Central Bank undertakes Application Portfolio Rationalization as part of resiliency initiative

Creating a modernized technology infrastructure to support the pace of change

The digital economy rapidly changes how businesses and people interact intranationally and internationally. Commercial banking is undergoing a dramatic transformation such that most bank CEOs characterize their businesses as primarily technology companies. This global disruption in how banking services are delivered to businesses and consumers stresses Central Banks' ability to keep pace with dramatic increases in the volume and velocity of payment transactions. Central Banks, as the clearinghouse for inter-bank transactions and the lender of last resort, are investing heavily to modernize technology infrastructure to meet the need for faster interbank settlement of payments.

The first step undertaken by this Central Bank on its modernization initiative was to identify and consolidate all technology assets deployed by the member banks into a single repository, thereby establishing a single source of truth for the entire Central Bank system. The Central Bank issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to several leading enterprise architecture software firms to achieve this objective. After a competitive review process, MEGA's HOPEX platform was selected based on the comprehensiveness of its application portfolio management solution.

Development of a single source of truth repository lowering costs and risks and increasing data quality and compliance

MEGA kicked off the project by co-developing a plan with the Central Bank to determine best how to gather and assimilate the data and objects for the inventory. The team leveraged MEGA's success with one of the member banks in the system, given that each member bank maintains its portfolio of technologies. Once this first member bank was set, MEGA worked across the remaining member bank entities to import and populate the bank's applications. This included:

• Importing the data - MEGA used the integration with Flexera's tool (Technopedia) to import the bank's technologies and to understand where each IT asset was in its lifecycle.
• Establishing user views - The Central Bank had to manage data and access levels across the member banks to maintain the needed confidentiality of their systems so the other member banks could not see what the others had. Customized Business Intelligence dashboards were created based on the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder group.
• Building an IT modernization roadmap – MEGA established itself as a strategic partner in building a roadmap that will position the Central Bank to meet the resiliency demands due to the dramatic increase in the volume and velocity of payment transactions. MEGA worked alongside the bank to build out key priorities of the bank's modernization initiative to improve operational efficiency and information security without introducing workflow complexity that compromises productivity.
• Conducting training – To ensure adoption, training was given to create power users of HOPEX and drive adoption across the organization.
• Leveraging KPI insights – The IT team at the Central Bank used the data from the HOPEX repository to uncover insights and opportunities around rationalization, cost, risk, data quality, technology debt, and compliance.
• Conducting oversight – This Company had established an Application Portfolio Management Change Advisory Board to discuss and prioritize enhancements to address changing business needs and meet portfolio management requirements.

Improved operational efficiency and information security

HOPEX provided the Central Bank with a "single pane of glass" to view all technologies across the banking system and realize immediate value by identifying redundant, out-of-support, and shadow technologies. The Company now has the following:

• An active inventory of IT assets across the member banks
• A single source of truth to document all technologies
• A solid understanding of the applications and associated technologies, as well as who is using the applications and who owns them
• Increased knowledge about the IT systems shared by all member banks

HOPEX's ability to grow with the Company is coming to life as the Central Bank is now looking to leverage its newly identified IT application portfolio, build out business processes, and understand its governance, risk, and compliance needs. This data and process connectivity allows the Company to marry processes and technology to get a better/more comprehensive picture of resiliency. As adoption continues and more people enter and use the data, the bank's resiliency efforts continue to strengthen.

Solutions

• HOPEX IT Portfolio Management
• HOPEX platform
• MEGA Services Team