ABOUT THE CLIENT
BB&T
Headquarters: Winston-Salem, NC
Industry: Financial Services
Assets: $220 Billion (2017)
BB&T is one of the largest financial services holding companies in the U.S. with approximately $220 billion in assets and market capitalization of approximately $36.7 billion, as of June 30, 2017. Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., the company operates 2,149 financial centers in 15 states and Washington, D.C., and offers a full range of consumer and commercial banking, securities brokerage, asset management, mortgage and insurance products and services. A Fortune 500 company, BB&T has also been named one of the World’s Strongest Banks by Bloomberg Markets Magazine, one of the top three in the U.S. and in the top 15 globally.
With a large systems integrator as their partner, in 2013 BB&T began their planned five-year greenfield SAP implementation to migrate all of their data and associated business processes from out-of-date, disparate legacy systems to increase overall efficiencies, streamline and simplify their IT footprint, and improve the control over business processes to meet customer needs.
CLIENT CHALLENGE
During the initial stages of BB&T’s implementation, leadership identified an urgent need for a partner with significant SAP expertise, particularly in the banking and financial services space with industry-specific business process and key module experience, to ensure their project would be successful and remain on time and under budget.
BB&T did not feel they were receiving adequate direction and support from an SAP BPC, SAP Fl or project management perspective. Because the project was already underway when this need was identified, with aggressive timelines and high monthly burn rates already in place, BB&T needed a partner who could onboard highly experienced SAP resources quickly and integrate them into their existing team without issue.
BAYFORCE SOLUTION & RESULTS
The long-term project included the implementation of multiple SAP modules including Bank Analyzer (FSBA), SAP BPC, SAP GL, SAP AA, SAP AP, SAP Business Objects, SAP Portals, SAP LRM, and SAP HANA. BB&T needed a partner who could onboard highly experienced SAP resources quickly and ensure their project would be successful and remain on time and under budget.
Bayforce worked closely with BB&T leadership to understand their timing constraints along with the industry and technology-specific needs of the project and resources needed and immediately went into action utilizing our rapid adaptive project approach. Within weeks of our initial conversation, Bayforce began on boarding the first of 42 SAP Consultants hired to join the BB&T project in North Carolina to ensure its success.
With our 20+ years of SAP experience, Bayforce’s consultants hit the ground running and contributed to the project in meaningful ways at multiple stages, from Realization, SI Testing, UAT Testing, Final Preparation, Go-Live, and Post Go-Live Support.
Among the consultants that joined BB&T’s project were SAP HANA-Certified consultants, SAP GL, Fixed Asset, Bl and BO, ABAP developers, BPC, Bl, AP, Portals, Security, Testing Managers, Workflow, and Informatica consultants. Bayforce brought a significant amount of banking and financial service industry experience to the project and proactively worked with BB&T management to ensure business processes followed SAP best practices.
Additionally, Bayforce proactively worked with BB&T leadership to assist the financial institution with the establishment of an SAP Center of Excellence to ensure the success of their SAP investment going forward. Since initially partnering with Bayforce, BB&T has successfully gone live with Bank Analyzer, SAP BPC, SAP GL, SAP AA, SAP LRM, SAP Business Objects, SAP Portals, and HANA. We continue our valued partnership with BB&T to this day and continue to work with them to ensure the success of all of their SAP initiatives.