Leading Global Bank

Implementing a standard governance model to support fiscal year planning and project and program management delivery using portfolio management techniques.

The Client

The Client is a leading global bank with a strong presence in both traditional retail banking and investment banking. The company employs over 80,000 people in 75 countries and generated over US $130B revenue in 2007.

The Challenge

The investment banking division identified the need for a solution to better manage discretionary spend in projects and programs. The solution needed to increase visibility, control, and insight in the planning and delivery of key business initiatives. After researching several business options, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) was identified as the discipline to support the effort. Pcubed created a roadmap to pragmatically implement a PPM solution.

The Pcubed Solution

Pcubed proposed a three-phased roadmap for implementing the PPM solution across the entire operations group within the investment banking division. The first phase focused on improving the annual planning process, moving away from subjective decision making employed in the past, towards a metric-driven, strategic, and financial valuation framework. The second phase focused on status reporting processes during project and program execution. Once the new portfolio management processes are fully established, the third phase will focus on improving project management and benefits management, where realized benefits will be compared with the estimated figures. In summary, the solution provided:

• Increased transparency during annual planning
• Decision making support to selecting the optimal 'book of work' for implementation
• Reduced effort spent on status reporting by redesigning and automating the reporting process
• Reduced financial reporting risks by using an online, single-source integrated platform
• Improved overall delivery of initiatives by using standard metrics to track performance

The Results

With a pragmatic and results oriented approach, Pcubed designed and deployed the PPM solution within the investment banking division, meeting tight timelines imposed by the fast-paced financial services world. The success of the deployment within the division has attracted the attention of other groups within the bank, potentially leading to a roll-out of similar capabilities.