Big Bank Pleases Customers with Clarity

When you’re a major bank with more than 12 million customers, you’re going to have a very complex technology environment. In a recent interview, one of North America’s largest financial institutions, with over 2,000 active projects, discussed how Clarity helps the PMO manage, build and invest to meet the ever-evolving needs of internal and external customers. Here’s an excerpt:

What were the challenges you needed to overcome to be successful?

Regulators, auditors and leadership don’t care that we have a lot of work on, they expect total transparency for every technology project we deliver, and for the entire portfolio. We have to demonstrate that we have real time tracking, control and governance of our work from software capitalization to timesheet approvals.

At the same time, work has to be effective and efficient – the mechanisms we have in place to manage the work can’t slow that work down, and we also can’t lose focus on the strategic picture, even as we manage the minutiae. We needed a software solution that could provide both macro and micro level insight without requiring a lot of administration and management.

How did you go about addressing those problems?

These challenges meant we needed a comprehensive solution that could support the delivery of our business strategy while enabling our delivery teams to become more effective and efficient. And of course, it had to satisfy all regulatory and audit requirements. We were very focused on ensuring we had a single, integrated solution that minimized the disruption and kept all information in one place.

What did you do, and how did it help?

We selected Broadcom’s Clarity because it did exactly that – gave us everything we needed in a single platform. We have a single book of record for all technology spend – we even use it to directly feed the general ledger. The same platform also allows us to have over 11,000 employees using it to track work and time without slowing them down, providing complete transparency and governance.

At the same time, Clarity provides the data for executive dashboards that allow stakeholders to review their initiatives by portfolio or business pillar. This data can be drilled down into and viewed in multiple different contexts, allowing our leadership to make the right decisions in less time.

Clarity truly is the hub of all our technology project investments, managing financial and project performance statistics and communicating data to where it’s needed, when it’s needed.

How is this driving your success?

Our leaders have more trust in the information they see – that’s a huge win for us. It allows them to make difficult decisions faster and without second guessing. We have also improved our ability to pivot with minimal disruption when things need to change – something we did very successfully when COVID-19 hit. We also get confirmation that our investments are delivering their expected outcomes – and that’s clear to everyone from the CIO to front line team members.

Delivering the best possible customer experience while complying with banking regulations is important to us. Clarity helps us live up to those expectations with valuable data and insight that efficiently guides our decision-making process to ensure we are delivering value for our customers.