The client is an international, specialist banking group that provides a diverse range of financial products and services to a select client base. Since its inception in 1974, the client has expanded through a combination of substantial organic growth and a series of strategic acquisitions. Today, he has an efficient integrated international business platform, offering all the core activities in South Africa and the UK and select activities in Australia, with approximately 4000 employees.

The Risk Division ran its Internet Credit Approval System (iCAS) on the Documentum platform (V 4.2.6). The primary functionality of this application is to allow the consultants to create a credit risk proposal. The ICAS application is also integrated with the CRM system (RADAR) and other application for credit rating and risk evaluation. Since the Independent Software Vendor (Documentum) had discontinued support for the existing version of the software (4.2.6), the business was faced with the challenge of supporting this deployment. Further, since a load of additional processes were being mapped on to the software, this transition to the new version in-effect comprised of two assignments:

• Support of the existing system (and carry out the enhancements) till the migration to the next version happens.
• Define the application strategy and execute the application migration to the new version of the software.

The application strategy was drawn up to encapsulate the support, enhancement, and migration of the Documentum applications from the existing 4.2.6 to 5.2.5. Zensar adopted a two pronged solution approach with focus on supporting the existing application and business users while documenting the future needs, impact of Basel II and compliance needs. The internal team was supplemented by the designated on-site resources. Along with the analyzing various options for migration to the new version, the team also provided consulting services to the internal team on the sizing and environment related issues.

The existing initiatives of additional processes being mapped on to Documentum were not discarded mid-way. The process mapping that had started prior to the cut-off date would be completed prior to the migration. The onsite team effectively supplemented the internal resources to provide a more effective contact with the business users. This also created an optimum blend of the client business users and the Zensar business analysis team.