Consolidating Global SAP systems in the financial sector

“What differentiates Turnkey Consulting from other suppliers is the different layers of expert SAP security management tha twe are able to access. We know that if we’ve got a concern or a question we can come to Turnkey and we can get quality answers and actions."

— Global Security Manager

Challenge

The Company wanted to improve the way it delivered its HR services to the entire business, as well as creating a new authorisation structure and identity procedures. Within HR, they faced wider challenges over identity management and processes needed to be put in place for JML (joiner, mover, leaver) and timely exit practices.

The Company was looking to bring together three parts of the business in order to consolidate its HR practices wherever possible. The three areas were Retail Banking, Investment Banking and the investment arm for government, corporate and institutional clients.

In addition, there were some legacy systems to consolidate, as well as the need to address the differences between the way the three parts of the business would approach such a change in HR practices and the delivery of security. Furthermore, the Investment Banking part of the business did not have an existing SAP security team who could be dedicated to building a project.

Investing in a single system would create and automate processes to manage HR procedures and to consolidate business processes. It would also allow the organisation to build a map of generic roles in order to reduce the duplication of effort and to consolidate business processes around HR.

Solution

Turnkey Consulting was already well known to the Company through previous contacts in Governance, Risk and Controls. In addition, with a lack of relevant resources within the Company for this project, NGA, the third party SAP HR Consultancy and Hosting firm used by the Company, decided to engage Turnkey Consulting to support them in delivery of the security work stream on the project.

The aim of the OneHR project was to consolidate business processes for HR globally. In order to meet this objective, standardised roles needed to be built to support the standardised business processes and simplify the JML process. The new, standardised roles would also need to address the use of portals and SharePoint at the front end, and ensure the new system would meet all the necessary GRC requirements. The final outcome would be to have defined roles and authorisation structures within one end solution with simple functionality that is easy for business approvers to understand and for support to manage.

The UK was one of the Company’s first countries to be moved onto the consolidated system and Turnkey worked closely with the Global Security Manager for the Governance, Risk and Controls team and the Head of Governance, Risk and Controls (GRC) to ensure that QA and security requirements were being met. The Global Security Manager explains “It was important to keep the executive stakeholders in HR in the loop and I held monthly meetings to communicate progress and iron out any issues. They were very positive about Turnkey’s input, especially on the security elements.”

Turnkey and the Global Security Manager had to work hard to get the business to define processes to the level of detail required by Turnkey in order to appropriately define the roles required to support these processes and determine how they would be built. In addition, it was necessary to review legacy roles and determine how these could be transitioned to the new design.

The Head of GRC in particular was extremely pleased with the collaboration between the organisaton and Turnkey project teams. He comments “There was a good dialogue between Turnkey, NGA and us about the challenges over technology and the right approach over architecture decisions. Even where they have disagreed on a particular issue, they have always been able to work it through professionally together to ensure the best of breed solutions.”

Benefits 

•  Consolidation of operating model – the standardisation of business processes and security restrictions has streamlined the operating model across the three parts of the business
• Delivery of cost savings for reduced use of HR maintenance – the improved automated functionality in one end solution allows human resources to be re-directed with less of an administration burden.
• Strategic approach to authorisations – Streamlined version of HR system addresses how the business is changing and allows longer-term strategies to be put in place and adhered to automatically.
• Improved compliance – access to Turnkey’s professionals gives the Company reassurance that it is tapping into the best practices and knowledgebase to achieve enhanced compliance.
• Simple functionality – the new improved system forms a central link allowing any changes to staff and the JML process to be instantly recorded and the process managed smoothly, without the need for additional ad hoc requests.

Overall engagement with Turnkey

Because of the previous working relationship with Turnkey, the Company was able to get them up to speed quickly and challenges could be addressed within the team more easily because of the familiar territory.

The Global Security Manager says “What differentiates Turnkey Consulting from other suppliers is the different layers of expert SAP security management that we are able to access. We know that if we’ve got a concern or a question we can come to Turnkey and we can get quality answers and actions. With other suppliers you might simply be hiring an additional technical resource, where the management might be just focused on the pure billing aspect of your project but with Turnkey they have content knowledge throughout the management hierarchy. Security is a complex area with many challenges, so it’s reassuring to know that you have got the management layer in place that you can have those dialogues with.”

The Head of GRC adds “Over recent years, companies have moved to a wide range of partners for SAP security and often off-shore for more cost-effectiveness. But what we’ve noticed is a drop in quality as a result of doing that. In our organisation we built up our internal team with our own strong capabilities, and then when it comes to projects, we hire in specialist organisations to support us in a knowledgeable way, and to talk to us in a business-friendly manner without being too technical in certain meetings.”

He adds “The OneHR project is such an important piece of work for us, everyone felt collectively that it was the right decision to bring Turnkey Consulting on board. It has been a good decision and it helps to build that partnership further.”

He concludes “At my level you tend to judge projects or suppliers on how much noise you’ve had to deal with and I’ve had none, so that tends to tell me that the partnership my Global Security Manager has with Turnkey has worked well. We’re really happy.”

The Global Security Manager agrees “It’s a great two-way interaction and a meeting of minds on how SAP security should be built and progressed. It is a good relationship and it does help that the consultants at Turnkey know what they need to do and don’t shy away from something that they don’t agree on.”