ROUNDTABLE

Travelex Capability-Led
Transformation

On Thursday 16th of May, Travelex co-hosted the Konvergent Architecture Round Table for Chief Enterprise Architects at their headquarters in King’s Place, London. Travelex’s Chief Enterprise Architect, Dan Phelps, presented his vision for architecture at Travelex and introduced the Finance Transformation Case Study.

The approach has succeeded in helping Travelex Architecture to reinvent their stakeholder relationships by using the language of Business Capabilities whilst creating a visible path to execution for the transformation of their Finance function. There was a degree of envy around the room when it became clear that this approach has gained traction within Travelex, who have now adopted this methodology for the whole Enterprise. During our round table discussion, our Chief Architect Community shared their thoughts on the difficulty of engaging stakeholders, the importance of good governance and tactics for following success.

Travelex’s Chief Enterprise Architect and COO have set in motion a bold new approach for the organisation by using Capability Modelling to build the link between their strategy and their investment governance process.

Key Takeaways

  • Finding the right initial stakeholder is crucial to proving the value of the approach. Choose your Proof of Concept wisely and make sure that your stakeholders are at least 80% bought in or you may have trouble getting their full cooperation.
  • You will need a good deal of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) to build a relationship with the stakeholders and to know what levers to pull to get their support.
  • You need to strike the right balance between partnering with and teaching your stakeholders about your methods. We didn’t define a Capability Model until the second phase of the project and focused on discovering the right model through stakeholder engagement instead. Travelex’s Chief Enterprise Architect and COO have set in motion a bold new approach for the organisation by using Capability Modelling to build the link between their strategy and their investment governance process.
  • Even though you’re trying to steer the conversation away from technology, your stakeholders are always keen to talk about it. You may need to engage with it at first and gently steer the conversation to People, Process and Information when the time is right.
  • It is crucial to have the right investment planning and governance processes in place to provide the top-down strategic framework. From here you can pin the outputs of your bottom-up activity of Capability-led recommendations.

The Konvergent View

We know that the best way to win stakeholder interest is by moving beyond the usual architecture box diagrams and crossing into professional comms design. Therefore, everyone at the roundtables was impressed by the quality of the comms pack we created for Travelex. Travelex recognised the value of this approach and are benefiting from the dedicated skills and support of Konvergent’s EA Office in defining their templates and tools for the team going forward.

Join Us

The Konvergent Round Table Community has developed into a dynamic network of chief architects who appreciate learning from, and alongside, their peers. This what our guests had to say about the event:

 

Simeon Brewer Head of Architecture QBE – “I know it was not your intention of the Roundtable, but this has been a fantastic advertisement for Konvergent. The quality of the deliverables that you have produced is outstanding.”

 

Mat Brooks Head of Architecture Met Life – “It has been impressive to see the quality of the deliverables produced and how that helps facilitate the conversation at the level Heads of Architecture need to be operating at.”

 

If you’re a chief architect and you would like to join us at our next event, please get in touch with:

 

Jeremy Etherington,
Konvergent Partner –
jetherington@konvergent.co.uk

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