Case study

Based in Sydney, Cuscal is the leading provider of wholesale and transactional banking services to more than 150 retail financial institutions in Australia. With approximately 285 staff, Cuscal has nearly $5.5 billion in assets under management. Cuscal’s customers provide products and services to more than 3.5 million Australians and manage a collective balance sheet of more than $40 billion. The Challenge Streamlining project management for greater efficiency involves automating business processes and integrating flexible business solutions. If implemented properly, the result can increase profitability as well as productivity. Yet many organizations either neglect the necessary steps to identify key problem areas in project management, potential solutions and critical success measurements, or simply fail to devote adequate resources to this goal and allow projects to overwhelm the system. The consequence can be costly. In fact, a 2001 Conference Board survey showed 40 percent of projects fail to achieve their business case within one year of going live, with implementation costs reaching approximately 25 percent above original projections. It’s no surprise respondents to a recent Computerworld survey identified project management as the number one management challenge.