Chicago Board of Trade Realizes 290 Percent Return on Investment by Teaming with CSC
Client: The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT)
Challenge: To balance strategic initiatives with operational activity.
Solution: CSC employed Enterprise Program Management Office (E-PMO) to navigate through this change initiative.
Results: CBOT realized efficiency improvements in its standard processes, departmental decision-making, projects status reporting, rate tracking on subcontractor contracts, and budgeting processing.
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The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) is the world’s oldest futures and futures-options exchange, dating back to 1848. More than 3,600 CBOT members trade 48 different futures and options products at the CBOT, resulting in a trading volume of more than 340 million contracts in 2002.
CBOT’s growth is dependent on its continued liquidity and the availability of timely, reliable information. It is increasingly reliant on solid technology platforms and a strong, committed technical organization. In late 2001, William Farrow III, CBOT's newly appointed executive vice president and CIO, realized his primary challenge was to balance strategic initiatives with operational activity. As he began planning for 2002, Farrow discovered an environment in which:
“To support our members and expand CBOT’s market reach, we needed a total infrastructure refresh and re-architecture,” said Farrow. “Without good program and project management and the necessary metrics to provide an accurate assessment of the status of projects and project-related issues, this goal could not be accomplished.”
Farrow decided to establish an enterprise-wide program management office to institute the changes he needed.
CSC -- A Trusted Guide
After a series of failed attempts lead by internal and external professionals, Farrow selected us to serve as the change agent within his organization. We had a long-standing relationship with the CBOT and was recognized by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) for its world-class experience and best practices in software program management.
Given the company’s desire to quickly shift the focus to enterprise-level planning and financial control, Farrow determined that the most effective way to accomplish change was to outsource the program and project management responsibilities. Based on its proven expertise and knowledge of the CBOT environment, we were selected to take over these responsibilities. We would set the organization’s direction, with the intent of returning control back to CBOT after 12 to 18 months.
Quantifiable Business Results with CSC
CSC employed its Enterprise Program Management Office (E-PMO approach to navigate CBOT through this significant change initiative. The E-PMO project team evaluated this complex, fast-paced organization using a holistic approach centered on four key initiative components: strategy, process, organization, and tools.
By performing a six-week assessment and identifying a series of “quick fixes”, we delivered immediate value to CBOT’s business community. Preliminary findings identified weaknesses in the following areas:
– An IT life cycle and tracking standards being used inconsistently
– Supporting tools focused on IT project tracking, but also used inconsistently
Our experience showed that CBOT was making a combination of tactical and strategic errors in tolerating the above environment:
To remedy these issues we teamed with CBOT to focus on high impact, high-value process improvements. These efforts provided immediate Return on Investment (ROI) for the organization through:
Our aggressive E-PMO strategy enabled CBOT to generate a 290% ROI within its first year of investment. These results are attributed to increasing CBOT’s available bandwidth and permitting additional focus on strategic initiatives versus operational activities. CBOT expects to maintain or increase the current benefit level on a recurring yearly basis.
Today, CBOT’s IT organization has a proven track record for successfully completing projects, which has raised business confidence in the organization. More senior managers are working with IT to develop business cases to fund new projects, as evidenced by the significant increase in requests for IT support.
By teaming with us, CBOT solved their program and project management problems, improved results, and gained credibility within their industry.
Our Large Program Management group is a National Practice consisting of our most experienced program and project managers. The practice is dedicated to program management and averages over 21 years of experience. This team uses proven processes to successfully deliver diverse and complex programs with multi-year, multi- location, multi-project and multi-vendor environments.