Delivering on IT business management

Dresdner Kleinwort chose the BMC IT Business Management suite for a comprehensive IT management solution to support the management of running the bank and changing bank activities.

“With BMC, we finally found somebody who developed a solution aligned with our vision for centralized IT management. It was like the glove fit the hand”
-Keith O’Kelly, Director, IT Global Business Management, Dresdner Kleinwort

Results achieved:

> Shorter planning and budgeting cycles
> Improved financial transparency
> Reduced sustained compliance costs
> Elimination of redundant vendor contracts
> Better alignment of project investments

The Challenge

Investment banking is one of the most challenging industries in terms of the demands placed on IT. There is constant pressure on systems to support new financial instruments and products while reducing transaction costs and meeting increased regulatory requirements in a global environment. In this industry, technology drives competitive advantage, and this bank is a leading competitor.

The challenge for the bank was to drive even more IT efficiency, while ensuring that IT investments are best aligned to the most profitable areas of the business. According to Keith O'Kelly, director of IT Global Business Management, "The goal was not to centralize IT management, but rather provide a single, central system that supported a federated model of IT management - where every functional manager could truly have responsibility and accountability for their resources, activities and associated budgets. We wanted each leader in IT to have the information and tools to make informed and aligned business decisions while providing a centralized view of cost and resource impacts of these decisions."

The bank already had much of the processes and data to support its vision of IT management, but the effort to bring the information together in a meaningful way was far from ideal.

The BMC IT Business Management Solution

The bank wanted a comprehensive IT management solution - an ecosystem of applications to support comprehensive management of running the bank (sustaining) and changing the bank (project) activities. When they looked at the commercial market for solutions to construct the ecosystem, they were introduced to the BMC IT Business Management Suite. "It was like the glove fit the hand immediately," said O'Kelly.

As O'Kelly explained, "We looked around in the market and only found point solutions in areas such as project portfolio management. Selecting a standard tool from the market to build an integrated solution is unique, but with BMC, we finally found somebody who developed a solution aligned to our vision for a single source of truth for IT management that supported our federated IT management model." Working together, the bank's team and BMC performed a review of the bank's current IT processes, defined business goals, and developed a roadmap of process change to achieve them.

The bank elected to implement the full BMC IT Business Management Suite, taking advantage of BMC's phased implementation capability. In the first year, the bank rapidly implemented solutions for project portfolio management, vendor relationship management, human capital management, and governance and compliance management in four incremental stages. Each deployment leveraged the framework of the earlier ones, accelerating progress as the deployments progressed. O'Kelly says that every module has been successful and the bank has recently deployed the final module - financial resource management - and is developing and managing the global IT budget across every cost center using the solution. The bank will now be able to centrally manage IT financials, including global IT budgeting and cost allocations and chargebacks, without having to manually roll up hundreds of individual spreadsheets and manage a homegrown database to do the work.

The Benefits

In just the first year, Dresdner Kleinwort gained visibility and the ability to effectively communicate IT priorities, accomplishments, and challenges with the various stakeholders, improving IT's credibility as a business partner. In labor efforts alone, the initiative has saved 20 full-time equivalents, who now can be directed to higher-value activities.

Additional Benefits Include:

• An improvement in contracts management, eliminating redundant vendor contracts
• More efficient overview of regulatory compliance, which can help to reduce compliance costs as workflows are automated
• Better management of the project portfolio
• A better financial management system
• A system that ensures project selection and resource allocation are better aligned with the bank's business objectives

In reflecting on the accomplishments of IT in the past year, Stephen Ashton, managing director, Global IT Business Management, explained, "With each module implemented and each process automated, we are achieving our goal of IT management clarity, simplicity, stability, and granularity. With this goal, we will achieve the agility and adaptability necessary in a fast moving and constantly changing industry, such as investment banking. We are making the important measurable, not the measurable important. We are commercializing IT."

Key Products Used

• BMC IT Business Management Suite:
• BMC Financial Resource Management
• BMC Vendor Relationship Management
• BMC Governance and Compliance Management
• BMC Product and Portfolio Management
• BMC Human Capital Management

About BMC Software

BMC Software delivers the solutions IT needs to increase business value through better management of technology and IT processes. Our industry-leading Business Service Management solutions help you reduce cost, lower risk of business disruption, and benefit from an IT infrastructure built to support business growth and flexibility. Only BMC provides best-practice IT processes, automated technology management, and award-winning BMC Atrium technologies that offer a shared view into how IT services support business priorities. Known for enterprise solutions that span mainframe, distributed systems, and end-user devices, BMC also delivers solutions that address the unique challenges of the midsized business. Founded in 1980, BMC has offices worldwide and fiscal 2008 revenues of $1.73 billion. Activate your business with the power of IT. www.bmc.com

Dresdner Kleinwort Case Study for download.