Internet Integration, Vendor Selection, Project Management

The Client

The retail broker/dealer division of a major U.S. bank.

The Challenge

The client had 120 days to create a special organization to support a new $150 million Internet-based financial services company, separate from its traditional lines of business. The technological and operational infrastructures had to be scalable enough to support 500,000 online customers within the first six months of operation and over 1,000,000 customers one year after. In addition to these pressures, two major competitors were also rushing to offer a similar service in the same time frame.

The accelerated timeline and broad scope of the project required methodical, dynamic leadership focused on many different areas:

• Internet network design and website development
• Brokerage organizational design
• Operations workflow process design
• Systems, network, and application level testing

The Solution

BearingPoint was asked to manage the launch of this new venture by providing both Internet and traditional brokerage management operations project expertise. This included:

• Providing leadership on vendor selection and the development and definition of service levels.
• Making agreements to maintain a superior customer experience.
• Deploying resources to augment and advise each project team and coordinating all activities using a centralized project management utility that worked with both internal teams and third-party vendors.
• Performing an extensive enterprise-level due diligence review, offering recommendations, and providing a comprehensive testing methodology that was adopted across the enterprise.

The Benefits

BearingPoint’s efforts contributed significantly to the successful launch of the new enterprise, on time and on budget.

• Our project leadership and methodology facilitated timely identification and resolution of project-related issues.
• Our enterprise-level testing and change control led to the identification and resolution of over 200 customer-visible service issues prior to launch.
• Our methodologies were adopted by the new organization to improve operations in the enterprise at virtually every level.