Evolving with speed with Microsoft Trusted Cloud

Microsoft Trusted Cloud Equals Innovation with Speed

As an organisation that is committed to genuine collaboration and unwavering dedication to its client’s needs and goals, Investec took a client-first approach when considering its move to the cloud. Graeme Lockley, Head of IT Architecture and Engineering at Investec, explains that “the first questions they wrestle with was how do we deliver more change to our clients faster? How do we improve the lives of our clients?” At the time, Investec had quite a large estate running on-prem, limiting its ability to process data and innovate quickly. The team had to look at lifting the pressure off their data centres and promptly find a way to modernise their estate. 

The reality is that innovation can only be built on a platform that has limitless, secure, and provides endless opportunities to bring evolutionary and revolutionary change. Microsoft has proven flexible, vast, and reliable, empowering organisations to build without boundaries. It is a platform that equips organisations to achieve more, empowering them to turn their ideas into innovation. Great solutions have been built on Microsoft Cloud platforms, most especially when solutions are designed and created with people as the focus.

The advantages of migrating to Microsoft Cloud Services are endless; one is given a massive platform to build solutions that will enable businesses to scale quickly by giving them deep insights into data. The platform allows companies to save time instead of sifting through massive data loads. Microsoft Azure is a data-driven platform that empowers clients to make intelligent and effective decisions. Azure gives the following:

• Faster Innovation on a platform that is created for productivity
• Enterprise-grade infrastructure to help your business achieve scale and resilience
• The ability to modernise on your terms with hybrid flexibility

Graeme Lockley explains how Investec is positioned to deliver change fast: “Microsoft Azure has given them the ability to process data and innovate with speed.” A lot of the work Investec does is around risk management and regulatory reporting, which requires them to extract data from various sources, do calculations over that data, and finally show the outcomes. This means they go through massive amounts of data monthly, and it caused a problem as it took them so long to assemble the data and show the final calculations. On many occasions, they couldn’t showcase this data in the relevant reporting period, which was not good for business.  Graeme Lockley explains how they “targeted that specific area, and the processing time went from 19 hours down to 6 hours.” He further explains how they still have some optimisations to put in, which will take the processing time down to 2 hours. Investec has also seen a 40% to 43% reduction in cost. So, they are getting substantial performance benefits and seeing cost reductions. This has transformed how the business is managing risk and processing data. 

Innovations Need Great Collaboration

To bring innovation, one needs to ensure that the people in your organisation are equipped with the necessary skills to execute and manage this innovation. Henry Ford once said, “if everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” To ensure the team was equipped, Investec had learning paths put in place where team members had access to free training. For certain staff members who wanted Microsoft Certification, Investec came on board to ensure the necessary monetary resources to get certified were released. Graeme Lockley explains “how we wanted to remove as much friction as possible so the team could be invested in learning. One of our objectives was that we wanted our people to be Azure Natives. We wanted them to understand the technology.”

Change is most probably the most significant hurdle people face on a day-to-day basis. But there is no denying that change in most circumstances is the catalyst to an improved environment or structure. It has been said, “don’t resist change, you may lose something good, but you may also gain something great.” As an organisation, they were aware that to be effective with this change, they couldn’t just limit training to the IT team but needed their business systems to evolve. They had to train business support functions to look at solutions with a more cloud-based approach, not on-prem. Graeme Lockley shares how “he is enormously proud that we have been able to help people upskill themselves and modernise their skill set.” 

Partnership Taken to the Next Level

Investec’s partnership with Microsoft Graeme explains how the migration to the cloud is the first act of a multiact play. He shares how he sees “the partnership developing into business-specific solutions which will look at how do we modernise onboarding, the opening of accounts, and modernise other business operations and experiences.” He explains how impressed he is with Microsoft not just limiting themselves to being product providers but having positioned themselves with their partners to be solution providers.

Modernisation and continuing on this journey are the key that has enabled Investec to now look at new markets for business growth. Graeme Lockley shares how enthusiastic he is about the future and that “we can now make a more meaningful contribution to our clients and future clients.” 

Microsoft understands that to ensure its customers are always catered to, it must constantly find solutions to drive its business forward, equip them to adapt to disruptions, and embrace change. This is possible only if your technology partner is committed to empowering every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.