Success Stories
Adding value through multi-service delivery for a leading international Financial Service Provider
A partnership, sound as a pound
The client is a leading international financial service provider, with services spanning across 75 countries. As a multi-specialist bank, it offers its clients a broad range of first-class banking services. It provides private clients with an all-round service extending from account-keeping and cash and securities investment advisory to asset management. The bank offers corporate and institutional clients the full product assortment of an international corporate and investment bank – from payments processing and corporate finance to support with IPOs and M&A advisory. In addition, the bank has a leading position in international foreign exchange, fixed-income and equities trading.
Already a leader in Europe, the client is continuously growing in key emerging markets such as Asia and North America. Understandably, it needs an IT partner to keep pace with its ambitious growth plans. HCL emerges as the ideal choice, and has since then complemented the client’s growth in numerous ways.
When Lady Luck plays fickle...
In 2000, the banking and financial services industry as a whole was undergoing a tectonic shift – moving towards cost-effective models of outsourcing and consolidation. For the client it meant that reducing costs and time-to-market for new products and increasing return on investment was critical if it were to keep up with the market benchmarks and competitive pressure. HCL needed to not only help accomplish these goals, but enable the bank to focus on its core business, giving them the flexibility to rapidly ramp-up or down as required.
A penny for your thoughts...
Kick-starting the engagement in September 2001, HCL put to use its experience and expertise in delivery, off-shoring and engineering. HCL’s robust frameworks, access to intellectual capital and partnerships were added benefits. Through a collaborative process with the client, the best technology and business processes were built into the team.
A three-tiered client partner based engagement model was developed to ensure quick response to the bank’s requirements at all levels and also enhance performance management, value creation, collaboration and future state partnership. This model included corporate leadership, client partner head and multi-services delivery. Human Resources intervention and capacity building along with engagement management were the main focus areas.
Time for the golden touch...
Adopting a value-centric approach towards the engagement, HCL proficiently provided truly integrated services; an amalgamation of technology, operations and infrastructure for the client, and the relationship evolved into the largest engagements for HCL in terms of the revenue and resources involved. It also became the largest outsourced operations out of India for a Financial Services firm.
The technology and back office requirements of the bank were serviced through a Micro-Verticalized Delivery Organization. The technology organisation was restructured into delivery centres that mirrored the micro-verticals of the client, leveraging function and competency-based aggregation. For example the technology vertical was classified into investment analytics, trade and trade management, risk and controlling, banking services and corporate and integrated businesses.
In the same manner, micro-verticalized offerings were created for back office operations spanning acr oss Trade Management Services, Settlement, Reconciliation, Reference Data Management, Asset Servicing and Controlling, Research and Analytics and Issuance and Payments Operations.
These service-oriented delivery units in technology and operations have boosted scalability, flexibility and economies of scale. It has led to a business service model, the rationalization of technology platforms and the ability to develop and leverage ‘best practices’ across common platforms.
In the infrastructure space, HCL provided administrative and performance optimization, hosting, round-the-clock monitoring of availability and performance for network and computing infrastructure and fault management services.
The hidden benefits
Since the inception of this partnership, HCL has endeavored to bring more and more value to the client. Regular conceptualization and rolling out initiatives and innovative solutions that would benefit the bank and help them maintain their leadership position are an integral part of the endeavor. These Innovative solutions have delivered economies of scale, consolidation of processes, right skill sets, process level improvements, task aggregation and process re-engineering. Some of the value adds delivered to the client going way beyond the base delivery include, a new operating model in line with the changing requirements of the bank; creation of near shore centers at New York, Eschborn and Belfast; conceptualization, designing and creation of Production Management Centre and creation of decommissioning and migration methodologies and product partnerships. HCL also brought Six Sigma based process improvements and a client satisfaction index measurement model.
Making a mint
The accomplishments from this engagement are there for everyone to see. Apart from the multifold jump in revenues and resources which make this engagement among the largest for HCL, there has been an increase in the number of development centers from one center to eight centers. The engagement covers the complete breadth of the bank, and there are around 119 projects undertaken for the bank till date. The number of resources involved in the engagement has scaled up from 10 in year 2000 to 3,500 in 2006. To provide the highest quality of services to the bank, HCL has armed itself with ISO 9001, BS 7799, CMM Level 5 and CMMi Level 5 certifications.
HCL’s unique micro-verticalization and integrated service offering approach has created economies of scale. Not only have cost savings exceeded client expectations, but customer satisfaction has also been improving year-on-year.
Betting the bottom dollar over an exciting future!
The banking and financial industry is known for constantly reinventing itself, reflecting the dynamics of existing and emerging markets worldwide. Needless to say, players in this domain must keep pace with the changes or risk being left behind.
In this scenario, HCL is proactively conceptualizing and rolling out initiatives that would benefit the bank and help them maintain their leadership position. HCL continuously endeavors to add more value to the client’s business by making more investments, designing innovative offerings, partnering in new areas to take the relationship to a higher level.
Demonstrating strength, accomplishing many a milestone, achieving many a feat, reaching the pinnacle of success through working in tandem with each other, both the companies are in a true partnership.
