The Challenge
There were two challenges that Volksbank was facing before it came to Eraneos. The first was more of a technological challenge: as Volksbank scaled up its agile practices, demand for the Atlassian project management software Jira increased. The rapid increase in the number of users led to the Jira instance on the company’s server becoming less stable. In addition, higher compliance levels had to be met. To provide a stable instance and comply with regulations, Jira had to be moved to Atlassian Cloud. Volksbank’s IT resources do not allow maintaining a secure data center cluster for tools that are not intended for the bank’s core activities. And so, for that reason – and because of the firm’s cloud-native ambition – the switch to the cloud was preferred. Volksbank quickly became the first major Dutch bank to take this step, so the question was whether Atlassian Cloud would meet the high requirements of the regulators.
The second challenge was related to business challenge: as Volksbank was scaling up its agile practices, the software had to support cross-team planning at the program and portfolio level. Eraneos were drafted in to help with both of these challenges.
“Focus on the future. The world is moving towards the cloud, so don’t be afraid to jump on the bandwagon or be one of the early adopters in your industry.”
The Approach
Since Eraneos has a long history of working with organizations that operate in highly regulated environments, such as governments and financial institutions, we were able to support Volksbank in weighing the pros and cons of switching to the cloud. We removed all compliance concerns, meaning Volksbank could make a well-considered and widely supported decision to move to the cloud.
Once that decision was made, Eraneos immediately drew up and implemented the migration plan. Aided by the user-friendly Atlassian migration tools, the entire migration went smoothly. But we will not stop there. To help Volksbank make the most of its Atlassian cloud products, we worked with the bank to further standardize its team tools.
Established in 1817, Volksbank is the fourth largest bank in the Netherlands, with 3,000 employees serving 3.2 million customers across four bank brands. The bank’s mission is “banking with a human touch”, with a focus on what’s best for the end customer. Volksbank operates in a highly regulated environment. Since supervisors only grant licenses to banks that have their IT in order demonstrably, being – and staying – compliant is, therefore, of the utmost importance. To better align software delivery with business objectives, Volksbank is currently scaling up its agile practices, loosely based on the SAFe framework.
The Result
With Jira and Confluence running in the cloud, Volksbank now benefits from the latest and greatest features, while the total cost of ownership has become significantly lower. The bank’s security and compliance levels are also higher than they could have been achieved with the available IT resources in a data center setup. We also helped Volksbank standardize its Jira and Confluence practices, enabling the bank to grow in agile at scale, supported by a future-proof cloud solution.
Let’s create sustainable change together.
