Business Challenge
A major international investment bank was expanding rapidly and required to significantly and quickly expand operations at their London headquarters in order to meet current and future business requirements.
This very high profile business expansion involved the Bank taking over several new buildings, installing IT infrastructure and seamlessly migrating thousands of key Business Users and their Business Applications to the new locations and IT infrastructures.
The key challenges included: working within ‘live’ trading and business environments, coordinating with a large number of Businesses within the Bank, managing multiple vendors and large project teams, delivering to tight timescales, meeting exacting business standards, zero business downtime and minimal business disruption.
Solution
We provided the IT Programme Manager and several of the key project managers and technical leads. A few of our deliverables and achievements included:
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Defining and Managing Budget of many £10s of millions
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Selected and managed a Team of technical and business specialists consisting of Bank Permanent Employees/Contractors /Consultants and Vendor staff.
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Managed the definition of Business & Technical Requirements for in the following areas - cabling infrastructure, LAN and MAN implementation; Voice Services (PBX, Dealerboard, Voice Recording, etc.); Desktop rollout; Front Office, Back Office & IT User Migration, etc.
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Co-ordinating with business and operational departments; the defining and ensuing the quality standards; service level agreements, ongoing support requirements, change management, vendor management, etc.
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Selecting and Managing a large multi-disciplinary Team of technical and business specialists
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Bid Managed key external vendors
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Management of the external Vendors
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Managed the Sizing, Design and Installation of 800 m2 Communications Suite. Suite fully integrated with another Suite of similar size with no loss of service to the business.
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Managed IT Sizing and Design of 800m2 Server Suite
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Managed User Migration (Equities, Fixed Income, etc.) requirements; Trading Desk requirements; Flat Screen Technology requirements; SDS and MDS Migrations to Digital Platforms, etc.
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Managed Cabling Design, Bid Management and Appointment of Cabling Contractor; PBX, Dealerboard, Switch Network and many other vendors
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Managed Dealer Desk design requirements and selection
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Managed a number of the IT migrations of Business Users including 800 Back Office Settlement staff, 160 Back Office IT staff, etc.
Business Benefits
All IT aspects of the programme were delivered on time and to the exacting standards demanded of zero downtime and minimal disruption. This enabled the bank to carry out the business expansion programme as planned.
