National Bank of Abu Dhabi EA creates a financial business capability taxonomy for M&A
During the third quarter of 2016 the decision was announced to merge two banks in the United Arab Emirates to become the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, the largest bank in the region. As a result, one major architectural reference model became the livewire of the merger activities. The potential target date for the completion of all preparatory work was April 1, 2017. The merge involved two organizations, with complex capabilities and multiple lines of business (retail, corporate, and investment banking) serving multiple jurisdictions.
IDGKeep in mind that merging two organizations, each with its own culture, is no simple task. For this requirement, EA played a fundamental role as part of the integration committee by introducing a customized banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) taxonomy model.
Ensuring that business alignment remains a primary objective, it developed a comprehensive capability map for both banks to manage the classification of information in both environments by creating a complete capability inventory (for business and technology). This would further enhance the quantification method to be used to measure the fit of the various subject areas.
The constrained timings required from EA an agile and expedited approach for both organizations to start shaping the Day 1 requirements, as well as the interim and target scenarios. The interim state and a detailed target state architecture were based on scenario analysis from validating a target merged business organization introduced by the governing board of the new organization. EA expedited the submission of the deliverables on both sides, as well as with the consultants working on the integration of the two banks.
In less than four months, the EA team identified business capabilities at each bank, compared them in various dimensions (such as products, processes, functional, and nonfunctional), conducted a gap analysis, analyzed various scenarios and used them to validate a hypothesis, defined target architecture, created synergies, and provided detailed impact analysis of the various systems, applications, and processes.
Enterprise Architecture Awards judge Jason Cook, head of EA at Mass Mutual, said, “They succeeded in bringing together two EA practices, by developing shared taxonomy and with it a streamlined vision.”
