The Challenge
The Client organization had grown significantly through acquisitions and new business sales efforts. Frequently, these acquisitions included sophisticated software products that were integrated into the core processing systems, but the integration was often minimal and therefore many of these software products functioned similar to stand-alone ancillary systems. At the time of the engagement, there were over 230 ancillary systems generating annual operating cost in the low 9 figures.
As a result of Client’s successful growth, the core processing engine was quickly approaching critical capacity thresholds. The Client made the difficult decided to re-architect the core systems, which entailed a massive, company-wide multi-year undertaking. It also made perfect sense to analyze all of the 230 ancillary systems to ensure that reintegration into the re-architected core would generate an acceptable ROI or business justification.
The Solution
The principal owner of Keystone Advisors, Inc. was asked to lead the effort of analyzing all of the Client’s related ancillary systems. Four other consultants were brought in to assist in the effort. The project was formally called the “Outer Ring Assessment”. The objectives were to assess the functional and technical health of all ancillary systems, to gather information on the market viability of each system, and to recommend retention or retirement along with priority of the action, timeframe and resource requirements. Consideration was given to business strategy, technical architecture, application architecture, market viability and customer perception. Technical and business questionnaires were developed and distributed to respective owners of the ancillary systems. Extensive discussion and analysis with all owners ensued. An industry survey was also undertaken to determine Best of Breed vendors and how the Client’s systems ranked.
The Result
This was an extremely complex analysis, requiring the team members to be fully knowledgeable of features and functionality available within the ancillary systems and the industry in general. Findings called for retention and re-integration of 30% of the ancillary systems. In several instances, functionality was duplicated among the systems, creating unnecessary ongoing operating costs. Even though retirement and or migration costs were considered, 18% of the systems were recommended for retirement. 26% required additional specific short-term research. Given the number of weeks available for the analysis, this was considered acceptable. 26% were related to the financial applications or core processing, which caused them to fall outside the scope of the project. The engagement was considered successful by the Client.