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| Background |
| The CEPME (Crédit d’Equipement des Petites et Moyennes Entreprises), a French national organisation, had grown
over many years primarily through acquisition of hundreds of small regional banks and loan organisations. The Bank's requirement was to develop
the strategy and project plan needed to convert all of it's corporate legacy application systems to the new IDMS/MVS environment. These had been
developed in a multitude of computer languages, and resided on a variety of technical platforms. |
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| Two project managers assigned
to the role one after the other had quit as a result of management pressure, creating an atmosphere fraught with tension across the IT and
End-user Divisions. |
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| Achievements |
| Despite these adverse conditions, the Change Facilitator consultant delivered the high-level project plan
integrating both (a) the data and application system conversion and (b) the systems work. Moreover, the consultant's work confirmed the
need for closer collaboration between the End-user, Applications, and Systems Divisions, and paved the way for more successful projects in future.
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| Challenges |
| Apart from technical issues, complex data issues, and general lack of documentation, the primary challenge to overcome was an
unrealistic expectation of how rapidly this programme of work could be completed, primarily because no one in the Bank had prior experience of
such a major change project. |
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| Approach |
| Working in close collaboration with the key stakeholders to clearly understand the business and
technology issues and concerns, the Change Facilitator consultant was able to build a solid business case to demonstrate the need to understand
and mitigate the business risks through thorough planning, organisation, testing, and staff training. The business case provided the supporting
arguments to enable the consultant to develop a realistic high-level project plan incorporating all key areas of work: data cleansing, application
and database systems conversion, parallel testing of mission-critical systems and back-up procedures. |
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| Benefits |
| This multi-million French
Franc project which extended over a period of over 20 months elapsed time, was delivered to schedule and to budget. |
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