Crecy Poitiers Agincourt Solutions

Enterprise Architecture

We can assist business to assess the health of its current state enterprise architecture, where necessary define a target state enterprise architecture and provide a transition roadmap to be delivered via programs and projects of work.

Solution Architecture

Our team have significant experience in the end to end delivery of solution architectures for large enterprise projects and bring a deep business domain knowledge that complements strong technical skills

Architecture Capability

We can assist your organisation uplift the maturity of its architectural practice including formalisation of architecture deliverables, tool selection and establishing governance forums to promote architecture and engage the right stakeholders in your organisation

Delivery & Execution

We can provide services to support your business through the solution delivery phase including: 1. project management; 2. vendor/supplier evaluation, selection and contract management; 3. Architectural oversight of technical delivery and compliance reviews; 4. Solution design and documentation

We are a Sydney based team of committed professionals that has over a quarter of a century experience working for global firms in diversified financials (including wealth management, retail banking, general insurance and life insurance) telecommunications and defence. The team bring a breadth of experience having worked in varied roles such as external consultancy, corporate in-house and software vendor.

Our team is headed by founding director, and principal consulant Andrew Tyson. Andrew had over two decades professional experience in IT working in a number of different roles for both small and multi-national companies before founding our firm. Along with his significant IT experience Andrew is a qualified lawyer, admitted to practice in New South Wales with a Master of Laws majoring in financial services law. His formal legal training gives him a key insight into regulatory, contractual and common law issues that complement his technical accumen. Andrew is a certified TOGAF practicitioner and is one of only a handful of ACORD Certified Experts in APAC.

Our name is derived from three mediaeval battles from the Hundred Years War: Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415). Whilst it might seem anachronistic for a technology consultancy to have a name more suited to a high school history class each battle provides a textbook lesson in how great leadership and judicious use of disruptive technology can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

How we work

We pride ourselves on our integrity, and recognise the importance of honesty and transparency in all of our dealings with our customers, our customers' staff and our customers' suppliers and vendors. When delivering large, complex and complicated transformational programs of work things don't always go to plan, and in our experience the only thing worse than bad news is bad news delivered too late, or not at all. Our approach is to promtly, effectively and respectfully identify, surface and address issues that might otherwise impede our customers effectively realising their goals and objectives.
We all appreciate quality and our team will strive to deliver the best quality solution available albeit we are always mindful of the competitive tension with timeliness and commerciality. Our team will proactively seek innovative solutions that employ novel technology so our customers differentiate in the marketplace and achieve a competitive advantage.

how can we help

Please leave us your details if you would like to know more about how we can help your organisation achieve its business goals and objectives.

Life Insurance
IT Strategy & Roadmap

Background

The insurance business commissioned a five year strategy plan articulating a statement of intent to ensure ongoing sustainability and profitability of the business whilst improving its customer value proposition and aligning to the group corporate goal of becoming customer centric. We were invited by the IT strategy and architecture team to lead an IT response to the business strategy through the delivery of an insurance IT roadmap.
Our Brief

Our involvement included putting forward a roadmap proposal, via terms of reference seeking and obtaining business and IT stakeholder approval for funding the roadmap work. Via a number of targeted business and IT stakeholder workshops that our team facilitated the business obtained a clear view of the current application landscape supporting the insurance business including key pain points and gaps. These were considered in formulating the proposed target state architecture that also addressed the key high level themes in the business' strategy. The final component of the IT roadmap involved putting together a catalogue of strategic initiatives that could be sequenced into a delivery roadmap over a five year horizon to support CAPEX funding submissions.
The value proposition

Development of a number of key EA artefacts for the insurance business, including a comprehensive business capabilty model. Noting that key enterprise architecture artifacts were missing to support the roadmap work we put forward a recommendation that AMP become a member of ACORD, an insurance industry standards body. This involved putting together a business case, which was presented to, and endorsed by key IT and business stakeholder forums and performing due diligence via on-site reference checks of other local insurers who are ACORD members. ACORD has subsequently been leveraged in the delivery of a number of insurance related projects.

Life Insurance
Claims Transformation

Background

After acquiring AXA’s life business in 2011 AMP ended up with four silo claims teams across lines of business / products and brands with an increased number of legacy applications supporting those teams. Having performed a review of “as is” operations it was identified that there were significant operational efficiency, customer experience, and claims leakage issues. To remediate these problems AMP committed significant resources and nine figure funding to consolidate all claims onto a single unified claims platform being provided by a third party vendor and further to implement industry best practice for claims management across all teams via a uniform target operating model.
Our brief

Initally engaged to provide solution architecture support our team quickly identified the absence of key architecture artefacts including the absence of a business capability model, and facilitated collaboration with key IT and business stakeholders to develop the missing model that was subsequently used as a key anchor model for other program deliverables and communication, including development of a target operating model for claims operations. Development of architecture options analysis, recommendations and solution architectures that were presented to and endorsed by business and IT architecture governance forums.
The value proposition

Built rapport with senior business and IT stakeholders, and was recognised as a trusted IT advisor. Additional areas where our expertise added value include highlighting: regulatory reporting requirements; and working with SME from corporate legal and taxation to clarify and codify the soltuion to support correct tax treatment of claims benefits.

Customer Strategy Roadmap & Execution

Background

AMP were seeking to implement Net Promoter System (NPS) across the enterprise to measure customer advocacy from which they could obtain actionable insights and improve their customer value proposition through continuous improvement. The program was considered central to AMP’s stated aim of putting the “customer at the center of everything we do”.
Our brief

Out team were invited to develop an IT roadmap to support the customer advocacy strategy in the rollout of NPS for the Australian division. Following the roadmap delivery we provided architectural support for an RFP to select an NPS vendor to support the program. The successful roadmap delivery resulted in: firstly, repeat business from the Australian customer strategy team who invited us back to refresh the roadmap and support a subsequent RFP when AMP were looking to change NPS vendors; and secondly an invitation to lead a similar initiative for the New Zealand business.
The value proposition

Leading a team to deliver a strategic architecture roadmap that defined the target state architecture, and a number of transition architectures that would enable AMP to incrementally converge to the target state. Convergence with the target state was defined in the context of strategic initiatives that would incrementally deliver IT components to support the required target state business capabilities. The initial engagement took three months elapsed time, and involved significant business, IT, and 3rd party vendor stakeholder engagement via workshops and meetings. We also worked closely with AMP's NPS implementation partner, a global business management consultancy engaged to assist with rollout of the NPS program. We advocated and adopted a TOGAF aligned approach to deliverables as part of the roadmap, and overcame challenges with roadmap delivery, including aligning with other transformation streams that were delivering key foundational capabilities for the NPS program. Following successful delivery of the roadmap we were engaged to provide architecture input and lead the technical stream of a formal RFP process whereby AMP selected its preferred NPS vendor to support their ongoing program. Thereafter we were engaged to define the solution architectures for a number of projects that delivered on roadmap. This involved solution options analysis, recommendation of a preferred option, and presentation at architectural and business governance stakeholder forums.

Global General Insurance
Claims Transformation Program

Background

QBE, one of Australia’s largest general insurers is undertaking a significant global claims transformation program across all of their regional divisions with the stated objectives of: increased efficiency, reduced claims leakage and improved customer experience / retention. The program includes uplift of claims capability across all of the QBE general insurance lines of business, incorporating both short tail and long tail claims.
Our Brief

We were engaged to provide Global Claims Program architectural oversight over each of the divisional streams, including Oceania, APAC, the Americas and Europe. The role involved significant cross division IT and business stakeholder engagement to ensure that the architectural plans of each of the divisions were aligned, and that the program would benefit from cross divisional architectural reuse.
The value proposition

Uplift of program architectural hygiene through the implementation of structured repositories for architecture artefacts and deliverables produced on the program leveraging QBE’s investment in SharePoint / Office 365 to improve transparency and collaboration on the program

Working with business stakeholders to develop and refine QBE business capability models that are key business subdomain anchor models forming part of the enterprise architecture blueprints

Working on an architecture roadmap for the fraud investigation sub-domain. This involved: 1. producing a current state traffic light analysis of the relative people, process and technology maturity underpinning claims fraud operations across various divisions; and, 2. development of a reference architecture for fraud detection, investigation and avoidance that identified key architectural building blocks / technology enablers to support a mature fraud operation; and, 3. development of division specific recommendations concerning interim / transition fraud architectures to facilitate achieving near term business indemnity savings; and, 4. recommendations concerning how the strategic claims platform, Guidewire Claim Center might best support claims fraud operations in the target state.

Working closely with an external consultancy concerning cross divisional reuse of the strategic claims platform, Guidewire Claim Center. At the commencement of the transformation program Guidewire had only been implemented for a small sub-set of business lines and was not being used in all divisions. Further, for those divisions and business lines where it had been implemented there was inconsistency in versions and implementation approaches which this piece sought to resolve.

Panorama Corporate Superanuation
Transformation Program

Background

BT is the wealth business of one of Australia’s big four banks, Westpac. Over the last few years BT have made a nine-figure investment in their Panorama servicing platform that provides rich self-service functionality to both investors and advisors. The platform had predominantly been used to sell adviser distributed retail products.
Our brief

Provision of lead architecture on a multi-year Panorama Corporate Super program to migrate a portfolio of “market lagging” BT corporate super products off legacy registry systems and rationalize them into a single “BT Super” product administered on a single unit registry, and serviced through the Panorama platform. The program sought to achieve the dual objectives of growth, through increased share of wallet in the corporate super segment, and also operational efficiency through rationalization of products and systems
The value proposition

Development of key architectural artifacts aligned to Westpac PMO defined SDLC, for example Architecture Decisions Register and High Level Solution Architecture. This included development of architectural views using the group standard Sparx EA tool in the shared architecture repository. Preparation of architecture communications for presentation to and obtaining endorsement from key IT architecture governance forums. We established an IT / Business design forum attended by key program business and IT stakeholders to ensure that all program stakeholders understood and endorsed architectural decisions. Co-ordinating program assigned domain architects, Westpac group architects and solution designers’ deliverables and review of artefacts. This included estimation as part of Westpac PMO defined SDLC. Facilitating uplift of program governance hygiene through adoption of Westpac group standard Atlassian productivity tools JIRA and Confluence. Assisting business and IT with regulatory compliance obligations to ensure a solution that achieved dual purpose of business desired outcomes and meeting regulatory compliance obligations. Reviewing commercial agreements with third part suppliers.

What we do

Enterprise Architecture

Solution Architecture

Architecture Capability

Delivery & Execution

Who we are

What we know

Financial Services & Wealth

General & Life Insurance

Technology & Operations

How we work

Who we have helped

how can we help

Life Insurance
IT Strategy & Roadmap

Background

Our Brief

The value proposition

Life Insurance
Claims Transformation

Background

Our brief

The value proposition

Customer Strategy Roadmap & Execution

Background

Our brief

The value proposition

Background

Our Brief

The value proposition

Background

Our brief

The value proposition