ING BARINGS: A CASE STUDY IN GLOBAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Sasan Rahmatian, Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences

The Sid Craig School of Business, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, CA 93740

559.278.4376, sasan_rahmatian@csufresno.edu

ABSTRACT

This is a report of a recent consulting assignment involving the introduction of new information technology in a global financial institution. While the project involved the selection and implementation of advanced computer technology, the fascinating lessons are those pertaining to project management and implementation issues.

The Company

ING Barings is a global financial institution of Dutch origin and is active in the field of banking, insurance and asset management in more than 60 countries, with more than 90,000 employees.

The Application

ING Barings already has a global presence and is able to support local client business anytime, anywhere. It lacks, however, the inter-time zone infrastructure. This means that clients are not able to enter overnight limit orders. Aimed at overcoming this deficiency, the project "FX/MM Front Office" is managed by a project manager from Operations/IT who has been assigned the task of selecting and implementing a new global FX/MM front office system for the Financial Markets users.

The project has been initiated to support a number of business objectives. The main objectives were cost reduction, enablement for e-Commerce and support for the globalization of the business.

The Success Factors

Senior management in Financial Markets kicked off the project "FX/MM Front Office" early in 2000 to select and implement a new global system for the Financial Markets users. There was a strong sense of commercial and strategic urgency to improve and rationalize an extremely complex and important business function in ING Barings. This represents a positive factor for the success of the project.

Project management was allocated to Operations/IT because of this department’s experience in change management and because IT is one of the main success factors in this project. This also represents a positive factor for the success of the project.

The project set out for considerable changes that would impact many stakeholders from all regions and many support functions in ING Barings. However, the scope of the projected change was not completely covered by the scope of sponsorship. This lack of alignment represents a negative factor for the success of the project and explains the considerable discussions and delays when the first decisions point was reached regarding the ratification of the selection of the software package, Opics.

The project team lacked clarity in the strategic business model and started to focus on the process of package selection and the execution of project activities rather than escalating this issue as a missing prerequisite for future delivery. This represents a negative factor for the success of the project and explains the amount of time it took before the lack of real progress became apparent and expectancy levels were adjusted.

During the course of the project, various discussions started to introduce unrelated topics into the project, thereby altering its scope. Also, interventions from senior line managers started to occur. This had an adverse effect on the quality of methods and processes and represents lack of strength in project management. This is a very negative factor for the success of the project.

Lessons Learned

The negative factors tended to outweigh the positive factors. The main causes of this negative balance are found in the area of project management and have led to the following lessons to be learned.

• Project management is underestimated in terms of importance and complexity by project managers and by line managers.

• A project organization should co-exist separate from the line organization. Lack of recognition of that principle will result in lack of recognition of the project manager's role. Ultimately, line managers start to run the project as they overrule project management.

• IT does not have the strategic position in ING Barings that it deserves. IT services all primary and secondary processes of ING Barings and is at the forefront of every change in the organization. However, IT is organizationally part of Operations rather than a separate support function by itself while Operations is only one of at least five business functions supported by IT.