Situation
This large Financial Services organisation was embarking on a significant program of transformation to meet the demands of a digital market environment. They needed to understand their current ICT capabilities and establish what, if any, improvements were required, to ensure their ICT function had the capability and capacity to manage their extensive ICT assets and deliver their forthcoming change agenda.
An assessment of the client’s ICT Capability Benchmark and Baseline was conducted using a mature and industry recognised framework – the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF ™).
Objectives
- Establish self-assessed, baseline maturity levels, using IT-CMF as the model for ICT governance and management. This baseline was used to measure progress against targeted improvements in overall capability-maturity;
- Establish comparisons to available benchmark data for ICT services in the financial services industry, as a justification for proposed target levels of maturity across IT-CMF, and the necessary investments to close identified maturity gaps; and
- Provide input and guidance to the ICT Strategy initiative, such that activities to close maturity gaps were included into the ICT Strategic Plan and Roadmap.
Solution
Business Aspect undertook the following steps to delivering the capability maturity assessment:
- Identified and presented to 30 plus business and IT participants for the survey.
- Distributed and conducted the survey.
- Conducted analysis in collaboration with the Innovation Value Institute, analysed current and target state scores, together with improvement scores. Applied relevant industry benchmark data and compared to the client’s current state scores.
- Identified priorities for capability improvement.
- Reported results.
The client, through the survey, self-assessed both current and target state maturity scores across the 35 areas of IT-CMF. Called ‘critical capabilities’ they are organised into categories: Managing IT like a Business, Managing the IT Budget, Managing the IT Capability and Managing IT for Business Value. The survey results identified current areas of highest and lowest maturity levels. Target state maturity levels were also identified and the gap between current and target maturity states provided the client with a ready assessment tool for their IT capabilities.
The survey participants also scored each of the 35 critical capabilities, based on how important it was to improve to support the strategic priorities. The importance scores indicated some notable differences of opinion between Business and IT and enabled the client’s management to make decisions on capability improvement based on importance ratings of the organisation’s staff.
Outcome
Business Aspect successfully applied the IT-CMF to establish baseline IT maturity levels within the client and identify areas of highest priority improvement. We also applied industry benchmarks for IT-CMF scoring which enabled the client to compare their maturity levels across the individual areas with other like organisations.
In having a comprehensive baseline and benchmark of their IT Capabilities, the client’s leaders could set priorities and direction in building and maturing organisational IT capability in line with their change agenda.