Industry Experience: Financial Services Institutions
The financial services industry must adapt to global competition, manage risk at multiple levels, and incorporate compliance control at the operational level. Perhaps most significantly, banking and brokerage services must continuously adapt, making the most of technology while preserving the value of personal interactions with customers.
This need for “hyper-agility” – being able to adapt quickly to stay ahead – means that organizations must be able to assess the impact of an event in the marketplace, adjust strategy to make the most of the opportunity, then execute the strategy using requirements that transcend projects and processes. An organization that cannot reuse or integrate process assets will fall increasingly behind.
DEA has experience providing services capable of addressing the financial services challenge. Some of the projects we’ve participated in:
Business
Area |
Example Solutions |
| Branch Experience Redesign |
- The client needed to change the way it interacts with its customers through its worldwide network of branches. DEA gathered findings based on research and worldwide interviews with existing branch employees, which were presented to upper management. Once prioritized, these became high-level business requirements for subsequent project work.
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| Online Experience Redesign |
- The client needed to completely update its online presence in a way that would encourage its customers to conduct transactions through a lower cost channel. DEA worked with the client to validate stakeholder requirements – helping to separate requirements that realized organizational objectives from “neat ideas”. DEA worked with experts in online design to tailor the user experience around the constraints of systems and customer expectations.
- Getting new customers, having those customers buy as many products as possible, and reducing customer churn is critical. From an online perspective, interactions must be easy and provide a positive “first experience” with the institution. DEA conducted business process analysis, eliciting requirements from all stakeholders (including prospective customers from its field of membership). We also worked with user experience designers to gather requirements for the system interface, ultimately translating those requirements into technical and data requirements for system designers.
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| Service Integration for Consumer Lending and Funds Management |
- Many vendors offer web services for Automated Clearing House [ACH] transactions, risk mitigation services and co-branded service offerings to the financial services industry. DEA helped its client understand all of the impact points for service integration from these vendors. Process analysis results provided support for business decisions, business requirements for subsequent projects, and “early warning” for IT operations.
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| New Product Integration |
- New products are critical to provide financial services institutions with a value advantage in the marketplace. For this client, DEA collected high level requirements for new products while vendor negotiations were taking place. The requirements identified key challenges to business case assertions, helping the institution and the vendor work together as a team to mitigate risks before they became business problems.
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| RFP and Configuration Requirements |
- DEA worked with a client that needed to consider buy options for teller systems and account management support. Our requirements approach provided the flexibility to support Requests for Information [RFIs] as well as Requests for Proposal [RFPs]. Contract obligations could also be managed using functional and non-functional requirements as the basis to evaluate the solution.
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| Back End Process Integration |
- Mergers and acquisitions create a myriad of systems to support operational functions throughout the organization. Basic information, such as a customer’s address, can be touched by dozens of systems – each of which can potentially violate the integrity of this information. The result is reduced agility and (in the worst case) a violation of Bank Secrecy Act guidelines. DEA conducted system analysis to identify how information is managed across the enterprise, possible breaches, and areas for consolidation / integration.
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| Process Analysis and Software Implementation |
- This client needed new software and improved processes for a core process, lending and capital stock management. By working with the client to discover true business needs, Doreen Evans Associates helped involve both business and technical users in defining use cases that captured requirements and led to a successful implementation.
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Some of the financial services companies we have worked with include:
- Allmerica Financial
- Brandes Investments
- Federal Home Loan Bank, Pittsburgh
- Key Bank
- Navy Federal Credit Union
Contact DEA at 617-482-4444 and let us know how we can help your project.
