CLIENT PROBLEM
Our Client (a leading Global Foreign Exchange Company) was awarded the opportunity to partner with a Global major mobile phone provider to develop a white label, international remittance service.
As a consequence of tight deadlines and in house band-width challenges together with prior knowledge of MHC’s capabilities, MHC were engaged to support the agile change programme; In order to ensure adherence to the contractual deadline, MHC were brought in to ensure on-time delivery. The MHC team worked with the Client through to delivery and post implementation support (Hyper-care), ensuring appropriate Programme governance, reporting and delivery of the service within the required timeline and budget.
MHC APPROACH
The MHC Programme Director lead the subsequent approach in managing the delivery of the service including the following core activities:
Programme Governance
+ Developed and established appropriate governance and reporting structures to ensure engagement of all required stakeholders, keep all parties updated with progress, risks, actions Issues and dependencies and enable timely decision making and risk mitigation.
+ Established and chaired required fortnightly Steering committee and programme board.
+ Developed a communication plan and associated documentation to the client throughout the Programme life cycle.
Planning
+ Enhanced and managed the end to end Project Plan covering each of the functional work streams and aligning project managers to each of the work stream SMEs assigned to the programme.
+ Established fortnightly cadence of work stream status reports covering achievements in last period, upcoming milestones, key risks and issues (and mitigations) as well as status summary.
Functional Requirements
+ Supported the development and validation of functional requirements for each of the functional work streams including User Experience (UX) design, Legal and Compliance, Data Protection, Operations, Customer Support and Finance.
+ Supported the development and validation of the test conditions/cases developed by the work streams to test requirements.
+ Developed the required mandatory reporting and Management information requirements
Non-Functional Requirements
+ The end solution has involved the collaboration and integration of a variety of third Party applications and services. A dedicated senior Project Manager was assigned to review and test the many and varied non-functional requirements, across the entire solution stack, that are necessary in order to deliver the fully functioning product to market. This has included Cyber security, data protection, performance, and Service Level Agreement monitoring.
Sub Ledger Functionality
+ Given the projected transactional volumes for this new International Money transfer opportunity, it was decided that a more future proof and scalable accounting solution would be to deploy a “thin ledger” to support summarised postings to the General Ledger along with a sub ledger capability to enable transactional level account substantiation.
+ The project Manager working with the Client’s Finance SME and Finance development and testing teams developed the requirements, defined the various test conditions and ensured appropriate sign off and implementation of the required solution.
Business Testing, Operational Readiness and Hypercare
+ Regular reporting and visibility of the ongoing end to end testing were implemented ensuring test management traceability and ultimate sign-off.
+ Supported the defect management process for prioritising and scheduling remediation of defects arising from each of the test phases.
+ The Project Managers working with the various workstream SMEs developed day 1 readiness/Go-No Go checklists of the various tasks that needed to be delivered in order for their workstream to be ready for launch of the service. These tasks included ensuring testing of core requirements, hiring and training of staff, development and approval of Standard operational Procedures as well as ensuring all required policies and regulatory requirements were met.
+ In addition to the workstream specific day 1 readiness checklists, an overall Checklist was developed for review and sign off by the Client’s Senior Management.
+ For the first month following launch of the service, a hypercare process was developed and implemented: Additional daily reporting of early warning signs was developed along with key health metrics for both the individual workstreams as well as the overall Service, and reviewed by the Programme SMEs and Senior Management.
Result
The service, being a new in-app international money transfer capability, successfully delivered the capability for mobile phone users to effect secure cross-border payments to 47 countries using their debit or credit cards.
Payout methods cover SWIFT and Local settlement to beneficiaries’ bank accounts as well as cash pick up at tens of thousands of pick up stores globally. Whilst initially implemented for customers in the US, the product has been architected to be further expanded to provide a fully global service over the coming year.
