Big 4 Bank

Challenge

Our customer is one of Australia’s “big 4” banks and serves over 8.5 million retail and business customers across 30 markets globally. Their ambitious migration to public cloud platforms—AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure—was swift, however, it came with challenges:

High Costs: Cloud costs surged faster than expected, raising concerns about affordability.

Poor Insight: Amid the cloud sprawl, identifying workloads and their costs became challenging.

Challenged Compliance: Ensuring security and regulatory compliance across diverse workloads was daunting.

Approach

Our approach was to conduct a Cloud Operating Model Assessment, to identify areas ripe for improvement and then focus effort on delivering meaningful change and value.

1. FinOps:

•       Conducted a detailed cloud cost savings opportunity assessment that set a FY23 savings target of 10% of annual cloud spend to reduce the cost of service to the business.

•       Established a virtual ‘Cloud Ops Ambassador’ team responsible for developing and delivering a clear and repeatable process, ensuring the                       effectiveness and efficiency of execution within each Tech Domain

•       Chairing fortnightly Cloud Ops Ambassador connects to enable sharing ideas/knowledge on optimising cloud costs to improve user experience and          productivity.

•       Leveraging data and facilitating clear actionable cost savings plans, identifying opportunities for automation, and maximising the value from cloud             investments.

2. Tagging:

•       Delivered a cloud tagging uplift project to assess & simplify the bank’s cloud tagging standard to reduce errors and poor process outcomes.

•       Drive a once-off compliance uplift effort against the updated standard, embedding ongoing cloud tagging governance & controls required to sustain compliance levels.

3. Continuous Assurance:

• Conducted data-driven research into the effectiveness of existing compliance and assurance controls across the technology domains and cloud platforms.
• Leveraging the insights gained from research to develop targeted improvement opportunities to increase the effectiveness of continuous assurance standards, processes and tooling while not impacting the overall compliant status.
• Develop and gain executive stakeholder buy-in to a roadmap aimed at uplifting continuous assurance frameworks and technologies to deliver a meaningful improvement in compliance metrics.
• Used process engineering tools such as persona mapping and journey maps to understand the change implications for different end users.

Outcomes

Supported by strong executive sponsorship, DigiRen helped the customer to achieve:

•      Delivered Cost Savings: We exceeded expectations, achieving twice the target cloud cost savings in the first year.

•      Enhanced Understanding: Across 12 Technology Domains, we fostered a deeper grasp of cloud cost optimisation strategies.

•      Built a Collaborative Culture: We instilled a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing around cloud cost management.

•      Tagging Compliance Surged: Compliance levels soared, with an impressive 6.5x increase against mandatory standards. This precision enabled accurate cloud charge back and heightened cost accountability.

•      Launched a Strategic Change Program: Our well-crafted roadmap paved the way for continuous assurance, positioning the organisation for sustained success.

‍