Paramount to the success of any offshoring initiative is a consistent level of service delivery that renders the physical location of the service provider a non-issue. Another critical factor is a securing a connectivity solution that enables offshore personnel to perform job functions with the same level of quality and speed in execution as their onshore counterparts.

When our client came to us for assistance in managing this effort, they were already in the midst of setting up a series of consolidated service centers in each regional hub that would provide investment banking operations and finance/controlling services to all bank offices, globally.

The client required a Project Management Office (PMO) to coordinate the onboarding and provisioning of remote connectivity solutions for offshore personnel in service centers located in India (Mumbai and Bangalore) and the Philippines (Manila). It was critical that functions be transitioned in a smooth and expeditious fashion; failure to do so would result in duplicative effort at a substantial cost to the client.

FinServ brought in a team of seasoned professionals with a wealth of project management experience and an in-depth understanding of the client’s existing technical infrastructure. A global steering committee with stakeholders from the four major hubs was established and a sweeping assessment of technical infrastructure needs, by service center, across job functions, was conducted.

Process standards around user onboarding, application packaging and connectivity use case scenarios were established to create a robust, repeatable framework for moving functions offshore. Progress against the multi-threaded initiatives were tracked and measured using FinServ’s PMO Methodology including; project dashboards, weekly worklogs, and issue management and escalation tools.

After implementing the PMO and integrated governance structure the client offshored approximately 1,200 Investment Banking Operations functions and 400 Finance/Controlling functions in the first year of the project. Moreover, a robust remote connectivity platform was implemented that allowed for twice as many functions to be moved offshore in the following year, while assuring the same level of world class service delivery.