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A World Class Solution Enables HDFC Bank to Implement Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) Customer Profile The

Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) was amongst the first to receive an 'in-principle' approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to set up a bank in the private sector, as part of RBI's liberalization of the Indian Banking industry in 1994. The Bank was incorporated in August 1994 in the name of 'HDFC Bank Limited' with its registered office in Mumbai, India. HDFC Bank commenced operations as a Scheduled Commercial Bank in January 1995. HDFC Bank's mission is to be a world-class Indian Bank. The Bank's aim is to build sound customer franchises across distinct businesses so as to be the preferred provider of banking services in the segments that the bank operates in and to achieve healthy growth in profitability, consistent with the bank's risk appetite. The bank is committed to maintain the highest level of ethical standards, professional integrity and regulatory compliance. HDFC Bank's business philosophy is based on four core values: Operational Excellence, Customer Focus, Product Leadership and People. HDFC Bank is headquartered in Mumbai. The Bank at present has an enviable network of over 250 branches spread over 135 cities across the country. All branches are linked to each other through an online realtime basis. Customers in 80 locations are also serviced through Phone Banking. The Bank's expansion plans take into account the need to have a presence in all major industrial and commercial centres where its corporate customers are located as well as the need to build a strong retail customer base for both deposits and loan products. Being a clearing/settlement bank to various leading stock exchanges, the Bank has branches in the centres where the NSE/BSE have a strong and active member base. The Bank also has a chain of over 800 networked ATMs across these

cities. Moreover, HDFC Bank's ATM network can be accessed by all domestic and international Visa/MasterCard, Visa Electron/Maestro, Plus/Cirrus and American Express credit/charge cardholders. HDFC Bank operates in a highly automated environment in terms of information technology and communication systems. All the bank's branches have connectivity which enables the bank to offer speedy funds transfer facilities to its customers. Multi-branch access is also provided to retail customers through the branch network and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). The Bank has made substantial efforts and investments in acquiring the best technology available internationally to build the infrastructure required for a world-class bank. In terms of software, the Corporate Banking business is supported by Flexcube, while the Retail Banking business by Finware, both from i-flex Solutions Ltd. The systems are open, scalable and web-enabled. The Bank has prioritized its engagement in technology and the internet as one of its key goals and has already made significant progress in webenabling its core businesses. In each of its businesses, the Bank has succeeded in leveraging its market position, expertise and technology to create a competitive advantage and build market share. The Bank has received recognition both nationally and internationally for 'The Best Bank' on various parameters in publications like Euromoney and Finance Asia. The Bank's IT department has a total staff strength of 120 (approx.), with a mix of functional and technical specialists. The project managers for new IT initiatives are designated both from this group and from businesses. Almost all the project development and application maintenance activities are outsourced to IT vendors. Background The Bank had been facing time and cost overruns on IT projects. IT resources were involved in both application maintenance and project related activities simultaneously. The project activities included requirement capture, vendor finalization, vendor management, user acceptance testing, application roll out and training. Given the fact that the total number of IT projects inventoried at the bank was 200,

with around 20 large scale application development projects, the A World Class Solution Enables HDFC Bank to Implement Enterprise Project Objectives To ensure implementation of project management best practices and address stakeholders' concerns related to smooth conduct of IT projects, through setup and initiation of the Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO). The goal of the EPMO is to facilitate delivery of IT projects on time, first time right and ensuring realization of planned business benefits, in close coordination with all stakeholders. Key stakeholder concerns identified and addressed were : Absence of regular and effective project status updates to all stakeholders. Ineffective project coordination (inter - departmental) due to varying stakeholder priorities. Lack of clarity on project roles & responsibility and resource management. Insufficient business user support for project conceptualization and budgeting. Ineffective vendor management during project execution and acceptance. Challenge The key challenges faced by the team were : Operations oriented organizational culture, structure and mindset. Fuzziness of shared vision and objectives of EPMO. Project management processes and governance structures not

defined. Approach Identify pain areas & customize project management best practices to address these pain areas. Prioritize projects to be taken under EPMO. Define parameters to be observed including roles, processes and templates. Align with and contribute to ongoing IT initiatives and to management vision. Provide training inputs to develop project management skill sets and culture. Finalize time frame for deliverables, starting with definition of concept notes and business benefits. Apply IT tools for project management process automation and status reporting. Facilitate accumulation of project data, documents and learnings for continuous process improvement and project portfolio management. Achievements Establishment of project communication channels for status health checks by top management and project visibility to all stakeholders. Initiation of culture change for project management by standardized project monitoring & reporting. This ensures timely issue resolution and risk mitigation. Streamlining of critical processes for project success including concept definition and requirement gathering. Ensuring sharper

focus on business benefits and formation of project teams for larger projects. Establishment of enablers like project management practices and templates suitable for the bank. This was ensured through briefing and training sessions for project management knowledge transfer. One key realization of this engagement has been that a clear vision and direction is essential for the success of the Program Management Office. Wipro has helped us to implement MS Project 2002 which helps teams across the organization to participate in project management processes, escalate issues and it also helps us to gather project metrics to identify bottlenecks and to keep improving our processes as we go along. Sudhir Mundkur, VP (IT), HDFC Bank We decided that we needed to have a Program Management Office set up... Rather than setting up ab-initio ourselves and trying to figure out the project management process from inception we looked around to see who had the best capability to do this. We zeroed in on Wipro because of our long association with them and the trust and the confidence that they had established with us... We have been able to institute a formal process by which projects are now tracked at HDFC Bank. C.N. Ram, Group Head (IT), HDFC Bank Wipro Limited Enterprise Solutions # 159, Kariyappa Plaza, 1st Main, Jakkasandra, Koramangala, 1st Block, Bangalore-560034. Ph: 080-5500747, Fax: 080-8440214 Website: www.wipro.co.in

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