Managing a major technology project without affecting client service
16 October 2018
Upgrading your technology can be a test for any business, regardless of size.
Trying to execute major change and adapt to new systems while ensuring that day-to-day business carries on as usual is a daunting challenge. It’s no wonder we’ve seen a number of big name providers struggling with replatforming projects this year, with numerous tales of missed deadlines and sunken costs.
We embarked on our own upgrade project at the end of last year, on our core custody platform. Our goal was to improve straight-through-processing; reduce risk while adding control for client instruction processing; and enable greater scalability and sophistication of delivery for our clients.
The project was a success and it passed off without having any adverse impact on day-to-day processes. It was also a useful learning exercise, so we thought we’d share a few things that we took away from it.
1) Be clear about the benefits of upgrading
The first step in any project is understanding exactly why you’re doing it and what you want to achieve. We were clear from the outset that an upgrade was crucial if we were to have the operational, technology and infrastructure scalability to comfortably match our ambitious business growth targets for the foreseeable future.
A key part of the project was the development of a leading API, letting us connect to a wide range of partner applications. Cutting edge technologies allow us to work with a range of innovative partners, looking to leverage industry developments around blockchain, RPA and AI initiatives, all leading to a digital transformation of the industry. By ensuring that Multrees can engage in these developments, we can future-proof our offering and provide confidence to our client firms that they, alongside Multrees, are ideally placed to benefit from disruptive technological advances.
2) Have clear project governance
The success of our upgrade, completed within a nine-month timeframe and within budget, was due mostly to the robust governance of the project. This means having a clear point of accountability. Each of our Change projects has an executive sponsor, who in turn is supported by a dedicated project manager. We also have a bi-weekly Programme Board meeting, hosted by our internal Change team to monitor the status of all our projects and ensure that they are not impacting day-to-day activities.
Our best-in-class technology partners were able to assist closely during the project, being always on hand to answer questions and provide support, both onsite and remotely. This really emphasises the importance of a thorough vendor selection process - ensuring you are working with good partners from the outset makes handling future upgrade projects a lot easier.
3) Have a clear plan and roadmap for future developments
As with all of our projects, we have built on the success of our upgrade work through continuous development, with a continual stream of innovation activity seeking to improve our systems. This has included adding new self-service applications to the portal, saving manual entry for our clients as well as operational resource.
The resulting resource savings also free up time internally for us to engage in more value-add activity, such as improving the interface of the client portal through custom content applications (which, in turn, improves the overall client experience).
Our current upgrade projects include further developing our core custody platform and our web API capabilities. We all look forward to the success of these projects and making sure that the Multrees platform keeps ahead of the technology curve.