A connected repository enables Mid-Market Company to design transformation
Challenges
- A small team consisting of domain architects with no single source of truth
- Needed to determine how legacy applications would coexist with emerging technologies
- Unsure how to execute a modernization initiative to provide customers with greater value
Results
- Created a connected repository that became the company's North star
- Decompartmentalized a "spaghetti diagram" into useable diagrams
- Established a documented workflow of how money moves across the business
Disparate sources, data, and information were holding back Transformation
A mid-market financial services lender ("Company") with revenues of $115M decided to take on a modernization initiative that involved providing customers with a "one-stop shop" online portal for services and payment options. The Company was just beginning its enterprise architecture initiatives looking to evolve from Microsoft Office and Visio static artifacts to a more centralized dynamic repository that could help manage and store their information and data. They loosely followed TOGAF standards and leveraged Gartner APM spreadsheets. They were stuck in "legacy land" and wanted to update their business with online form publication, online loan processing, vetting, etc. Additionally, the Company wanted to move away from Waterfall to Agile product updates.
After reviewing the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture tools, the Company connected with the leading vendors and issued an RFP. The lead project manager identified the right requirements of an EA tool because of her deep experience with the Company. She had a good perspective on how business and technology connect. She was already working with different teams to document processes and tie them to services, applications, and underlying infrastructure.
Key features that were considered necessary included: dashboards, analysis reports to enhance decision-making, roadmaps, must-be SaaS, and the ability to refine processes to deliver customer value faster. MEGA listened to the needs of the Company and presented demos of the use cases that would be relevant. The Company chose MEGA's HOPEX platform as their enterprise architecture tool as HOPEX had the best features and functionality to meet their needs.
Create a centralized repository that could connect people, processes, and technology.
To kick the project off, the MEGA team met with the main owners of the implementation to co-develop objectives, approaches, and timelines as they began using HOPEX IT Portfolio Management and HOPEX IT Architecture. During this initial phase, MEGA and the Company collaborated and:
- Built internal awareness: The stakeholders gathered the domain architects and presented several demonstrations and training to show what the HOPEX platform could do to model systems and help the Company move beyond spreadsheets.
- Right-sized the approach: Initially, as the team began to document processes in HOPEX, they realized their "spaghetti diagram" was too complex to be helpful. After careful consideration and discussions with MEGA on how to get the most out of HOPEX, they began to prioritize where/how they could break down their people, processes, and technology into components and work to build and connect the layers.
- Focused on a business-outcome-driven use case: The Company started with a use case that would document how it makes money and transfers across the business. This process touches every corner of the business and thus is especially important to modernization and transformation initiatives.
- Built out the repository: The HOPEX tool proved to be the north star for this exercise, and the domain architects began working together on a more layered approach using the HOPEX 360 portal to make sure the models and diagrams they were building were accessible to the rest of the organization.
- Managed governance: In parallel to this process, the Company created an Architecture Council, which includes the technical, business, strategy, HR, and data architects who met regularly to discuss and prioritize projects. This ensured the team worked together toward a mutual outcome. MEGA sits on this council in an advisory capacity.
A clear road to Transformation
In two years, the Company successfully moved from a disparate collection of artifacts to a connected repository that has become a single source of truth.
The Company integrated several best practices and, as a result, is realizing value. Examples of this include:
- Improved collaboration: By being committed to a single source of truth, the Company was able to bring different domain disciplines together, align under one vision and mission, and work together towards those goals.
- Stakeholders see value in EA: Using a business outcome-driven approach, the money transfer project drives value across the entire enterprise and is highly visible.
- Complexity is now manageable: The architects created diagrams that model people, processes, and technology used as building blocks across the Company.
- Clarity on where/how to transform: Now that the Company has modeled this part of the business, they can see how to update and digitize it.
- Prepared the business and strengthened its resiliency: This good business practice was critical given the pandemic shifted customer interactions online. The Company was organized and could accelerate quickly to meet market demands.
- Looking to the future: The Company is now developing an operating model around money transfer capability to show how it will look using transformative technology, improved processes, and streamlined organization.
Solutions
- HOPEX platform
- MEGA Services Team