Financial Plan for Systems Transformation

Operations and Finance managers at a leading investment bank conceived a program to replace legacy systems that had been assembled through a series of mergers but not optimized or upgraded. They needed to present a complete financial proposal that included all costs and specific business benefits. There was no standard financial model for project budgeting.

• Structured and produced multi-year financial plan guidelines and templates.
• Articulated and taught methods for measuring achievement of business value.
• Consulted with 24 Finance and Operations development teams to advance their business cases from white board concepts to verifiable financial commitments.
• Consolidated plans and preparing analytic reports for executive presentations.
• Designed and coordinated planning exercises to guide investment prioritization.

Cost Allocation Improvements

The Capital Markets Operations Division of a multinational investment bank allocated costs to front office businesses. Allocated costs were increasing and the basis for allocation was not fully explained. Businesses were losing confidence that costs were under control.

• Reviewed existing cost allocation methods in detail.
• Defined a process and created a template for Finance staff to document and review allocation methods proposed by operations managers.
• Showed through simulation that eliminating small allocations (75% of total items) would simplify reporting and have minimal impact on the amounts allocated.
• Collaborated with software development and technology infrastructure managers to explain the structure of data center cost allocations, the largest source of costs allocated by Operations to the businesses.
• Reviewed the value and limitations of activity based costing. Recommended the structure for an initial exercise focused on the most cost-sensitive business unit.

Post-Disaster Reconstruction and Insurance Claim

A global consumer finance leader suffered heavy damage at its corporate headquarters during the 9/11 disaster. This client retained a design-build firm to assess damage, manage reconstruction, and provide information that was central to the claim for insurance reimbursement, expected to reach $90 million. But the client was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the content and quality of logistical and financial status reporting.

• Restructured monthly progress reports, reorganized the records of authorized and actual project spending, and created financial reports that met client's expectations.
• Structured and compiled the property damage insurance claim, including an inventory of damage, explanation of reconstruction strategy, and fully detailed itemization of cost.
• Gathered and framed input from architects, engineers, and construction managers; produced analytic research studies; and prevailed against challenges by insurers.
• Helped the client to achieve over 90% of the targeted recovery, a very high percentage.
• At the client’s request, assisted its Technology division to complete an additional insurance claim of similar size that had stalled after 18 months. Developed a project plan, reorganized claim expenses, established reporting database, challenged inadequate input, organized presentation of the finished claim, and defended items contested by insurers. Increased the insurer’s offer to settle this claim by 65%.
• Also helped the client’s Finance staff to refocus, rationalize, and support the claim for business interruption to meet insurers’ acceptance criteria. Full settlement followed.

Trading Floor Merger Integration

A financial conglomerate had acquired an industry leader in fixed income underwriting and trading. The merger implementation plan included reconstruction of a 1,200 seat trading floor, upgrades to the computing and network infrastructure, and integration of legacy systems from both firms. But this $50 million project was disorganized and progress had stalled.

• Enabled an unproven replacement project manager to reorganize and complete the merger.
• Organized and integrated the project plan; compiled the budget; tracked progress against the plan; restructured weekly reporting to the senior oversight committee; wrote all reports presented to this committee; led interactions with senior end-users; wrote end-user training materials; and provided end-user support.
• Accomplished the same results for a similar project to add 600 trading positions to complete a merger with a major money center bank. Merged foreign exchange, derivatives, and emerging markets staff and applications into the expanded environment.
• Assisted technology managers of the combined firm to plan and propose an insourcing of network management services that had been outsourced to the bank’s legacy vendor.
• Evaluated the existing contract, structured and assembled the conversion plan, wrote proposals to senior management, and integrated detailed implementation schedules. The insourcing was technically successful and achieved a $60 million savings goal.

Risk Management Reporting

The credit card division of a leading multinational bank had lost confidence in the technology infrastructure division’s ability to manage and learn from unplanned service interruptions. The global processing executive wanted an independent evaluation of the Problem Management function’s effectiveness.

• Showed how the client’s dissatisfaction stemmed from a post-merger reduction of business-facing relationship management resources without a corresponding strengthening of Problem Management resources and methods.
• Recommended steps for improving the Problem Management function, including restructuring relationships with key stakeholders, clarifying the scope of each systematic report, and improving reporting formats.
• Also documented a high visibility plan to remediate serious risk control gaps (security, change management, and business continuity) in midrange server environments and designed progress reports, all for presentation by Risk Management to Auditors and the Chief Information Officer.
• Also guided a redesign of Risk Management’s consolidated global monthly report to executive management.

Telecommunications Procurement

A multinational bank was planning to consolidate all existing contracts for international communications bandwidth when the responsible procurement officer gave notice. Some requirements were known but the bidding exercise had not been structured in any detail.

• Wrote RFP documents based on input from operating managers.
• Managed all stages of the RFP process.
• Achieved savings of 35% on a $20 million base.
• In parallel, supported another sourcing division by writing their RFP for broadcast fax services required for mortgage origination. Guided vendor selection and negotiation, achieving savings of 20% on $5 million base.