ENSURING A SMOOTH MIGRATION
La Mondiale’s IT systems need to be fully aligned with the business strategy and this has led to a four-year restructuring project designed to create a shared services approach across the different lines of business.
The tenth largest French life insurance company, with twenty one billion € in managed funds, La Mondiale Group is a top three player within its three chosen markets: inheritance savings plans, pension schemes for large enterprises, and pensions and savings for self-employed professionals and very small companies.
IT restructuring
La Mondiale’s business vision is to build a group of truly European scale, while
its strategy is also affected by developments in the French market (notably the
creation of a Popular Pension Savings Plan). La Mondiale’s IT systems need to
be fully aligned with the business strategy and this has led to a four-year restructuring
project designed to create a shared services approach across the different lines
of business. All major applications (for customer relationships, contract management,
risk management, financial management and back office functions) had to be kept
fully operational throughout this process.
One of these change projects was to migrate the data and applications for managing pensions products from a Bull Gcos8 to open systems. From April 2001, for risk management purposes, Patrick Peugeot, La Mondiale’s CEO, asked for this activity to be started at once, in return for commitments about time and budget from the IS department leadership.
Expert reassurance
“Ten thousand programs, ten million lines of code and an immovable delivery date
of August 2004: statistics that demonstrate both the parameters and the high stakes
involved in this key project,” Vincent Béhague, deputy CIO of La Mondiale, tells
us. Capgemini was brought in to give project management support: “I needed specific
project leadership skills but, above all, I needed people who had already successfully
managed a migration project on this scale before. With them around, I felt reassured…,”
he concludes. Thus, in addition to serving as deputy project and quality team
managers, Capgemini professionals also acted as coleaders of the various work
streams which included specialist sub-contractors working directly for La Mondiale.
“This enabled Capgemini to look after our interests while energetically driving
the sub-contracts. The IT department could then keep a close watch on the work
being carried out on this business critical system, while taking full responsibility
for the fundamental technology choices.”
A long-term relationship
This level of trust has been built up during a long relationship between La Mondiale
and Capgemini that dates back to the 1980s! High-level consultancy, development
of many different projects, including management of the Euro project: the strong,
added value benefits have been many and numerous. “After all, Capgemini is not
an unknown quantity; the effectiveness of this collaboration is based on a strong
mutual understanding, enabling us to create good project teams focused on common
goals. That’s the basic requirement for a shared success” is Vincent Béhague’s
conclusion.
Written in collaboration with:
Vincent Béhague
Deputy Information Systems Manager La Mondiale
Régis Durieux
Account Manager Capgemini