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Implementation Services
Program Management
FINARCH empowers our capital market clients to navigate complex transformations by combining deep functional expertise with hands-on program management tailored to their unique digital transformation roadmap.
Our implementation-focused approach ensures strategic initiatives—from regulatory compliance and platform modernization to product launches and operational efficiency programs—are executed with precision, aligning technology, processes, and stakeholders to deliver measurable outcomes. Leveraging our domain knowledge in front-to-back-office workflows, trade lifecycle management, portfolio analytics, investment accounting and risk frameworks, we bridge the gap between technical know-how and domain expertise.
FINARCH empowers our capital market clients to navigate complex transformations by combining deep functional expertise with hands-on program management tailored to their unique digital transformation roadmap. Our implementation-focused approach ensures strategic initiatives—from regulatory compliance and platform modernization to product launches and operational efficiency programs—are executed with precision, aligning technology, processes, and stakeholders to deliver measurable outcomes. Leveraging our domain knowledge in front-to-back-office workflows, trade lifecycle management, portfolio analytics, investment accounting and risk frameworks, we bridge the gap between technical know-how and domain expertise.
FINARCH empowers our capital market clients to navigate complex transformations by combining deep functional expertise with hands-on program management tailored to their unique digital transformation roadmap. Our implementation-focused approach ensures strategic initiatives—from regulatory compliance and platform modernization to product launches and operational efficiency programs—are executed with precision, aligning technology, processes, and stakeholders to deliver measurable outcomes. Leveraging our domain knowledge in front-to-back-office workflows, trade lifecycle management, portfolio analytics, investment accounting and risk frameworks, we bridge the gap between technical know-how and domain expertise.
As part of our combined expertise across several of the largest digital transformation programmes, we have developed our project management guiding principles, which includes implementing a strong governance structure upfront, ensuring the project is making data-driven decisions, and assembling a diverse product team.
Guiding Principles 1 - Create an Effective Project Governance Structure.
Creating an effective governance structure is critical to any large digital transformation project. Without an effective project governance structure, it is likely the following will happen:
No clear ownership and lack of accountability; meetings are unproductive and do not focus on solving issues.
Duplicate work and wasted effort on low priority/severity tasks.
Inability to track accurate project status and completion percentage of major milestones.
Cost overruns, inefficient resource management, and constantly shifting dates.
Large amounts of re-design and re-architecture of key functions.
Unfortunately, most of the above is apparent only after the project has already started—at which time, making changes to governance is more difficult than it would have been at project initiation. As a best practice, we encourage defining the governance structure up front. We suggest the following:
A clear reporting structure and meeting cadence with escalation points:
- Executive / Steering Committee
The executive committee should be the final escalation point. It aims to make high-level decisions regarding timeline, budget, and other mission-critical matters. Members should include C-Level executives, vendor leads, and implementation partners leads. - Project Lead Working Group
The project lead working group should be the second highest escalation point. It should involve all three champions for the pillars below, workstream leads, and vendors/consulting partners. In addition to being an escalation point, this forum should be where workstreams formally request extensions to move dates or request additional resources. - Business, Data, and Technology Champions
Most projects involve business, data, and technology. This working group should be the last escalation level for each of the three pillars. It aims to resolve working-level issues and provide guidance to the work streams within the pillars. - Workstream
The lower level working groups. These are the individual project working groups, usually having multiple groups within each of the three pillars above. Typically, these are defined at the functionality or domain level.
Clearly define the standards and methodologies to be used across all workstreams.
This helps to ensure that all workstreams are speaking a common language and are using the same data points when creating management reporting/tracking (see Guiding Principal 3). Some examples of this include priorities definition, severities definition, reporting metrics/data points, business requirements, user story templates, test case templates, linkage standards, project plan standards, and management reporting templates.
Clearly define the technology and tools to be used within the project.
This should define the how for the project and provide a common delivery framework to be used across all workstreams.
Guiding Principles 2 - Make Data Driven Decisions
The benefits of making data-driven decisions should be clear to any seasoned executive. Reliable data-driven decisions allows unbiased and statistically significant decision-making, which is more actionable than intuitive decision-making. Within the context of digital transformation projects, this data (e.g., reporting metrics, RAG, % complete, etc.) is usually generated by the various workstreams and presented to project leadership as part of various stakeholder meeting updates.
The challenge to making data-driven decisions is how to gather the right data and metrics as input into the decision-making process. We recommend the following guidelines to generate highly accurate, relevant, and timely data to be used in project decision-making:
Clearly define standardizations as to what constitutes a unit of work across the different project phases. This is typically needed for: configuration units, test cases, and project artifacts (e.g., documentation, process/data/requirements, etc.). This is to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison across the various project stakeholders that can be rolled out to a summary level view.
Use project management software to track execution results and to create public reporting dashboards/views for all workstreams. All meetings, updates and reporting should be based on these dashboards and should be updated by individual contributors and leads frequently. Avoid using Excel sheets.
Quantitatively build rules around Red, Amber, Green (RAG) status reporting and other metrics. Any deviation can be explained through qualitative reasoning, but the status itself should follow binary logic.
When there is not a standardized way to report workstream status—or even worse, to use excessive intuitive or judgement in the reporting process—it is likely that the actual project status is not aligned to what is being communicated to executive stakeholders.
This misalignment of reporting metrics and delivery results can happen when project reporting standards are qualitative (emotion-driven), not quantitative (data-driven).
Guiding Principles 3 - Assemble a Diverse Project Team
The benefits of making data-driven decisions should be clear to any seasoned executive. Reliable data-driven decisions allows unbiased and statistically significant decision-making, which is more actionable than intuitive decision-making. Within the context of digital transformation projects, this data (e.g., reporting metrics, RAG, % complete, etc.) is usually generated by the various workstreams and presented to project leadership as part of various stakeholder meeting updates.
The challenge to making data-driven decisions is how to gather the right data and metrics as input into the decision-making process. We recommend the following guidelines to generate highly accurate, relevant, and timely data to be used in project decision-making:
Focus on creating a collaborative project culture. With any large project, there will always be politics, silos, and other obstacles to implementation. By nature, humans do not like change, and digital transformation’s goals are to change existing processes and systems that users have become accustomed with. Creating a collaborative, respectful, and accountable project culture is critical for any digital transformation project to succeed.
Engage users and subject-matter experts up front. The current system users need to be engaged from the start, ideally when they are formally participating in working group sessions and making Target Operating Model (TOM) decisions. By waiting for the tail end of the project to involve users (e.g., during user acceptance testing), there is a high risk that implemented functionality will not meet expectations which will lead to re-design and/or de-scoping functionality.
Create a diverse and well-rounded team. Capital markets is an industry that is constantly evolving; no one is able to act as a subject matter expert across all domains, technologies, and systems. We recommend creating diverse project teams that should include the following members:
- User subject-matter experts
These resources are needed to provide expert-level guidance, requirements, and validation for target-state decisions and processes. They typically come from within the implementing organization and have a senior role; they understand the current state and have a vision as to what the target state looks like. - Vendor configuration experts
System specialists, usually employees from the software vendor(s). These are expert users and are the basis for any design and configuration of the target system(s). - Implementation specialists
These are typically consultants and have significant experience with system implementation. They are typically responsible for key deliverables including requirements, testing, project planning/strategy, and other areas such as data conversion.
Although each digital transformation project is unique, at FINARCH we have the experience and track record to ensure your transformation is a success and achieves measurable business outcomes, which all starts with establish an effective program management team.
