Client Background
The client is a leading commercial bank in Jordan serving retail, SME and corporate customers alongside an active treasury business. With its core banking system and several key technology components approaching end of life, the bank launched a multi-phase transformation programme to modernise its platforms and automate its finance and risk processes. The application estate had grown layer by layer, leaving overlapping systems, under-used licences, heavy manual reporting and no dedicated enterprise architecture function to govern technology choices. The first phase of the programme combined an IT and enterprise architecture diagnostic with reviews of core banking, the general ledger and financial risk platforms. Cedar was mandated to lead the enterprise architecture workstream, define the bank's target-state architectures and frame the strategic decisions that would feed its way-forward roadmap and business case.
Cedar’s Approach
Cedar applied its enterprise architecture diagnostic methodology, moving from business-IT alignment and design principles to target-state blueprints and, finally, to structured decision papers that leadership could approve at steering committee level. The work was organised into five modules:
Application and Functional Architecture – Cedar agreed design principles with the bank, including API-first design, minimal customisation and security and resilience by design, then assessed the full application inventory and assigned every system to a retain, upgrade, evaluate, replace or new bucket. The resulting target functional architecture spans Cedar's eight layers, from channels and integration through mid-office, back-office, support and analytics, and introduces capabilities such as enterprise fraud risk management, an ERP platform, a corporate general ledger, an operational data store and an integrated financial risk platform.
Technology Architecture – Cedar reviewed databases, servers and storage, web and application servers, operating systems, environments and network against industry practice, and set guiding principles around containerisation, disaster recovery for tier-one applications, component rationalisation, cloud readiness and open banking capability.
Data Architecture – Cedar defined data design principles and a target-state data architecture, with an operational data store and data marts to relieve the manual effort behind finance and risk reporting.
Strategic Decision Papers – Cedar identified 17 key decision areas across business, application, technology and data. Each paper set out the problem statement, the options, their pros and cons, the cost implications and a clear Cedar view, and the papers were taken through successive steering committee sessions.
IT Organisation – Cedar designed a typical enterprise architecture office structure with roles and responsibilities for its head and core architects, and set out how the bank's digital factory could scale through agile principles, a strengthened core team and targeted skills and certifications.
Strategic Outcome and Way Forward
The engagement gave the bank a single, agreed view of its target application, technology and data landscape, together with a transparent decision trail. Several decisions were approved at steering committee, including building an in-house enterprise architecture function for critical lead roles, meeting identity and access needs with existing directory tooling rather than a full-scale suite, making better use of an under-used treasury front-office platform, and retaining the incumbent compliance screening solution instead of funding a replacement. Other papers covering database and middleware roadmaps, web and application servers, the operational data store, ERP and trade finance back-office were queued for decision alongside the core banking choice.
The way forward moves from cost-benefit assessment of the approved decisions to a formal business case and a three-year technology roadmap prioritised into quick wins, medium-term and long-term initiatives, followed by steering committee and Board presentation and the initiation of the programme's second phase.