Client Background
The client is a leading bank in the Levant with retail, business banking, treasury and electronic payments activities, preparing to deliver a new multi-year strategy and a set of CEO priority initiatives. Its architecture had evolved through point-to-point integrations, reporting relied on manual extraction and analysis, and processes such as credit scoring and treasury valuations ran largely on spreadsheets. The core banking platform lacked key capabilities, several infrastructure components were approaching end of support, and customers experienced digital channels with limited depth and branch-heavy onboarding. The bank engaged Cedar to assess its enterprise architecture, digital readiness and IT strategy and to define a prioritised way forward.
Cedar’s Approach
Cedar structured the engagement around its three-module framework of Enterprise Architecture Assessment, Digital Readiness Assessment and IT Strategy Design, applied through a four-step approach of internal data assessment, stakeholder interviews, analysis with preliminary observations and final reporting. More than sixty conversations were held with over forty-four stakeholders across sixteen departments.
Department Diagnostics – Cedar reviewed eleven business, control and support functions, rating satisfaction with current systems and capturing observations and opportunities for each, from credit and collections to finance, treasury, risk and technology.
Application Architecture – Using Cedar's 8-Layer Application Architecture, every application was rated on functional fitment and technical alignment. Cedar then ran option analyses and supplier scans for priority areas including core banking, middleware, treasury, trade finance, transaction banking, reconciliation, credit process automation, CRM, fraud management and IT service management.
Technology and Infrastructure – Cedar assessed data centre and disaster recovery set-up, servers, storage, databases, operating systems, environments, branch network bandwidth and system downtime, and prepared decision papers on hybrid cloud and tiered storage together with an infrastructure security policy framework.
Digital Readiness – Cedar deep-dived each channel, from mobile and corporate internet banking to kiosks, merchant acquiring, wallets, ATMs, the contact centre and chatbot, and rated the bank on its Digital Maturity Assessment across six dimensions: customer experience, product convergence, onboarding, process fulfilment, channel adoption and technology platform, benchmarked against regional and global peers.
Strategic Outcome and Way Forward
The final report gave leadership a target functional, application and integration architecture across eight layers, anchored in seven design principles such as API-first design, cost-effective technology and a right-sized, skilled IT organisation. Cedar recommended 26 architecture and infrastructure initiatives across platform modernisation, treasury and risk, customers and channels, process automation, data and enterprise enablement, together with a business-IT and data governance model. On the digital side, Cedar articulated a digital-first vision and mission and 18 digital initiatives spanning mobile banking enhancements, an SME app, digital lending, a digital factory, fraud management, CRM, a benefit realisation framework, cloud feasibility, core banking transformation and applied AI.
Both portfolios were sequenced into three delivery waves. The agreed next steps are Board approval of the recommendations, budgeting and RFP design for vendor selection, and assignment of project managers and skilled teams to launch implementation.