Capco and Commerzbank Launch IT Complexity Initiative

LONDON, January 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Goal of ground-breaking programme to develop Complexity Model for CIOs

Capco, a global business and technology consultancy dedicated solely to the financial services industry, announced today the launch of its IT Complexity Model project with Commerzbank - a leading bank for private and corporate customers in Germany. Background information on the Capco/Commerzbank Complexity Model is outlined in a white paper authored by the project's leaders: Dr Peter Leukert, CIO of Commerzbank AG, Andreas Vollmer, Chief Architect of Commerzbank, and Mat Small, Pete McEvoy and Mark Reeves, Partners in Capco's Capital Markets Technology practice.

IT complexity, which generates inefficiencies and additional costs within organisations, is generally handled by CIOs and CTOs based on past experience, intuition, trial and error and financial analysis. To date, however, quantitative techniques for measuring complexity have not been available. The goal of introducing a Complexity Model is to enable better management of complexity by allowing CIOs to quantify and articulate short-and long-term implications of initiatives, costs over time, impacts on existing operations and the business as a whole, as well as strategic implications and justifications for high-risk projects.

Currently in the first stage of its development, the Complexity Model is focused on IT applications and has been statistically validated by both Commerzbank and academia on 1000 applications over three years. Other firms are being selected for participation in the project going forward and the additional data will serve to increase the model's precision.

Dr Peter Leukert, Commerzbank, said: "We believe that a complexity metric could substantially aid the CIO in decision making and we are well on the way to developing and applying such a metric. Commerzbank is very pleased to be working with Capco on this ground-breaking initiative."

Mark Reeves, Capco: "In our paper, we are aiming to provide a useful overview of the problem of IT complexity and showcase some new ideas for approaching this issue. The goal of the complexity project is to foster a useful dialogue on the complexity issue, continue gathering information and data and ultimately make a substantial contribution to how CIOs improve their organisations."

The white paper outlines the four dimensions covered by the Model: function, interfaces, data and technology. As the Model is being developed, the project will be addressing a series of topics related to complexity including:

• How is complexity calculated and how would an organisation embark on a complexity programme?
• What is envisioned as a dashboard for complexity measurement and scenario modelling?
• How is complexity modelling different across various corporate paradigms (different sizes, ages, business models)?

Copies of the white paper: IT complexity: model, measure and master can be downloaded from http://www.capco.com.

About Capco

Capco, a global business and technology consultancy dedicated solely to the financial services industry. Our professionals combine innovative thinking with our unrivalled first-hand industry knowledge to offer our clients consulting expertise, complex technology and package integration, and managed services to move their organisations forward.

Through our collaborative and efficient approach, we provide our clients with tools to enable them to increase revenue, better manage risk and regulatory change, reduce costs and enhance control. We specialise in banking; capital markets; wealth and investment management; finance, risk & compliance; and technology. We serve our clients from offices in leading financial centres across North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. To learn more, visit our web site at capco.com and subscribe to Capco's newsroom RSS feed.

About Commerzbank

Commerzbank is a leading bank for private and corporate customers in Germany. With the segments Private Customers, Mittelstandsbank, Corporates & Markets, Central & Eastern Europe as well as Asset Based Finance, the Bank offers its customers an attractive product portfolio, and is a strong partner for the export-oriented SME sector in Germany and worldwide. With a future total of some 1,200 branches, Commerzbank has one of the densest networks of branches among German private banks. It has above 60 sites in 50 countries and serves more than 14 million private clients as well as one million business and corporate clients worldwide. In 2010 it posted gross revenues of EUR 12.7 billion with some 59,100 employees.