Retail Banking Solutions

Avocado Consulting’s brief was to help deliver a new, high profile credit card product to tens of thousands of customers while transferring another organisation’s card customers to the bank at the same time.

Avocado Consulting were required to integrate third party provider software into the bank’s core systems and migrate legacy data to new systems. The scope of the project would include test management and execution, software release management, data migration, coordinating user acceptance as well as operational handover and BAU support.

The client’s highest priority was to retain customers during the transition from one product to the other. In this kind of project a minor glitch or inconvenience can alienate customers. For this reason Avocado’s Consultants needed to ensure absolute certainty and quality during the rollout and in the treatment of legacy data. Moreover deadlines were immovable because they were linked to a national advertising campaign.

Adding to the challenges, the business users were inexperienced in testing complex applications. Previous projects of this type had used experienced business Testers, but these were no longer available.

Because of the complexity and importance of the project, Avocado recognised the need for early and close business engagement. At the outset we allocated experienced Business Analysts, test management and quality assurance Consultants to ensure a sound foundation for the project. We also provided subject matter experts who had existing knowledge of the bank’s business systems and processes.

Avocado laid out a strong quality framework that guided the business users in planning, writing and executing test cases, making sure all critical system functionality was thoroughly tested.

Avocado also implemented a process of close daily tracking and reporting of UAT issues, defects and testing progress.

Avocado’s experience and expertise allowed functions such as data migration to be fast tracked. Most importantly it meant our Consultants could direct the business in what not to do, saving the client valuable time.

The close daily tracking of issues helped ensure all stakeholders were across status, and provided them with the confidence to make informed decisions to go live.

Transparency during this process combined with early identification of issues allowed risks to be mitigated early and ensured all deadlines were met.