Client’s challenge
A global credit card processing company had a serious
IT decision-making issue. Without rigorous visibility and
transparency of IT costs, most IT decisions were being made
without the right information, or worse, with no information
at all. Burdened with two separate purchasing organizations, each
operating different legacy systems, the company had no controls
over purchasing processes. In addition, by lacking a proper IT
asset management capability, the company couldn’t account for
IT cost reporting and was unable to determine how many servers
were being used to manage any given client.
PwC Advisory solution
We began by helping the client outline clear objectives and
priorities for the development of its IT strategy. The PwC
Advisory team documented executive expectations of IT asset
management and compared the client’s current asset
management capabilities to best-practice capability maturity
models. In addition, by highlighting redundancies, resolving data
gaps and streamlining processes, we helped the client identify
areas where total IT costs could be lowered.
Using its IT Asset Management Lifecycle Framework, the PwC
Advisory team proposed three asset management strategies
to improve the overall IT governance structure. These included
setting up automation capabilities for enhanced asset
management, establishing reporting capabilities and putting in
place an IT governance structure to ensure the desired outcomes.
Impact on client’s business
PwC Advisory helped the client create a shared vision for IT
asset management and identify opportunities to reduce costs,
lessen margin risks and increase IT operational effectiveness.
This shared vision helped the client develop an IT plan that
met risk- and cost-management objectives and provided clarity
on its entire IT asset management initiative.
In addition, our onsite team was able to eliminate a major
security risk to the client and its customers by determining that
a critical server had defective data and ensuring that this server
was taken offline.
