Transform your Systems and your Business
Mark Norton 25 March 2016 01:26:08 PM
System Audit and Remediation
An assurance that the output of current processes matches the current businesses obligations is important in its own right, and as a foundation for almost any change agenda. The Virtual System Image produces, on a customer-by-customer basis, the delta between the current system's results and those from its own virtual image of a perfectly implemented system. If the delta is zero then good - the organisation can proceed at speed with confidence. If there is a delta then we can fast track rectification because the nature and cause of the delta is made transparent.
This assurance is also useful as a 'before and after' validation when migrating systems, products, or customers, either to new processes or computer systems, or to new product propositions.
Generally a proof of concept for this can be done in two to four weeks, and a production ready capability for some significant subsection of a business possible in the region of 4-12 weeks.
System Simplification and/or Enhancement
The virtual image at the customer level becomes the executional cornerstone for a rationalised product and service offering. The IDIOM derived virtual images can be projected for scenario analysis, and also to automate the data transformation that delivers the chosen product taxonomy. Mass migrations of customer and other system data can be completely and flexibly handled by the extensions to the Virtual System Image. The Virtual System Image also allows simulation of past, present and future scenario based business cases.
Digital Ready
Digitisation goes beyond automation. It is automation plus knowing in real time the actual customer context. Using a GPS analogy, information is always based on the exact real time location of the customer. The same idea can apply to financial services, except that 'location' is not a geographic concept; it is the 'context' of the customer in relation to all of the company’s product and service rules. Because the Virtual System Image provides the complete real time context for each customer at each interaction, e.g. all financial and benefit information, it enables digitisation of the customer experience - i.e. real time determination of the ‘best-next’ process at any device at the moment that device is used.
A relevant banking analogy to this is what happened to enable ATMs to work in real time when the infrastructure was batch. ATMs operated in real time using 'mirror' files that periodically updated to the 'real' batch files. The idea here is not so dissimilar. The Virtual System Image is a mirror system that is akin to the mirror file. The legacy infrastructure can remain batch-like behind an agile real-time customer-facing shop front that is enabled by the customer's virtual image within the Virtual System Image. (The analogy is crude in the sense that the Virtual System Image is much more sophisticated than a mirror file.)
Replacement
The mirror file analogy can continue to deliver value indefinitely. As it does so, it will end up with more and more data from the legacy system residing in its own ‘mirrored database’. Sooner or later its functionality will both supersede and exceed that of the legacy system it is mirroring. This is the time to consider the replacement ‘switch’. With minimal effort and minimal risk, at some point the increasingly redundant legacy system can be simply 'switched off' as we transition fully to a new world of nimble, continuous, and perpetual systems improvement.
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