Global Simplification and Automation

The client, one of the largest auditing firms in the world, who’s 180 000 global employees and provides industry-focused audit and assurance, tax and consulting services for public and private clients. As such, their staff is required to maintain financial independence from their thousands of local and international clients.  

Overview

RCG was challenged to provide a global, business configurable system to track and manage these personal and firm holdings. Utilizing proven practices and the latest technologies, RCG helped to re-engineer the business process and build a solution to simplify and automate the independence policies that govern these financial relationships. 

Strategy and Goals

RCG was entrusted with leading the Visioning and Business Sessions, Design Architecture, Detailed Design, Construction and System Integration.

RCG’s Architectural Approach started with our clients’ business drivers and business needs. As with similar projects this project was delivered incrementally, with each sequential phase providing additional value to our client. This allowed them to realize the benefits quickly, as they reduced their payback period. 

RCG had the skills required to lead this engagement and were able to quickly provide an on-site team to drive and support the business alignment, process reengineering, design, and construction.

Good architecture and strong design are keys to any successful implementation. With the accumulated experience of hundreds of business-driven projects, the RCG team had the right skills and expertise needed to design and implement this client’s solution.

Approach

RCG’s approach to this engagement followed our standard business roadmap methodology and consisted of the following key steps:

• Understand the current state – what is being done currently, why is it being done, where is it being done, how is it being done, and who is doing it.
• Identify the similarities and differences of the various (where it makes sense) business units (understand what makes them
  unique) and understand where you can have the process and system commonality.
• Define the business and technology future state
• Define the solution:
  • What systems and processes need to be replaced and or consolidated
  • Which assets are supported by which systems and processes
• Define roles within each process and system
• Create a prioritized list of projects with estimated timing and cost and a phased execution plan 
• Create a technology architecture and standards that will support the business for 10+ years Define and build a Proof of Concept to validate assumptions made in the technology architecture
• Use the POC to gather final requirements and adjust the future state
• Build the final solution and assist with global deployment

The Final Results

• Enable faster response with less effort and cost to new or changing regulatory demands.
• Lower Cost through replacement of aging, disparate business systems with a single global system
• Make it easier for management and senior staff to comply with Independence rules.
• Increase compliance through automation of the governance around the compliance process.
• Reduce time to respond to change by allowing business operations users to configure business rules, business workflow (including communications), reports and analytics by themselves, without relying on technical teams.
• Increase the confidentiality of personal data without requiring complex local systems or infrastructure.
• Provide a single trusted source of independence information for the system and related downstream applications.
• Reduce the amount of effort (and hence FTE support levels) required to perform certain currently highly onerous support processes.
• Achieve Scalability Provide a technical solution that will support the business for 10+ years. Enable a business configurable system allowing for changes in policies, rules, relationship types, and reporting needs.
• Mitigate Risks by assuring compliance with regulatory mandates while reducing the costs associated with inaccurate, untimely information.

The Conclusion

Meeting & Exceeding Goals Required Significant Change. RCG led an initiative to integrate three existing, regional systems into one global system. The technical environment represented challenges as a new enterprise technology strategy was being adopted at the same time that this initiative was undertaken. The use of automated business rules was being integrated into a solution for the first time. RCG was instrumental in developing the global architecture standards being adopted by other teams around the world to solve business problems.