Impact Study: Commercial Payments Business Technology Strategy

When the President of the Commercial business published her new strategy and supporting pillars, this Global CIO needed a response on how her technology organization would enable them.

Client: Fortune 50 Global Financial Services Institution
Industry: Financial Services
Sponsor: Global CIO
Locale: Global (130 Markets)

The Challenge

The commercial LOB had just published a revised 15 business priorities for the coming 3 years across its payments, lending, and financing businesses. Now the Technology group needed to respond with a strategy of its own, its first in its 100+ year history.

The CIO sought a trusted advisor to craft a strategic multi-year technology plan that would realize the business priorities, as well as provide an objective view of where the organization was starting from.

Engagement Description

The CIO wanted more than just another IT Strategy. We worked collaboratively with her teams to unravel the Gordian Knot that was the commercial technology ecosystem and craft an elegant, yet actionable vision and plan. Our work began with an objective assessment of the current technology landscape, followed by a priority-by-priority strategy, and a set of pragmatic initiatives to enable them. Additionally, these initiatives were guided by a set of overarching aspirations and strategic pillars for the technology organization.

Outcomes Delivered

A strategy that both leadership and staff believed in.

Rather than design a strategy in isolation, our team engaged all platform owners, architects, and stakeholders across global technology to work in a collaborative fashion. In the end when the CIO asked her team “can we do this?” her team confidently said yes… because they had helped craft the strategy.

A pragmatic plan of action.
With 15 business priorities to address, the Technology Strategy was not shy about conveying where more energy and resources would be spent vs. where progress would need to be opportunistic. The message of “we can’t do everything at once” was well received, and it helped adjust business prioritization in the following planning cycle.

A valuable snapshot of the current state.
Given the diversity of the commercial technology landscape, producing a snapshot of current capabilities provided not only a valuable reference to the CIO and her team, but also a baseline for how they could measure progress.

A vision for future commercial technology.
Going beyond the near-term priorities, we crafted a new vision for what commercial technology could mean for the company’s buyers, suppliers, and cardholders.