Maintaining momentum of accelerated digital transformation created by the pandemic

Abstract

Like many financial services firms, Mercer, an investment management company, started planning and kicking off several digital transformation initiatives in the early winter of 2020. These projects ranged from the creation of a data management repository to the migration from a proprietary on-premises trading system to a third party hosted system. The latter will be the focus of the comments in this paper. The goal of these projects was to increase operational efficiencies and to transform data into information and make that information more accessible and useable. And then, everyone went home. In this paper, the challenges, learnings and unexpected benefits resulting from managing large-scale digital transformative projects during a pandemic will be discussed, and how that momentum can be maintained as teams return to the office, at least in some form. The intent of this paper is not to be a technical deep dive into the specifics of any projects, but rather a discussion of experiences. The goal is to provide the reader with additional considerations when undertaking a digital transformation project, real-life examples of unexpected considerations and how focusing on people, no matter what the initiative, should yield positive outcomes, even in unexpected ways.