs. Scrutinize potential third-party support for the availability of local resources — where necessary — as well as the willingness to accept project responsibility beyond a merely supportive role.

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Appendix A: Methodology

In this study, Forrester interviewed 15 organizations in Asia, Europe, and North America to learn about the key risks of banking platform transformations, the planning of transformation initiatives, and the role third parties like banking platform vendors played in these projects. Survey participants included decision-makers like CIOs or their relevant direct reports or senior specialists such as the head of the transformation/core banking initiatives, the head of app development and delivery, and enterprise architects. Questions provided to the participants included “Could you describe the context and environment of your banking platform transformation initiative?”, “What were your key business objectives and expectations?”, “Was the product implemented with much customization to meet your specific needs?”, and “What are the five top risk factors that apply to banking platform transformations/implementations?” Respondents were offered access to this final published paper as a thank-you for time spent on the survey. The study began in December 2011 and was completed in March 2012.

Appendix B: Supplemental Material

Related Forrester Research “Best Practices: Off-The-Shelf Banking Platform Transformation,” Forrester Research, Inc., September 22, 2011 “Financial Services Firms Again Seek To Renew Their Application Landscape,” Forrester Research, Inc., November 8, 2010 “European Financial Services Apps Show New Focus And Pace,” Forrester Research, Inc., November 13, 2007