Case Study: Platform Rationalization Identifies $50 Million in Cost Savings

Challenge

How to gain leverage from multiple platforms designed to support specific initiatives.

Landscape

A global financial services firm with an eight digit IT budget, realized that there had been multiple projects in the past three years to build or purchase similar systems for managing regulatory compliance. Each investment decision was reasonable and justifiable within the context of an individual business unit. However, executive management sensed that the purchases and corresponding projects represented duplication of effort and unnecessary redundancy from a corporation-wide perspective.

Process

MIDIOR was engaged to identify and analyze each of the existing software platforms and associated operating processes to identify overlaps and recommend a plan for convergence and cost reduction. The discovery phase included interviews with internal and external users (customers), developers and managers across multiple business units to understand what systems and manual processes were in place. Next, MIDIOR constructed a financial model to evaluate the cost/benefit trade-offs of converging these multiple systems to a single platform. This analysis uncovered potential savings of over $50M over a five-year period.

Impact

Through this process, MIDIOR discovered 13 systems and numerous manual processes for accomplishing similar results. Executive management reconsidered all pending proposals for investing in new technology related to this function and new spending on additional systems was halted. A team was assigned to initiate a cost reduction program, marked by redefining functional requirements and executing a migration plan to a single platform over a two-year timeframe.