Great Southern Bank (Formerly Credit Union Australia Ltd) is Australia’s largest member-owned financial institution. It provides banking, health, and insurance services to approximately 500,000 Australians. The bank has an internal IT group that develops applications and engages with vendors that offer COTS and bespoke applications. It was challenging for Great Southern Bank to manage these applications and ensure they were fit for purpose. This case study will discuss how Sentify helped the bank manage vendor services and achieve quality deliverables.

The Problem  

Great Southern Bank faced many challenges in ensuring the delivered applications met their quality standards. The challenges included time zones, language barriers, and budget constraints. Large vendors following the waterfall approach also complicated the situation. The lack of quality, delivery automation, and specific acceptance requirements in historic vendor contracts made it difficult for the bank to ensure that the delivered applications were fit for purpose. As a result, Sentify was engaged to de-risk the delivery acceptance from a key global vendor.  

The Solution  

Sentify’s team, with an understanding of delivery processes, expected artifacts, and knowledge of the bank’s systems and data, took on managing the vendor. The company developed an actionable strategy that involved relaying requirements specific to Great Southern Bank and the vendor, aligning deliverables with release schedules, reviewing vendor test cases, managing vendor test plans, and providing proof and information around delivery failure.  

The Outcome

Sentify’s efforts resulted in the vendor delivering a quality outcome that included a code base, test cases, and proof of successful execution of quality checkpoints before delivery. Derek Cooper, Senior Technical Lead, Great Southern Bank, noted that Sentify streamlined program delivery and dramatically improved their vendor scorecard.  

“Working inside our team, Sentify provided the unique combination of advisory service and hands-on technical support to streamline the program delivery and dramatically improve our vendor scorecard.” Derek Cooper, Senior Technical Lead, CUA (now known as Great Southern Bank).  

Incremental Value Achieved 
  • An overall solution strategy tailored to the bank’s complex application implementation requirements
  • Understanding of vendor position to promote collaboration to address the bank’s systems and application requirements
  • A reconciled application is built for each delivery milestone
  • Assistance to the vendor to speed resolution through Sentify’s understanding of backend systems and APIs being called
  • On-going incremental improvement of deliverables
Conclusion  

Sentify’s involvement in vendor management allowed Great Southern Bank to ensure that the delivered applications met their quality standards, even with the challenges posed by time zones, language barriers, and budget constraints. With an actionable strategy, Sentify helped the bank align vendor deliverables with release schedules, review vendor test cases, manage vendor test plans, and provide proof and information around delivery failure. As a result, Great Southern Bank can now rely on vendors to deliver quality outcomes that meet their specific requirements.