Banking & Financial Services - BPO

Cognizant is the chosen partner to improve the efficiency of service delivery

Client: Our Client is a leading global investment major in Private Equity and Hedge Funds, with approximately US$ 160 billion worth of assets under management. Business Need: To drive adequate quality initiatives in the existing processes with the intention of improving overall productivity to meet its growing business needs; To sustain operational excellence, that would result in tasks being performed accurately, in a timely manner, and with necessary controls in place; To improve leverage of IT for process enhancements and automation, and publish customized reports on a timely basis; To meet ad-hoc requests from investors and audit teams.
Our Clients business was growing rapidly, and one of their primary concerns was to focus on new areas of growth without de-stabilizing existing processes. In order to achieve this, our Client outsourced their non-core processes by distributing them across multiple vendors within the US. However, this approach demanded additional time and effort from the Clients resources to manage multiple vendors, resulting in reduced focus on their other daily responsibilities. To meet all the above needs, and to improve the efficiency of their services, our Client made a strategic decision to consolidate the processes offshore with a single vendor, thus enabling more effective management of the non-core processes.

Cognizants Approach: Cognizant was the chosen partner to improve the efficiency of overall service delivery. Cognizant brought IT and BPO synergies on a single platform that was complemented with strong domain expertise in fund accounting and administration.
Cognizants proven transition methodology was customized to enable smooth transition of processes, initially those that involved funds managed in-house by the client. Cognizant received accolades for delivering outstanding quality of services and demonstrating immediate impact on the clients bottom line. Due to its ability to demonstrate significant improvements in the clients business, Cognizant was given the opportunity to transition funds that had been, till then, managed by other vendors. Consolidation and streamlining of processes was effected by employing a dedicated transition team responsible for planning, coordination and execution.

solutions overview

In addition to the transitions group, Cognizant also employed a team that was responsible for knowledge management and quality initiatives. This team ensured continuous learning and development as well as increasing the quality of service and productivity. Highlights of the project were:

day, to meet additional investor and audit requests even during non-business hours;

Leverage of technology and quality teams, to

institutionalize process improvements through automation, resulting in creation of different forms of investor and cash summary reports.

The transition of more than 40 sub-processes

across multiple Lines of Businesses (LOBs), managing over 600 funds and US$ 80 billion worth of assets under management;

Benefits: Consolidation of process under one umbrella allowed Cognizant to help its Client regain better controls, use a single platform for sharing best practices, and improve relationship management.
The mix of business analysts and operational experts in Cognizants team enabled Cognizant to deliver benefits of quality and timeliness with highly focused and industry-relevant support from its domain experts. Additional key benefits delivered by Cognizant were:

Establishment of a dedicated Onsite Coordinator

and Account Manager, who worked closely with stakeholders for smooth transition of complex processes involving multiple systems, and to manage issues in a live environment;

Ramp up of a team including a high proportion of

certified accounting professionals (approx. 30%) from 25 to more than 275 within a period of 20 months;

Implementation of multiple quality initiatives,

such as Eureka, Bright Ideaz, and Replicator, to ensure significant improvements in service delivery and productivity;

Implementation

of

Follow

the

sun

operational model, which helped extend the time window for indexing and imaging services and resolving queries of investors, customers, third parties, and auditors across the globe during non business hours;

Adoption of 18 hours x 5 days in a week

coverage, i.e., more than two-third of a business

business stronger by empowering them to be

more responsive to their customers
and to the

Making our clients

competitive environment.
2 solutions overview

Original Process
Manual creation & tracking of record in sharepoint; Manual update of work record status. Supervisor log in sharepoint to view work items; Manual work priortization & allocation.

Manual checking of fund information in different legacy systems; Manual identification of different database for updation.

Manual processing, tracking and update of different verification processes of investor /funds; Lots of manual decision points.

Sharepoint views for checking relevant details and review; Manual report preparation and data collation for review.

Post BPM
System created work objects & Request ID automatically; Status is updated as per work objects.

Workflow directs work items to supervisor work list; Work items are displayed as users log in the system; In-built feature to prioritize work items based on different color coding.

Fund information is auto populated in the system based on background data; System automatically identifies databases to be updated based on the fund selected.

Parallel routing of different work; Auto update of work status; Enhanced control to track all the handoffs and monitor areas of critical to quality.

Monthly metric reporting via a single click; Customized dashboard to highlight open/closed issues; Access to view audit history of work items.

Benefits
Automatic Work allocation Status maintained througout the process life-cycle Work load priortization Minimized data entry error Workflow based handoffs Change in business processes can be incorporated in the system, with a single point change in workflow configuration Enhanced visibility to managers to identify bottlenecks in the process by allowing real time status reporting on different stages, urgency levels and SLA

Cognizants

robust

and

consistent

processes by Cognizants Delivery and Quality teams, to ensure accurate output to the end customer; Cognizants approach of continuous process improvements, which has yielded benefits to the Client. additional Cognizant initiated

documentation, which reduced the learning curve for the process, institutionalized processes, and reduced dependency on key individuals. This has helped client personnel to use their time to focus on new areas of business growth; In addition to funds management, other end-toend processes like cash & treasury management, account reconciliations, investment valuation, financial modeling and reporting transitioned have been added to those being managed from offshore, delivering benefits across the full value chain;

multiple lean Six Sigma and BPM projects, which resulted in automating processes leveraging workflow tools and portals. Other key achievements of this project: End to End investor on-boarding cycle time has been reduced to a single day from the earlier five days;

Establishment

of a centralized cash consolidation team, which caters to all the Lines of Businesses and acts as a single point of contact for any Queries related to Cash processes. This has resulted in a reduction of FTEs by 20% in cash operations;

A workflow tool and an access controlled portal

were created to perform the investor onboarding process, and to maintain all the data related to the investors safely, which would be readily available at any point of time for audit; Quarterly reporting of funds was done by the Client in 90 days, Cognizant enabled this to be done within 30 days from quarter end.

The establishment of multiple reviews, enhanced

checklists and additional controls for all the

solutions overview

About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting and business process outsourcing services. Cognizants single-minded passion is to dedicate our global technology and innovation know-how, our industry expertise and worldwide resources to working together with clients to make their businesses stronger. With more than 40 global delivery centers and approximately 61,700 employees as of December 31, 2008, we combine a unique onsite/offshore delivery model infused by a distinct culture of customer satisfaction. A member of the NASDAQ-100 Index and S&P 500 Index, Cognizant is a Forbes Global 2000 company and a member of the Fortune 1000 and is ranked among the top information technology companies in BusinessWeeks Hot Growth and Top 50 Performers listings.

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For more information on how to drive your business results with Cognizant BPO, contact us at inquiry@cognizant.com or visit our website at: www.cognizant.com.

World Headquarters 500 Frank W. Burr Blvd. Teaneck, NJ 07666 USA Phone: +1 201 801 0233 Fax: +1 201 801 0243 Toll Free: +1 888 937 3277 Email: inquiry@cognizant.com

European Headquarters Haymarket House 28-29 Haymarket London SW1Y 4SP UK Phone: +44 (0) 20 7321 4888 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7321 4890

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