ING Direct banks on Oakton to drive their new enterprise IT strategy and architecture plan

The Challenge

Having completed a very successful entry into the Australian banking market by employing a fully online banking model, ING Direct continues to experience high growth and is expanding its product offerings and level of service.

Given the dependency on IT to deliver the business model, ING Direct chose to establish an Enterprise IT Architecture Group to plan and guide the delivery of IT services in a manner that was fully aligned to business objectives and strategies and that maximised the value of IT within the business.

The key objective was to develop a three year plan for IT investment that would support and enable the business lines to grow, innovate and provide superior customer service whilst at the same time delivering cost efficiencies through economies of scale. They needed to identify the most appropriate architectural models and methods to be employed. These had to be acceptable to the business, IT management and the architecture team.

Mentoring and skills transfer were also important as ING Direct wanted to build up its own architectural capability concurrently with building the deliverables.

The team set themselves the challenge of delivering the plan in three months.

The Solution

ING Direct called on the services of Oakton to assist in the rapid establishment of the architecture practice and to develop the initial sets of enterprise architecture deliverables including current architecture assessment, target architectures and transition plans. These deliverables were used to develop and justify a three year program of work to take ING Direct forward.

Oakton provided enterprise architecture skills that seamlessly formed part of the ING Direct enterprise architecture team. This enabled guidance and skill transfer whilst building exposure and credibility of the new team.

Oakton also provided templates and approaches drawn from it’s repository of work in the enterprise archtiecture space to fast track the project.

Applying Oakton processes that had been adapted in consultation with ING Direct, work began with interviews and surveys to capture the current business, application, information and technology architectures. These were analysed against business objectives and strategies to develop a target architecture and transition plan.

Working with, and as part of the ING Direct team, valuable skills transfer took place in a real time, real life environment. And through the sharing of its extensive experience and intellectual property, Oakton was able to tailor the output to suit ING Direct’s priorities and culture and fast track the development of the deliverables.

The business outcome

The quality, clarity, depth and breadth of the project met the CIO’s objectives, on time and within budget. Today, the team has a new level of confidence, and with the acquired techniques to capture and ensure business input ING Direct are well positioned to successfully deliver this project and future efforts, in alignment with the business goals.

By the completion of the project, the following was in place to drive the three year plan forward:

• Documentation of IT objectives and strategies aligned to business objectives and strategies
• Identification and acknowledgment of key business issues and “hot topics” to be addressed by the target architecture
• Current application and technology portfolio
• A costed program of work to implement over the next 3 years, including risk assessments; and
• Architectural processes and procedures to monitor and assess architectural compliance to be reused on a regular basis going forward.

Oakton’s pragramatic and adaptable approach, willingness to share its IP and experience, and most importantly its depth and breadth of experienced consultants, were all key ingredients to the success of the ING Direct architecture review project. In addition to lowering the total cost of ownership, the new strategy based on a sustainable architecture will ultimately allow ING Direct to deliver better levels of customer service and customer experience.

The Oakton advantage

Oakton provides specialist end-to-end IT services to plan, deliver and operate business systems, as well as business consulting, financial management and assurance services. For nearly 20 years, Oakton has consistently enabled some of Australia’s largest organisations to meet their technology and business needs with a flexible, cost-effective, results-driven approach to service delivery. We employ over 1300 staff, and have offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Hyderbad (India), and offer a range of services across the lifecycle of systems and across a range of different technology and industry sectors

Oakton has a strong partner network with leading global and local product companies — this supports a sharp focus on the provision of services that support the successful delivery of business system solutions for customers. However, we do not develop and sell products, nor do we sell hardware or network solutions.

Oakton’s service provision combines highly skilled resources, relevant and proven service delivery methods and frameworks, and a strong focus on project delivery governance.

Oakton’s enviable history of achievement for large and medium sized organisations in the private and public sectors is reflected by the testimony of customers to the quality of our service delivery and results.