Client Background

• Industry type: Banking
• Key Products & Services: Credit cards, retail banking, commercial banking, investment banking, private banking, and financial analysis
• Geography of Operations: Presence across 160 countries in LATAM, NAM, APAC
• Number of Employees: Global workforce of 214,000 employees

Challenges

The company wanted to move its Argentinian IT Development Center owing to high operational costs and stringent labor laws. The team based in Argentina was working on regulatory and compliance related projects. They were required to send weekly, daily, and quarterly reports to Federal Bank without fail. As these projects were very critical to daily operations, enabling seamless resource shift was essential.

The company’s goal was to shift resources in an effortless, swift, and convenient manner with minimal impact on the overall Project Delivery. However, the off-boarding process involved risks of attrition, security, and heavy infrastructural expenses. To add to that, there was a huge skill dependency as certain resources had developed and worked on these applications for over a decade. Losing such key employees would have drastically impacted the team’s performance.

Solution

Wipro was able to address the company’s needs by constructing an Agile Transition Plan. As per the plan, the transition process was divided into 5 different sprints that were executed within 13 weeks -

• Sprint 1 - Team onboarding
• Sprint 2 - Detail transition plan
• Sprint 3 - KT session for application, environment, and processes
• Sprint 4 – Project-specific & role-specific transition
• Sprint 5 - Execution and ownership

Wipro documentation templates were used to record the deliverables of every sprint. Additionally, thorough quality control was also in place with timely retrospective and knowledge checks after each sprint. Tools like Synergy and MyWipro were implemented for internal communication and Wipro’s entire stakeholder ecosystem came into play, including the Talent Acquisition Team, Practice Team, HR, Procurement, HRSS and Delivery.

The final solution was different from the legacy transition process and required some adjustment at the employee’s end. Post Sprint 1, few employees left the organization and a new ‘Travel Plan’ was created. As a result, some key team members traveled back to Argentina to complete faster and face-to-face transition.Business Impact

The Agile Transition Plan was successful in drastically reducing the operational cost associated with shifting. Furthermore, the running projects were unhampered, and client deliverables were timely met. The client was also able to focus on its business and effectively plan for the next two years – 2019-20.

Post the successful completion of their workforce transition, the company was able to save close to $2 million per year. They also announced the launch of Mexico 2020 program in which they aimed to take several initiatives. 

“The transition was completed as per plan in a very innovative manner, and the client also recommended Wipro as a strategic partner to other business units.”

- Sachin Vispute, Program Manager