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Resolution Life - Strategy and target operating model development
“Atos worked pro-actively, as part of our team, to help us achieve our business goals. They deployed the right people, at the right places, at the right time, with the right skills and they did the job. So far, together, we’re being very successful.” Brendan Meehan, Group Chief Operating Officer, Resolution Plc
Resolution Life became the leading UK consolidator of closed life funds through persuing a growth strategy of acquisitions and a merger with Britannic Group.
Resolution Life selected Atos Consulting as its operational and implementation partner. We provided the expertise needed to help manage and achieve a co-ordinated programme of due diligence and acquisitions, providing the skills and resources to address the complex challenges of integration.
Furthermore we supported the design and implementation of Resolution Life’s future operating model, including outsourcing arrangements.
The quality of this work was recognised through the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Award of Best Business Strategy in the Private Sector.
Global general insurer - Security and information risk
Following a period of acquisitive growth, globalisation and outsourcing, the client identified the need for greater consistency from an IT risk and security perspective.
Atos applied its security consulting strategy method, known as ‘Columbus’ to:
- Develop a global security and information risk management approach which combined consistency with appropriate flexibility
- Align areas of potential exposure with associated business impacts and investment cases
- Create a clear and justifiable remediation roadmap.
Liverpool Victoria (LV=) - Transformational IT outsourcing
“LV= selected Atos as its IT Partner because of the confidence, culture and experience they demonstrated; I was very pleased that a flawless Transition of a complex legacy infrastructure was completed as planned, with no disruption to the business; Atos now delivers back to LV= a greatly
improved IT service, to very high standards and at reduced cost.” Richard Rowney, Chief Operating Officer, LV=
LV= was facing a number of IT challenges that were constraining its business strategy:
- An ageing legacy mainframe system, costly to maintain
- A need to adapt IT to suit changing business requirements
- The makings of a transformation plan that needed assurance and certainty of delivery
- Desire to give business units visibility of IT costs
Atos took over the running and maintenance of their legacy IT infrastructure as well as the management of their applications development. The deal involved a rapid transition of thee months and the delivery of improved response times. This is now allowing increased business operations, faster quotes and swifter case reconciliation by customer service representatives as well as the normal benefits of IT outsourcing.
Swiss re Front-office business transformation
At the project outset Swiss Re were already a leading global reinsurer, but as in many modern markets they had identified the need to continually evolve to sustain and improve on this position. In support of this Swiss Re selected Atos Consulting as their business partner to help improve the efficiency and performance of their Client Markets function.
We supported in rolling out their global Business Transformation Initiative (BTI) to further their market standing in sales force effectiveness and client management methodology.
The end programme enabled Swiss Re to dramatically improve their client servicing proposition across their entire global footprint and in doing so have created a worldwide community of client managers with a single business language and terminology and an agreed set of best practices and core competencies.
The specific issues driving the change programme are:
- Changing the sales approach to differentiate themselves in the changing customer landscape
- Concentrating on value-add services to protect market share in an increasingly competitive marketplace
- Developing of a client manager community across roduct and solution lines to leverage knowledge and increase sales across each account.
Banking
Investment Bank – Merger and Integration Planning
We were retained to advise the Client’s bid to create the fourth largest banking group in the world. The team worked with key business leaders to develop integration plans for each functional area for Day 1 and beyond, establishing a Project Management Office, programme and governance structures.
Although the acquisition was unsuccessful, our team were able to assist the Client in achieving readiness for the merger in very short timescales whilst ensuring minimal distraction from business as usual.
Through assessing capacity constraints the project highlighted a number of areas which needed addressing to make the Client ready forany potential integration and in some cases to support organic growth. With the Client expecting to be acquisitive again in the future, we left it in a position to reuse many of the structures, plans and techniques for any future deals.
Investment Bank – Smart Order Routing Vendor Selection
The Client was keen to move to a strategic Smart Order Routing solution to meet ongoing performance and volume processing needs,driven in particular by algorithmic trading, statistical arbitrage trading and pending/future regulatory impact (i.e. MiFID/NMS).
Although the initial requirement was rooted in the equities and associated derivatives business units, it was clear that any strategic solution should be flexible enough to integrate additional asset classes.
Our team conducted a rapid market scan of potential solutions to fit the Client requirements. They held and co-ordinated vendor meetings and completed thorough vendor analysis, identifying five potential vendors and solutions. In addition a view of the post MiFID competitive landscape was produced as part of the comprehensive vendor selection documentation.
We succeeded in accelerating the process of vendor selection and gave confidence to the Client’s senior management about its strategic direction in this area, providing greater insight into a post MiFID competitive landscape as well as the implications of buy versus build approaches.
Dresdner Kleinwort – IT Outsourcing
Dresdner Kleinwort had complex application architecture and interface systems based on various technologies across Europe, supporting various business functions.
The cost of managing those applications was becoming an increasing management overhead, with application systems criticality and service levels varying from high availability to business day only support. There was also a desire to outsource the application management function (3rd level support and developments).
Using our tailored approach, our team worked with the Client to establish the service level required for each application. Particular consideration was given to options for systems consolidation of benefit to all parties and we agreed the use of off-shoring facilities where appropriate. Each consolidation case took into account rationalisation opportunities and support issues.
Working in partnership with Dresdner Kleinwort we developed a robust reporting mechanism used to monitor KPIs and deliver benefits.
Carnegie Bank – Market Risk Systems Selection
Carnegie Bank wanted to move to a more robust market risk management process and realised that a specialised tool was necessary. With a total timescale of selection to operation of no more than six months, the challenge was to create a criteria and selection process to take no more than ten weeks from start to finish.
A fast track process was developed to profile the market risk vendors and eliminate those that were unsuitable. The initial pool of 100 vendors was chosen from a published risk management vendor survey and then additional requirements were used to develop a short list. An additional site visit was made to a local supplier to evaluate their capabilities against the criteria.
The requirements were established and agreed between the risk, trading and IT functions to develop a common understanding for attempting the implementation. An open debate was had about the type of suppliers that were not suitable for the organisation based on non-functional criteria, for example responsiveness, local support. A vendor was successfully selected well within the allotted time frame.
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