Asset managers who transform their back-office processes could drive sustainable benefits such as cost reduction, increased capabilities, streamlined processes and a better enabled front office.

However, if you’ve ever undertaken a back-office conversion—or considered it—you’ll know that the challenges can be numerous:
  • Speed through business requirements identification at the outset, and you could spend hours or days reworking the design after testing.
  • Fail to get key stakeholders on board or establish effective resolution mechanisms, and tensions—and inefficiency—could mount.
  • Set out with an overly ambitious timeline or insufficient resources, and you could watch deadlines be missed and your budget disappear.

To plan and execute increasingly critical back-office transformations, firms should be thinking about business requirements, project planning, governance frameworks to establish accountability and the data management experience required to see the transformation through to completion.

Advancing your back-office transformation journey

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Seven actions to move your back-office forward

To become more competitive and profitable in an era of constant disruption, asset managers should be prepared to take action. From focusing on business requirements to taking advantage of a new data management strategy, here are seven actions to bear in mind.

1. Understand the business requirements

Clearly define your business requirements at the outset or you could pay later in the form of rework, delays and budget issues.

2. Asses the flexibility of the development processes

A development process that is too rigid could hamper efforts to address new requirements or alter existing requirements, forcing costly changes.

3. Evaluate your data management strategy

A poorly designed data management framework has the potential to increase operational risk and lead to end-user rework.

4. Plan for the likely duration of transformation

Underestimate the time required to execute the transformation and you could experience missed deadlines, budget overruns and change management issues.

5. Understand staffing requirements

Without adequate resources and access to key subject matter experts, the risk of project delays and poor decisions could increase significantly.

6. Discuss issue resolution protocols

When no effective issue resolution protocols are in place; expect stakeholder disagreements, increased tension and service level gaps and delays.

7. Assure leadership buy in

Management should establish back-office transformation as a top-priority across the organization, or progress will likely be delayed.

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How can we help asset managers on their transformation journey?

Our deep industry knowledge, broad end-to-end capabilities, subject matter experts and proven track record can help kick off a transformation process.

We can help develop formal frameworks and methodologies for capturing business requirements, managing projects and establishing program governance. We’ve been engaged in numerous implementation projects providing program, project management and subject matter experts for a wide range of front-to-back office and data management implementation initiatives.

Mike Kerrigan

Managing Director – Capital Markets, Asset Management Lead

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