Helping a Major Global Bank Become More Agile

Software developer, Website designing programmer teamwork coding a project.

Some things were made to last forever. Software is not one of them. Technology is fast-paced, ever-evolving, and fuelled by innovation and severe-based solutions that can hinder your innovation processes.

Along with the security risks, and the expense to maintain and run this outdated technology, having a cloud-based solution, run as a managed service, can rapidly increase the productivity and performance of any business.

Our client, a major global bank, wanted to protect itself in case of disaster, and stop relying on a privately-owned off-site recovery system by moving applications and services to the Cloud. Access plc provided the perfect service capability to fit in with their Cloud-based strategy.

The successful delivery of this Cloud-based strategy can be difficult at a large organisation, especially within International Banking due to legislation, not to mention application migration to the Cloud, on-demand and scalable cost management, and the capability or resources needed to deliver such a project.

Access plc recommended that the Bank moved to a cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 service, due to its ability to improve security, enable scalability, and increase collaboration, along with a host of other abilities to manage a variety of business processes.

With our clients being able to see the undeniable benefits of our service offering, we could then start the process of delivering Microsoft Dynamics 365 as a cloud-based platform and empower them to do more.

When starting this project, Access utilised its quality and incredibly experienced staff, with the blend of skills and right behaviours to provide the right solution to our client’s problems. Our clients want to be able to depend upon us, so we recruit staff with a “can-do” attitude who genuinely care about the work they do.

We then equipped our client with best-in-class tools to support their day-to-day work. This includes, for example, the use of the Azure DevOps software application to manage requirements gathering, estimation of effort, build, resource planning, testing and acceptance.

Further, we take pride in understanding and learning how to use internal operating systems and applications specific to our clients. This showcased a level of care and commitment, making our delivery process as seamless as possible.

Within 8 weeks we started our first project delivery and took just 12 weeks to complete it end-to-end. With the current average delivery timeline for IT projects within the banking industry sitting at well over nine months, our client was extremely impressed with our work ethic and tenacity when it came to delivering the required solution.

Our end-to-end delivery included requirements gathering, agreement and build. We also worked across three independent Cloud tenants, completing all banking compliance and controls as well as passing rigorous rounds of approvals.

Ultimately, our implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 as a cloud-based platform had an incredibly positive impact on the bank. A rough calculation on the return on investment currently sits at 500% when factoring in the expensive maintenance of old solutions, new dynamic technology, reduce resources time and the vastly reduced cost of ownership.

Since implementation, we are now delivering four projects in parallel, with a further five projects to be scheduled. This is a new capability for the bank, delivered at pace whilst assuring quality in delivery.

So, in summary, Access’ “three pillars” of people, processes and tools came together to bring about a quality and consistency of delivery which makes our clients trust us, and the results making it an easy decision for this client to continue working with us on new, innovative projects.