Case Studies

Central Bank Payments System Modernisation

Triari Consulting worked with a prominent European financial services consultancy to define a strategy to modernise a central Asian country's RTGS payments system.

The country's Central Bank systems supporting RTGS payments was in need of modernisation to support an expanding local payments ecosystem, to replace outdated and unsupported technologies and to move to an international messaging standard based on ISO20022.

Our consultant Payments Architect undertook an extensive survey of the existing IT landscape to establish the baseline for modernisation. A future state concept was then defined in terms of the new components necessary to replace the current state, integrating with existing components to be retained in the short term.

Different realisations of the concept were then proposed based on three themes:

Bespoke design and build
An overlay of commercial off the shelf packages
A spectrum of hybrid solutions between fully bespoke and a fully packaged solution

Different options for the roadmap to the future state were proposed. Each option highlighted the associated market and delivery risks, such that the client could make an informed choice as to the appropriate strategy.

The engagement was successfully completed to exacting timescales.

SEPA Instant Solution Architecture

Triari Consulting provided technical leadership to the solutioning for SEPA Instant payments for a major European Bank.

SEPA Instant payments provides a number of solution challenges. Firstly to repostition payments systems from batch oriented processing to single shot, real-time processing. Similarly, the SEPA Instant scheme has a requirement to be available 24x7x365, presenting a further challenge of how to make all the system components in the payments value chain highly resilient and 'always on'. Finally, the demanding SLA's of a 10 second response time presents a significant performance challenge.

To address the availability and resiliency challenges, a number of infrastructure architectural patterns were defined, spanning all of application, middleware and a database technologies. In addressing the performance challenge, a comprehensive architectural model was produced and a performance budget allocated to each component. This model highlighted the likely performance bottlenecks and the critical components affecting the ability to meet the SLAs's.

API Strategy

Triari Consulting and Rullion partnered to deliver an API Strategy for a major food retailer. The consulting brief was to develop an initial API strategy for the organisation from a starting position of low API maturity. The client situation was that APIs were being created and deployed across the business, but without appropriate management and processes in place to assess risks and benefits to ensure the use of APIs was optimal.

At the outset of the engagement, a Statement of Work was agreed, defining the key deliverables and the milestone schedule. The scope of the work comprised producing a multi-dimensional API strategy including a 3 year roadmap to deliver the organisational and technology enhancements necessary to progress to the target state.

Execution of the engagement was via a collaborative working process, involving key stakeholders throughout the strategy process to ensure buy in. To support this approach a Working Group was set up to review emerging themes and the strategy proposals. To reflect busy schedules of stakeholders, a hybrid approach of weekly meetings and offline activity was established. The engagement was overseen by a Steering Committee including senior level sponsors, providing guidance to the work and facilitating the removal of any blockers to completion.

The strategy process was conducted using modern collaborative tooling. Microsoft Teams was used as the collaboration tooling. This allowed for the secure sharing of ideas and information and provided a videoconferencing facility. Monday.com was used to provide project management support and transparency of progress to the client, including:

Project planning
Milestone definition
Progress reporting against milestones

All the tooling was web based allowing consultants and the client to exchange information securely without the need for network access to the client organisation or use of a client computer. This reduced the lead time of the engagement and lowered the overall cost of the delivery.

Our engagement approach resulted in the successful delivery of the pre-agreed outcomes as planned. Over 40 strategic APIs were catalogued, establishing the baseline of API maturity upon which to build the strategy. The roadmap allowed the client to incrementally plan the necessary capability and organisational changes in a structured way. Consequently, the client was well positioned to support business growth through the expansion of their API portfolio in a controlled and scalable manner.