Summary

Cedar has been at the forefront of thought leadership and execution expertise across multiple digital and technology transformations. A technology transformation is very easily mistaken to be about system/application readiness alone. Hence, while a financial institution is transforming, all the focus is shifted towards system readiness. They must implement solutions the right way in the first attempt. Often the governing committees managing these transformations require a holistic view of the current state and readiness to initiate the upcoming significant or milestone for the right decision making. RAPID framework – a Cedar proprietary tool is a practical framework that comes in handy.

Cedar recommends the RAPID framework, which gives a holistic view in assessing readiness for program milestone initiation or completion. RAPID stands for the five essential components or perspectives of technology transformation which becomes necessary for consideration - Resources, Application, Process, Infrastructure and Data. This has been drawn from Cedar's experience encompasses core banking, digital banking, and card implementation across 40+ banks and financial institutions. The RAPID framework is a practical framework to assess the readiness for an upcoming milestone at multiple levels, including the Board / Steering Committee, Working Committee and Program Management Office (PMO).

How we add value

Cedar follows a 3-step approach to assist institutions in implementing the RAPID framework across strategic, operational & an in-depth assessment of the project. The RAPID framework assists in assessing the readiness across multiple areas, the most important one being the readiness for a bank to roll out and go live. RAPID readiness dashboard provides the management with a holistic review on the readiness to roll out the transformation on D-Day successfully.

Following is a sample of the critical areas tracked.

  • Strategic: Following are some of the sample questions that are asked at the strategic level.
    • Resources: Are the right resources sufficiently allocated as part of the testing workstream?
    • Application: Has the system met all its entry criteria for initiating the UAT?
    • Processes: Has the UAT Strategy been drafted and accepted by all the stakeholders?
    • Infrastructure: Are surround systems required for UAT made available?
    • Data: Is the necessary data for UAT migrated and validated?
  • Operational: It is vital to further sub-divide individual components of RAPID to multiple assessable parameters.
    • Resources
      • Representatives allocated from all business units.
      • At least 2 members allocated from each business unit.
    • Application
      • Has the System Integration Testing met all its exit criteria?
      • Have the test cases required for UAT been submitted, verified and signed-off?
    • Processes
      • Have all business unit leads reviewed the UAT strategy document?
      • Is the document incorporated with all the inputs and signed off?
      • Has the briefing session for UAT testing conducted for testing and incidents management?
    • Infrastructure
      • Is the URL for the UAT Environment made available and communicated?
      • Is the associated development environment for incidents managements made available?
    • Data
      • Is the data migration round before UAT been completed and validated?
      • Have all the high priority issues in the data migration been resolved?
  • Assessment: The parameters defined above are assessed and evaluated. Each activity's status is identified and is provided with an appropriate plan of action and an owner for tracking the actionable.

Client Cases

Talk to our Consulting leaders about how we can add value
Contact us to make strategy & innovation work for you