Empowering Financial Advisors

Empowering Financial Advisors by successfully managing a "hot potato" project with a quality project plan

The Need

Client is a Fortune 500 company in the Financial Services industry which needed to develop a solution to enable their independent Advisors to manage customer accounts. The system needed to be able to transfer funds between clients and other banks/financial services companies on behalf of customers. Because of the technical complexity to accommodate the needs of internal constituents, external organizations and customers, this was considered a “hot potato” project previously thought impossible to properly scope, manage and complete. We were informed by the Client that this project had started and stopped four times over the previous two years, costing the company millions of dollars and dozens of Advisors. They needed a team that could galvanize the right resources and motivate stakeholders through good project and program management, something that was lacking in their previous attempts.

Our Approach

There was a lot of outdated and confusing documentation that had already been created so we used that as a starting point to gain a frame of reference. After a short period of time a picture started to develop. There appeared to be a lot of enthusiasm and desire for success but those efforts were diluted due to incomplete, confusing and conflicting requirements. We immediately began to refine and replace the documentation by speaking with all the stakeholders and asking them exactly what they wanted/needed the system to do. By involving all appropriate people in the process we were not only able to gain instant buy-in but we were also able to developed greater clarity, delineation of responsibilities, timelines, budgets, resources and milestones. As a result we were able to develop all the components for a quality project plan including specific technical and business iterations, staffing plans (hired 11 people to specifically manage various project needs), communication plans, and appropriate performance measurements. Even when the scope was doubled by executive leadership we were able to accommodate that change and stay ahead of it rather than letting it derail and consume our project.

The Results

We worked with the Client over the subsequent year, conducting assessments at six and twelve months, and were able to measure the performance of our work. Some of the highlights:

• On-time, on-budget and on-scope delivery even as the work was essentially doubled midway through the project
• Time needed to transfer funds decreased by 40% after implementation while errors and the need for intervention decreased by 60%
• Averaged 4.7 out of 5 on Project Satisfaction Survey administered to all stakeholders; 94% scored 5 out of 5 on “Met agreed-upon project expectations and critical success factors”
• Earned an "Excellence in Service" award for efforts and results