Success Stories > By Industry

Securities

One of the nation's largest full-service securities firms with more than 1,650 financial consultants and 5,000 employees. The company serves inpidual investors and businesses through offices coast to coast, and capital markets and correspondent clients in select U.S. and international market.

Challenge: The customer undertook a large conversion from in house applications to outside service provider in an effort to realize real time processing benefits for its clients, align long-term IT development goals and reduce back office costs. The IT Management team recognized need to utilize outside assistance to help realize conversion objectives, establish future processes to support IT strategies and realize operational efficiencies in the business.

Solution: Fulcrum provided team based management consulting and IT staffing services on short notice to support conversion goals, IT strategy attainment and process improvement objectives. The range of work included teams to assist with Program and project management of conversion workstreams; Developers and QA support for integration and testing needs and organizational development staff to facilitate rationalizing, strategy formulation and business analysis.

Results

• Fulcrum is rated the #1 vendor (out of 25) in the areas of Project Based services. Overall customer satisfaction rating was 4.75 (5 being the best).
• Most of conversion related drivers have been realized.
• IT Portfolios have been rationalized and prioritized to deliver optimal business value.

Financial Services

A diversified financial services company providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance with over $482B in assets and 153,000 employee utilizing stores, the internet and other distribution channels across North America.

Challenges: The customer’s Mortgage Business, one of the largest providers of residential mortgage lending and servicing required outside help to lead various business and IT transformational initiatives (process change, technology implementation). The customer utilized outsiders as a mechanism to augment internal delivery gaps while focusing on core competencies.

Solution: Fulcrum provided team based resources skilled in program and project leadership to support attainment of business and IT transformation goals. Business drivers that Fulcrum has asked to participate in include cross enterprise consolidation of processes and systems, migrations, process improvement, risk management and customized development.

Results:

• Fulcrum is rated as a top niche vendor for Project Leadership services with the Mortgage Line of Business.
• Projects objectives were realized on time and within budget parameters.
• Overall customer satisfaction was 4.83 out of 5 (5 being the best).
• Fulcrum has and will continue to play an important role in helping the customer maintain market leadership and delivery business value through project based delivery services.

Insurance

A global financial institution that provides banking, insurance and asset management to more than 60 million clients in over 50 countries.

Challenge: The customer’s Annuity Life Line of Business required outside assistance to complete requirements definition and deployment of over 20 IT projects while migrating to a large Life System. Customer had limited internal capacity to address project backlog and sought one firm to lead the overall workstream and supporting projects.

Solution: Fulcrum provided a turnkey solution, from launching PMO based resources who developed the underlying project structure and program strategy, to validating and refining project based estimates that were delivered on a not to exceed price basis. In addition to the PMO and BA staff provided, Fulcrum sourced large implementation teams (+40) to complete the analysis, development and ongoing support of these applications.

Results:

• Overall customer satisfaction rating was 4.85 out of 5 (5 being the best).
• All projects were completed on-time and on budget.
• Client was able to focus on other priorities.
• Overall IT customer satisfaction within business improved based on internal feedback.
• Project ROI ranged from $1M+ to over $100M recurring.
• Compliance related mandates were realized in a timely fashion.

Transportation

A recognized leader in the Airline Industry, this customer has consistently maintained its market leadership role through the cost effective delivery of passenger and cargo transportation services.

Challenge: The customer believed its Customer Service Department was spending too much time on non-revenue generating tasks, as well as on software application tasks that were extremely time consuming. Additionally, the Credit and Collection processes did not support the business requirements, and had reached the limits of growth. The challenges that faced were magnified by the growth strategy of the company and expectations to increase shareholder value. The customer wanted a lean and efficient customer service organization that would help the company compress cycle times and improve customer services responsiveness and quality.

Solution: A joint team of customer and Fulcrum specialists identified a number of issues and improvements that were needed. During the analysis phase, the project focused on six work streams: four in Processes and Technology, two in Training and Organization. Fulcrum discovered 150 opportunities for improvement by using several diagnostic tools including "A Day in the Life", "Brown Paper" idea generation sessions, surveys, executive interviews and data probes.

During implementation, a joint customer and Fulcrum team designed and implemented process change and related system enhancements and recommended next steps that included development of Key Performance Indicators to monitor changes, improve overall management of processes and simulate future improvements

Results: Customer utilized Fulcrum to deliver all dimensions of project, from strategy through implementation. Overall engagement satisfaction rating was 4.89 out of 5.0 (5 being the best).

Customer recovered full project cost after 4 month period due to process improvements.

Customer service roles are now aligned with overall business direction and goals to build stronger relationships.

Retail

Customer is one of the largest consumer retailers in North America, operating over 500 stores in 50 states and Europe.

Challenge: Approached with significant investment costs to upgrade and expand current functionality with their current software partner, the customer engaged Fulcrum to assess the benefits of maintaining, investing further, or changing direction with respect to their current ERP systems. Long-term, the customer wanted to ensure their application strategy would help the company achieve the goal of maintaining its recognition as being one of the "Best Places to Work". Similarly, to maintain or invest in an ERP solution that would provide enterprise view and access to company information, provide customer based self service capabilities, enable process change and allow for measurement of benefits.

Solution: A joint team of customer and Fulcrum specialists worked through the following activities to determine the current state of fit and readiness for change, including:

• Envisioning exercises were completed with executives to understand the mission, goals and objectives for the administrative pision
• “Brown Paper” sessions were used to construct “to be” business flows that supported the long-term goals of the business
• Analysis was conducted on current costs (hard and soft) around the current systems investments; similarly, process and cycle time opportunities were identified to support process innovation flows
• Peer and industry benchmarks were developed and compared to customer operating environment
• ERP function/business fit analysis was completed on existing ERP and 4 other leading packages that supported future administrative requirements
• Business case and project plan was constructed to support “implementation” workstreams

During implementation, the joint project team focused on eight work streams that focused on process and technology improvements to support the vision of the administrative pision. Ultimately, the customer determined that a different ERP suite mapped better with the “to be” goals of the company.

Upon acceptance of the business case, customer and Fulcrum designed and implemented process innovations, implemented new ERP modules, provided training in the new business processes and system functionality, built measurements to ensure long-term benefits realization and outsourced the maintenance of support functions to third party

Results: The overall project paid for itself 4 months earlier than planned due to improved processing efficiencies and reduced systems maintenance costs. Fulcrum satisfaction rating was 4.71 out of 5 (5 being the best)

Brokerage

A full-service national brokerage firm with nearly 7000 financial consultant in more than 700 offices nationwide and in Europe.

Challenge: Customer and Fulcrum Consulting worked together as a result of goals to address post-conversion business inefficiencies, and to build long term process improvement capabilities within the Operations and Branch pisions. Ultimately, the customer wanted to extract greater value generated by the large $MM+ investment made in converting. Fulcrum was engaged to:

• Optimize and/or fix existing business process across branch and operations impacted by conversion (e.g. Mutual Funds, Customer Disbursements)
• Enable process change capabilities throughout operations and branch office functions
• Reduce manual operating procedures over time
• Allow for measurement of benefits
• Support the activities necessary to differentiate their retail and back office functions from their competition

Solution: A joint team of customer and Fulcrum consultants worked through the following activities to determine the current state of fit and readiness for change within the Operations pisions, including: development of “to be” business flows that supported conversion impacts and address long-term efficiency goals of the business, analysis of current costs around the current systems investments; peer and industry benchmarks were developed; readiness analysis was completed to determine sequencing, priority and communications framework required to support implementation of future changes; business case and project plan was constructed to support “implementation” and change management workstreams.

During Implementation, customer and Fulcrum designed and implemented process innovations prioritized to address the largest opportunities for improvement throughout the operations pisions, provided training in the new business processes, built measurements used to ensure long-term benefits realization and wrote communications to support key change milestones.

Results:

• Customer satisfaction average was 4.75 out of 5 (5 being the best)
• Project ROI ranged from $2.5M to over $80M recurring
• New skills were transferred to key internal staff
• Fulcrum was engaged to assist with other key transformation goals including:
  • Led rationalization efforts to reduce direct costs resulting from staff redundancies brought on by the conversion.
  • developed resource management process focused on improving AGE optimization of available resource supply and business demand across operations and IT pisions.
  • provided direction and coaching that supported changes in culture, business processes, controls and systems within the operations, retail and IT organizations.

Telecommunications

A global telecommunications equipment manufacturer with a goal to improve its competitive position, lower sales costs and better serve customers by implementing a multichannel B2B and Web based sales channel strategy.

Challenge: The customer was facing stiffer competition in an increasingly commoditized marketplace, and its existing sales model, which relied heavily on direct sales, was unsustainable. It needed to provide its customers with a more cost-effective, flexible means of buying its products. In part due to customer demand, the customer knew that it would have to expand its limited on-line sales channel, but it lacked a strategy to do so.

Solution: Fulcrum developed an on-line e-business strategy which used an integrated, pronged, approach that leveraged both direct B2B and Web sales. The B2B channel, designed to facilitate call-off sales to high value customers, can be supplemented by the Web channel for sale of configurable products to those key customers. The Web portal solution would also be designed for smaller customers, allowing self-service order management for commodity products.

Benefits: The combination of B2B and Web sales allowed customer to tailor its sales strategy on demand, based on customer characteristics. The company is expected to see a 23% increase in sales over two years without significant investment in sales and sales support resources.

Manufacturing

$8 Billion division of global 50 manufacturer who, in less than five months, needed to transfer more than 6,000 people and over 1,400 applications transparently, and without a business shutdown.

Challenge: Customer announced that it was spinning off an industrial manufacturing pision to European company. The customer faced the massive job of transferring 6,000 employees across a number of countries, along with over 1,000 IT applications. The transition had to be seamless to customers and suppliers; all business process associated with the pision would have to be extricated and put into place at the new company, all without disrupting service to customers.

Solution: Customer engaged Fulcrum to help it decouple its pision. The key to the smooth transition was the core Project Office, made up of people from both companies, through which every aspect of the pestiture passed. This office had full authority and executive-level support from both companies for all decisions, and managed the project across functions, geographies, countries and processes.

Results: Customer’s successful pestiture of a $8 Billion company was completed in less than 5 months and with no downtime.

Healthcare

Provides a full range of business services to meet the complex needs of national employers and health plans, offers network-based health care services and information services to the healthcare industry. Because of cumulative acquisitions and process overlap, the customer needed to integrate the corporate function under one company operating under centralized systems and processes.

Business need: Customer needed help with its centralization plans to fit the new corporate model while continuing efforts to streamline processes to cut costs and improve efficiency.

Solution: Fulcrum worked with customer through its reorganization process and oversaw the business transformation in the costing center and financial departments. The Fulcrum team helped set up a central finance unit within the new corporation and guided the company through a difficult readjustment under changing business circumstances and within a tight timeframe.

Benefits: Business goals were met. The streamlined processes resulted in reduced costs, improved accuracy and shortened financial closing cycle to 2.5 days. It also improved production profitability tracking, enabled cost analysis and supported better informed business decisions.

Consumer Products

A diversified Fortune 500 consumer products company.

Challenge: The customer underwent an audit for compliance with government security regulations. Fulcrum was engaged to assist the client with procedural and technical aspects of the audit requirements. The procedural solution included the development of an audit matrix and the development of procedures in areas of non-compliance. The technical solution encompassed selection and deployment of key system components for securing the client's system platforms. This project addressed the procedural solution.

Solution: Fulcrum was engaged to develop a security matrix to assist in the audit of the system environment's compliance with governmental requirements. It also comprised the actual evaluation of the different aspects of security compliance categories (logical access control, network security, vital record protection, disaster recovery and computing controls).

Fulcrum developed the matrix through a review of the client's internal security policies and procedures. Each identified category was then evaluated for compliance. In the event of non-compliance, Fulcrum provided the recommendation for correcting the deficiency. The evaluation consisted of an integrity check on each security requirement and a "test audit" to verify whether these requirements were properly completed.

Benefits: Fulcrum provided the customer with a preview of what the audit would identify for non-compliance. In many situations, Fulcrums audit standards proved more stringent than the governmental requirements. Fulcrum succeeded because of a clear articulation of scope, deliverable, and expectations from the client's perspective.

Pharmaceutical

A Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company.

Challenge: Our customer determined that its Research & Development group was not operating fast enough to bring new products to the marketplace, and operate at a greater speed. The company was lagging its competitors in the introduction of solutions and management processes. To support the company’s long-term growth plans, the customer needed to improve Research & Development productivity. This would require new technology and a new strategy to leverage the technology as well as the skill to deliver new capabilities down the road.

Solution: The customer came to Fulcrum to help them develop a long term strategy. The company would draw heavily on Fulcrum’s change management experience as it changed its R&D culture. Ultimately, helping them to collaborate and embrace rapid change. Working jointly, Fulcrum, helped design and deliver the future blueprint for a organization with clear governance, new business processes and technology. Leveraged by new standards and processes, technology and tools, information has become transparent and available in real time, both streamlining and improving the decision-making process and helping to increase the product delivery lifecycle.

Results: R&D processes turn than they did before the transformation. Improvements in throughput have doubled, using 25% the resources required previously. Reduced time spent on duplicate activities will save customer over 8,000 labor days annually providing additional capacity to focus on the challenge of introducing new products.

Diversified Financial Services

A diversified global financial services company known for its full range of payment processing and payment product businesses.

Challenge: Pursuit of scale led to increased complexity and challenges in coordinating geographically dispersed operations and international integration projects. In order to deliver merger benefits to shareholders, the client embarked on an ambitious program to integrate and simplify operations, facilities and people. Facing a deteriorating business climate, the client also realized that successful integration at the business level must be by a coordinated action to streamline its IT strategy. This decision was influenced by concerns about the organization's capacity to implement and absorb change at the planned rate and its ability to ensure that IT investments would yield planned benefits. The client needed to reduce IT investments to a level that was compatible with overall cash flow targets without cutting back on the promised integration and business benefits.

Solution: Fulcrum was brought in to work with the customer’s executive team to align IT spending; to assess all investment data against consistent criteria, model the financial aspects of various investment scenarios and determine the concrete actions required to achieve these scenarios. Within four months, the client's portfolio of IT investments was assessed, filtered and prioritized. This represented a pipeline of over 1100 IT projects which made for high complexity due to the many interdependencies. Speed to value was critical, so the assessment focused primarily on the largest and most strategic projects which together made up the bulk of the planned investments.

Results: Fulcrum teamed with the customer to deliver these results providing analytical tools and techniques that allowed rapid progress, a new point of view to challenge conventional thinking as well as discipline and execution focus to ensure that the initiative resulted in real change and business results improvement. The joint team delivered a new IT agenda that reduced spending on IT development by $80M and brought forward the break-even point for the portfolio of IT investments. In total, the analysis uncovered over $175 million of value to be delivered over a three-year period through reprioritization, better sequencing of projects and an improved approach to critical projects. At the same time, the new IT investment agenda has lowered risk and increased the probability of success for each of the initiatives. At the heart of this success was the management team's determination to take a portfolio view of the entire IT investment agenda. This allowed the client to allocate more funding to those critical projects with very strong business cases—in the midst of a general reduction in IT spending.

Managed Healthcare Organization

A Fortune 500 Managed Healthcare and Insurance Company.

Challenge: To stay competitive, the customer needed fast and accurate decision-making based on seamless access to business information and operational data across all areas of the organization. Similarly, the company wanted to reduce its cost base and improve time to market. All these objectives required a strong bridge between the business and the technology supporting it. The customers IT management team decided to strengthen this linkage by aligning the group's business and technology more closely. While each of the customers business pisions was closely aligned to the business units it served, they were well-positioned to support end-to-end processes or solutions, with human intervention being required to share data across pisions. The company engaged Fulcrum to help it define an enterprise architecture across all of its technology pisions, enabling it to drive greater re-use, better integrate its systems and enjoy shorter timescales for technology delivery.

Solution: Working with Fulcrum, the joint team started constructed an SOA Plan. In the first phase, the team examined and assessed the current technology systems across key operations. The main findings pointed to the need to fully exploit existing IT assets and different application technologies, and therefore an enterprise-level standards-based approach was required. Phase two involved building a clear picture of key business and technology drivers. The joint team then set out clearly how these could be reflected in the "to-be" future technology architecture. Because integration and process orchestration were key enablers for the new architecture, the team proposed that a service-oriented architecture should be used to integrate the business and technology systems in a way that would put the road map into effect while minimizing the need for investment in systems replacement. The team conducted a proof of concept n two phases, Technical and Functional. At relevant points in the process, Fulcrum utilized SOA specialists from across its national network to provide input and expertise. The Fulcrum team also worked with third parties chosen by the customer to validate the technology standards set out in the initial enterprise architecture work, and to demonstrate the concept and value of SOA to the business.