CES LTD | IT & BPS Company

Speed Up Mortgage Loan Origination via Cost-Effective Back-office Services

Posted on November 25, 2020April 4, 2025 by Ces_creative

Helping Mortgage Lenders Process, Underwrite and Close Loans Faster as Their Trusted Remote Team

Sizzling hot mortgage market

The mortgage lending market is red hot right now and expected to stay this way for a while. Thanks to Fed’s commitment for keeping interest rates low, while continuing to buy mortgage bonds from lenders with no end in sight – already 1+ trillion since March 2020 and counting! Practically, the Fed is encouraging lenders to make as many conforming loans to qualified buyers as possible.

Many lenders are shattering all records for sales and profitability; borrowers are saving money on purchase and refinance loans due to lowest interest rates on record; and even GSE’s (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) had a solid revenue in Q3, 2020.

Not everyone is lucky enough

However, opportunities in the market are not evenly distributed. Many mega lenders and servicing vendors are under pressure as borrowers are refinancing homes at lowest interest rates, often elsewhere. Loans in Forbearance are beginning to show a declining trajectory, but it continues to be a hanging sword on the loan servicing segment of the market. Non-QM loan providers are resurfacing after literally disappearing from the market in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Unfortunately, only most qualified borrowers can benefit from the red-hot mortgage market due to strict investor and institutional lending guidelines and practices.

A few mortgage lending drivers in 2021

Keeping the mortgage market aside for a minute, there is no precedence or accurate data models that can predict the end of coronavirus-related disruption to the economy and our personal lives. So far, many economic pundits have been proven wrong who had predicted above 10% unemployment rate throughout 2020 and well into 2021. Also, Q3 2020 GDP showed a startling two-thirds recovery from the 2 trillion hole the pandemic inflicted on the economy. However, these are just a couple of initial “chapters” in the long road to complete recovery.

With this backdrop, below are a few predictions based on the current state of affairs:

Interest rates: Nobody knows for sure, but odds are better than flipping a coin that mortgage interest rates for many loan programs will increase from the current historic lows to between 3% – 3.5% in 2021. As for the Fed, they are determined to keep interest rates near zero for many years (at least 2023) even it it means higher inflation.

Refinance market frenzy: – Never say never, but it is unlikely that we will see better refinance rates in years or even decades to come. For many good reasons, refinancing application volume in 2021 will decrease as majority of homeowners would have already refinanced in 2020. However, 2021 will stay a hot refinance market as millions of homeowners who stayed on the sidelines (procrastination or legitimate reasons) will finally come to the refinance party!

New home purchase market: – If existing trends hold true, new home purchases should significantly increase in 2021. It is a very simple math: 2020 witnessed limited inventory of new homes in the market as builders had limited opportunities to build new homes and lesser confidence for investing in the real estate market. In 2021, new home construction should give a good boost to the economy as well as compensate for decline in the refinance activity.

” Successful lenders move at the speed of the market and win more business! “

Same lending environment but significantly different outcomes

Mortgage lenders of all stripes struggled when coronavirus brought everything to a screeching halt. Many lenders are barely recovering and adopting to the new reality, yet some are thriving by uniquely capturing market opportunities.

For the most part, winners and losers in this context are defined by their ability (or inability for that matter) to deal with the coronavirus reality for their organization and customers.

Successful lenders

Clear winners are lenders that are able to capture and monetize greater volumes of business at lowest cost, process and close loans quickly, delight borrowers with excellent engagement at every touchpoint, and earn referral business.

These lenders either already rely on suitable digital lending operations or were able to quickly adopt and embrace technology and processes that allowed their workers to work from anywhere. More importantly, leadership teams in these lending institutions do not cling to legacy operations and traditional ways of thinking and acting as per a playbook that is already obsolete.

Lenders that can be successful

These are lenders (banks and non-banks) that have equal access to plenty of opportunities. However, they are falling short by a mile compared to successful lenders because of higher origination costs, longer loan closing cycle, and frustrating borrower experience with technology and personnel.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, face-to-face interactions was a primary method to acquire business and build relationship with borrowers. Digital operations and business workflows stayed rigid (even to this day) and could not be sufficiently updated to accommodate much needed help from remote employees and contractors.

CES – Assistance with fully digital and semi-digital lending operations

Whether a loan origination environment is fully or partially digital, CES has proven expertise to deliver significant cost savings and help expedite loan closing cycles as a trusted remote team. In other words, lenders can choose the level and amount of human expertise they need for many loan originations tasks such as loan processing, pre-underwriting, underwriting,and pre-post closing auditing functions.

“Loan Origination is a team sport and empowering underwriters will keep the scoreboard ticking.”

Key lender challenges where CES can help

Loan Processing

Borrowers do not properly complete loan applications and provide supporting documentation as per minimum requirements for loan programs.

It is cumbersome and time-consuming for loan processors to deeply inspect every loan application and identify and correct red flags. Despite automation, this is where fault-lines begin to appear as data values and supporting documentation are as unique as borrowers themselves.

CES helps and empowers loan processors by taking responsibility for many back-office tasks that most loan processors do not like doing even during slower seasons as they rather spend time and efforts on building relationships with borrowers. No wonder there is a high attrition rate for loan processors.

Pre-Underwriting

Most lenders do not have a job function called pre-underwriting. Lenders count on loan processors to wear many hats, most complex of which is to practically function as a junior underwriter. This is in addition to ensuring that loan applications are filled out completely and accurately, while building relationships with borrowers.

When/if a loan processor’s responsibilities are scaled back, the burden of loan applications’ completeness and compliance is shifted to over-worked underwriters. Loan files are tossed back and forth between underwriters, loan processors and borrowers – causing frustration all around.

CES plugs above-mentioned gaps between loan processors and underwriters by ensuring that loan files are fully ready for underwriting. Also, CES’s pre-underwriting staff can take responsibility for light underwriting tasks.

Underwriting

Loan Origination is a team sport and underwriters shoulder the burden of scoring points for the team. When a loan is presented to an underwriter for a decision, the underwriter expects for others in the team (loan officers, loan processors, pre-underwriters) to have done their part – provide complete and accurate loan applications with all the supporting documentation for the given loan program.

Underwriters are well-trained and high-in-demand professionals who should not be forced to slow down due to structural inefficiencies that can have detrimental impact on the business and team morale.

CES’s assistance with underwriting tasks helps loan origination team process and close more loans quickly and most cost effectively. Regardless of a lender’s size, underwriters tend to be extremely busy throughout the year deciding the fate of loan applications – whether to approve, conditionally approve or reject a borrower’s loan application altogether.

CES provides underwriters with most pertinent and accurate information to approve, conditionally approve and reject loan applications as per lending guidelines. Also, we make underwriting recommendations that best align with institutional and regulatory guidelines for both residential and commercial loan programs. For more information or a conversation on how CES can support mortgage lenders and make back-office operations efficient, please contact adrees.rana@cesltd.com or get in touch with us at sales@cesltd.com.

Revival of Software Testing in the Digital Era

Posted on November 11, 2020April 4, 2025 by Ces_creative

The 10 commandments to achieve Quality, Cost Savings, and Faster Releases

The world of Software Testing has seen waves of innovation when it comes to increasing the pace of delivery to production. It has evolved from the Waterfall, to the Agile, and to the semi/fully automated mode using CI/CD, virtualization and, even, AI. This evolution has expedited product releases from several months to a few days. This has also enabled companies to optimize their IT operations and beef it up with best in class technologies and processes in software testing.

Yet, we come across clients who have misconceptions about testing and have very minimal to no testing process in place. Some remarks and objections we often hear are:

Testing is good to have but not important; our business is doing well with existing IT applications and processes.
Our business team is responsible for (high-level) testing before the go-live.
Our application is simple. Our developers do enough testing before pushing the code to production.
Testing is an unnecessary expense. Or, how can we reduce the cost of IT operations and still carry a QA team?
Functional testing is good enough we do not need non-functional testing.
We are launching the MVP. The functionality will be minimal hence we may not require testing.
My manual testing team is with us for last 10 years and we do not want to automate away their jobs.
There are many more but the best excuse for not testing is this: What is the ROI of testing? I can see developers are producing something but what do testers produce? How does testing help the business make more money?

These misconceptions and not realizing testing as a continuous need pose a great risk to the product quality and the business.

At CES we have been solving these problems for our clients, giving them utmost confidence in their software releases. Here, I would like to share 10 commandments or testing best practices for an efficient bug free release while maintaining the fast pace of product development.

1. Automate more API tests than UI tests

Automated API tests execute in a fraction of a second and can provide a larger test coverage when compared to UI tests. Balance UI and API tests by smartly identifying what really needs to be validated on screen versus what can be validated through backend API calls.

2. Bring automation to every aspect of the product development

Automating UI tests is not enough for assuring test coverage and efficiency. There are opportunities to implement automation of backend API’s, Test data management, Test environment setup, Load testing, User acceptance testing, and Security testing. All these assure an End-to-End coverage and fast releases.

3. Continuous Testing in DevOps

Regression testing is costly when done manually and that makes a strong case for automation. Doing it on every code deployment increases its value by two folds and prevents defect leaks to production. Tools like Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and AWS code pipelines offer wide range of integrations and features to efficiently deliver faster releases.

4. Setup parallel execution on auto scalable cloud infrastructure

Cloud service providers offer virtual machines and storage space at very low costs. Parallel execution in cloud addresses the issue of Enterprises with thousands of tests which take weeks to execute in a single machine. By creating an auto-scalable test environment, one can execute massive numbers of tests within minutes.

5. Use containerization to run large regression suites in minutes

Containerization services like Docker and Kubernetes can scale the level of parallelization up to 10 times and that helps test execution for large number of test cases. With containerization test environments can be spawned up in real-time and destroyed post-test execution, optimizing the infrastructure usage.

6. Choose a device cloud provider instead of maintaining a local device lab

With digital revolution, mobile device testing services have increased in recent years. Key service providers like Browser stack, AWS device cloud and Perfecto are offering a wide range of services, devices, and platforms to test application compatibility, performance, and usability.

7. Never shy away from using open source solutions

Open source frameworks and tools can offer great value in terms of cost savings for Web, Mobile and API automation. The case for a licensed tool should only be made for very specialized needs when the open source tools cannot support. For example, automating Desktop applications or PDF validation, etc. Frameworks like Selenium, Appium and Rest-Assured are some popular ones in the market. CES has built an in-house Test Accelerator – Zyna using these frameworks that can jumpstart automation projects within a week.

8. Implement real time test analytics & reporting

Having a real-time test analytics improves the ability to measure the test coverage, conduct root cause analysis, and make Go/No-go decision for the build real time. Integrating automation with data analytics tools like Klov and Tableau can even help predict post-production impact for product releases. Test analytics can help enterprises make educated decisions during releases. For example, feature-gating a module (which broke a few areas of the application when enabled) and proceeding with a partial release.

9. Do not ignore the non-functional needs

It is widely accepted that businesses are impacted by non-functional aspects like (Performance, Security, Usability, etc.) rather than the functional issues. Of late, Cyber Security has been one the biggest concerns for large enterprises while on the other hand Usability testing is influencing the marketing strategy of companies in positioning their products and services to the customers.

10. Harness the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 21^st century

A new breed of functional testing tools are in the market now, coming with in-built AI capabilities like self-healing scripts, real time predictive analytics, smart object-recognition, record & playback codeless script creation, integration with CI/CD, etc. By using these tools testers can:

Create scripts at 10X speed
Perform in-sprint test automation (test automation in parallel with development)
Reduce script maintenance efforts
Use predictive analytics to prevent deployment of a buggy build
Release code fast and even ad-hoc

Tools like Testim.io, Sealights, 21Labs, Mabl, and TestProject (open source) are slowly creating a niche market to cater to customers who want in-sprint automation and have aggressive go-to-market milestones.

Closing thought: Shift left and fail fast

With change in the technology ecosystem and the market needs we must evolve, transform, and adapt our test strategy, tools, and processes to cater to the industry’s future needs. For a faster go-to-market strategy, testing in agile is de-facto. Agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban have been serving product teams’ needs for over a decade and have now evolved into hybrid methodologies like Scrumban, SAFe, Squads, etc. Smaller self-organizing teams have a better sense of ownership; they quickly resolve conflicts, bring consensus, and take decisions. It is proven that smaller teams build and release software faster into production. The idea of Shift-left-fail-fast encourages developers to write more unit tests which helps in catching bugs earlier in the software development life cycle. CES brings in the best processes and industrial practices, while giving agility to every individual product team to operate independent of each other while maintain their alignment to product roadmap and organization goals. For more information or a conversation on how CES can help build a world-class QA capability in your IT department, contact us at sales@cesltd.com.

A Mobile App for Bridging the Social Distance with Digital Life Stories

Posted on November 11, 2020April 4, 2025 by Ces_creative

New ways of connecting human: Guided video creation and storytelling on a mobile phone

Nature vs culture

Man is a social animal that lives in a society with friends and family. In nature, the animal world also lives in their own societies – herds and packs – but that world is different from the human society. The animal world is governed by the law of survival of the fittest. Whereas, in the human society the mighty takes care of the meek. We, as a society, are wired to take care of people with special needs and those in vulnerable age group.

Pandemic and the vulnerable

When the Corona pandemic hit the world earlier this year, it seemed Charles Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the Fittest” might apply to the human society as well. Governments around the world took swift action and locked down the economy. They urged and even mandated people to severely restrict their movement. With remote working and travel restrictions, the communities for senior living particularly got isolated. While the physical isolation was aimed at reducing the risk of health hazard for the seniors, they getting distanced from their children, grandchildren and other relatives was emotionally challenging for them. The relatives were also concerned about the well-being of their seniors. As in remote working, zoom or other video conferencing tool was an available option for people to connect and handle their social responsibilities. But this option was only slightly better than a having a conversation over phone. It needed both parties to have time for each other at a common schedule. A better and easier solution was needed for this problem.

“We, as a society, are wired to take care of people with special needs and those in vulnerable age group.”

Technology giveth hope

This is when the human society rises to the occasion and does something different – and so did one of software companies in the US with the help of CES. When the distancing happened in physical contact, closing in happened with digital contact. This software company re-purposed the available technologies and pivoted its business offering to develop a solution that squarely addressed the situation the seniors were in. They developed a new and a more memorable way to stay connected for the elderly and their families and be aware of each other’s well-being.

Studio in a smart phone

They developed a SaaS based video creation app which the elderly could use to create and share videos of their daily mundane activities and mini adventures. Delivered from the cloud, the mobile app turned out to be a digital playground for the elderly. It was a studio in a smart phone that is amazingly easy to use. It is a platform to stitch and broadcast real-time memories which the receiving relatives could watch at leisure. This asynchronous mode of high-quality communication resulted in peace of mind for the relatives but more importantly a purpose in the lives of the elderly. The elderly could now be creative and give wings to their expressions. They could share their life status and receive responses and feedback from their children. It resulted in better bonding with their digital-savvy grandchildren.

“CES helped re-purpose the available technologies to develop a solution that squarely addressed the situation the seniors were in during the pandemic. “

CES helped develop this SaaS based video capturing and sharing app to help the residents stay in touch with their loved ones. Videos can be easily stored and replayed in the app allowing the families to conveniently revisit the captured and shared memories whenever desired. But the app also helped improve the attractiveness of the community, which was a surprise bonus. The community became more desirable and talked about by the future dwellers. The property management looked good as well and, ultimately, the property value went up.

“When the distancing happened in physical contact, closing in happened with digital contact.”

CES stands with its clients and partners

CES continues with its endeavours of making life more humane and to fulfil its obligation to make the pandemic a little less painful for the society. For a conversation on how CES can help your customer and the communities with our intention and innovation, please contact us at sales@cesltd.com.

Protect your Digital Assets from Cyber Threats with Vulnerability Management

Posted on November 6, 2020April 28, 2025 by Ces_creative

Proactive vulnerability management is a must for any business that handles customer data

Safeguarding an organization’s digital vaults

Every organization takes relevant measures to keep their systems and data safe from cyber threats. However, the digital age comes with its own set of challenges and vulnerabilities. It is not easy to judge how far hackers and cyber miscreants would go to breach the corporate information networks. These threats could be directed from outside or even inside the organization. Many times, an innocent unmindful act by a new employee turns out to be very harmful.

Can we bullet-proof the corporate networks? What if something was overlooked that left open a gap for cyber-attacker to make in-roads into the business systems?

Repercussions of a security breach

The impact of a security breach could be far-reaching. A business revolves around data from and about its customers. The customer data could have Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or HIPAA related protected information. Protecting that data is the number one priority of a business to maintain trust with the customer. Therefore, it is vital that an organization’s digital vault is always guarded, as a breach of private data can negatively impact business credibility. It may even lead to punitive damages or regulatory fines.

A system break-down due to a virus attack on the other hand can cause business downtime impacting internal productivity and external sales resulting in financial loss. This simply would double the time and cost involved in reinstating security measures, along with the cost incurred due to lost business, and unwanted panic in the process of bouncing back. The situation calls for proactive measures to protect the digital vaults by enhancing cyber security and related processes.

” A breach in IT security can raise eyebrows on business credibility “

Ways to take on security breaches

One can turn a blind eye to this ever-looming danger of information security breach or burry our heads in the sand like an ostrich and believe that a breach won’t happen to their networks. Purchasing insurance coverage is another solution for protecting against the fallouts from cyber-attacks. However, a more holistic and proactive approach is called for to protect the overall digital infrastructure of a company.

A preventative solution for vulnerabilities in IT security

CES recommends a proactive and preventative approach to managing vulnerabilities. Securing the network perimeter, keeping end-point devices patched, and setting up clear access protocols are a must to shield data repositories from infiltrators.

There are two sides to this approach:

Technology Focused
Process Focused

Technology Focused

The technology focused approach requires the organization to identify, prioritize, and remediate known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by cybercriminals to gain access to applications, systems, and data. Regular scheduled scanning of IT infrastructure helps find and fix vulnerabilities.

” Proactive vulnerability scanning, assessment and remediation protects the IT infrastructure against perennial cyber-attacks. “

Identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing security vulnerabilities in an environment can be difficult without proper methodology, skills, and toolsets. A customized Vulnerability Assessment approach tailored for the specific needs of the organization helps manage vulnerabilities. The approach should involve:

Asset Discovery
Vulnerability Scanning
Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability Remediation

The process involves taking stock of the infrastructure assets (Asset discovery) like servers, desktops, laptops, OS, applications, databases, etc. This inventory database must be updated every time new systems are added, or existing systems are removed from the environment.

A good vulnerability management approach includes continuous 24/7 monitoring and integration with patch and configuration management. Ability to assess the scan reports and spot missing patches, errors, and weaknesses in system configuration settings, and general deviations from policy are also part of this approach.

Vulnerability Remediation would involve activities like Patch Management which is the process of packaging and deploying the required security patches to targets requiring remediation. Without a vulnerability testing and patch management system, old security gaps may be left on the network for extended periods of time and allow hackers or DDoS attacker to creep in through hidden backdoors. Necessary processes should be in place for routine deployment as well as emergency patch deployment.

” Information Security should be an important part of the overall corporate risk strategy. “

Process Focused

Despite the best measures taken to secure IT infrastructure and prevent cyber-attacks, there is a human element where an error can take place. The mistakes could be mischievous or unintentional. There are processes and best practices that can be institutionalized to prevent such incidents. We will discuss the processes and best practices in a different blog but some of these are: Guidelines for strong password, Multi-level user access, separation of authority, etc.

Information Security

As IT moves towards becoming a utility and is increasingly being delivered from the cloud, businesses must invest in proactive Vulnerability Management. It should be part of the digital culture of a modern enterprise. The cost of Vulnerability Management should only be seen as a small insurance premium for the peace of mind of business stakeholder. Information Security should be an important part of the overall corporate risk strategy. For more information or a conversation on how CES can implement Vulnerability Management and safe-guard your environment against cyber-attacks, please contact us at sales@cesltd.com.

Improve Application Design and User Experience Without Breaking the Bank

Posted on November 4, 2020March 10, 2025 by Ces_creative

DLS Lite: A simple, light-weight design language system that is easy to implement

User Experience – A psychological journey

User Experience is a psychological journey that a user undergoes through the physical interaction with a product or service. It is a sum of the value the user derives from using products or services of a company. The value comes from superiority and consistency of the product or service offered throughout the user’s interaction with it.

It is difficult to provide a customer the perfect user experience or feel, particularly in an ever-changing world where products/services and user expectations constantly change. Same is true with business applications that users interact with.

UX in business applications

In this era where the digital services are accessed and consumed via multiple devices, a business application must be User Experience centric. It must be highly intuitive and functional. If the application is consumer facing, it must have the look and feel, the message, and the design patterns which are consistent with the company’s brand. However, supporting this consistency requirement across applications is difficult to achieve and is expensive.

” Where the digital services are consumed via multiple devices, a business application must be User Experience centric. “

Design Language System

This gives rise to the need for a foundational Design Language System (DLS) that does not change frequently and ensures consistency across different applications and across versions of an application. DLS ensures a certain level of harmony in a digital ecosystem.

Large organizations have a dedicated design team that builds and maintains DLS. They work closely with application development teams to ensure the design guidelines for UI/UX are adhered to. Such design teams in an IT department have a budget associated and they operate under a charge-back model.

However, there are many small projects that do not have the budget to afford a consultant from the design team. There are also IT departments that cannot afford to have a design team even for their relatively larger projects. With the digital transformation wave taking over the technology world, identifying a sophisticated approach for consistent UI/UX would require a whopping amount of time and budget.

CES solution – DLS Lite

Given this situation in a client engagement, CES worked out a framework and drafted a light-weight design language system – DLS Lite. This framework was culled out from a comprehensive, more detailed DLS Framework that CES had already developed. Using this framework ensured a consistent and sustainable design/development activity.

The key elements of DLS Lite are:

Choosing from a predefined design system (Foundations, components, patterns)
Creating UI Library (Framework agnostic using web components)
Implementing and adapting the DLS (Applications inherit DLS)

The key features of DLS Lite are:

A library of core design elements (simplified wireframes, branded color palette, etc.)
Easy configurability and reusability (a standardized and compatible set of widgets)
Application developer friendly (usage guidelines to help implementation by developers themselves)
Organic structure (easy to expand and evolve into a full-scale DLS)

” With DLS Lite, businesses get the application that is consistent with company brand, without having to pay for it. “

Benefits of DLS Lite

This process framework benefits the suite of applications that a company plans to develop or even modernize. It would be a perfect fit for those cloud migration projects that do not involve a lot of rewrite. It could be used in maintenance mini-projects involving small UI tweaks. It saves design time and is light on the budget.

With DLS Lite, businesses get the value of an application that is consistent with company brand without having to pay for it. Since even the smaller projects get to use it, it helps develop Design Thinking culture across the board.

Some benefits realized by the customer where CES implemented DLS Lite:

The cost of new UI development reduced up to 40%
The cost of designing reduced up to 80%
The cost of modernization/upgrade of existing UI reduced by 40%

Ease of implementation

CES can help build a light-weight DLS system from scratch or repurpose it from an existing foundation. It can be a starter DLS for an organization that does not have one. It can be carved out as a subset of full-featured standard DLS used in the organization.

Having a DLS significantly improves productivity of a scrum team and its through-put. It ensures consistency, familiarity, and ease of use of business applications. In case of end user applications, it also helps ensure loyalty to the product or service of a business. For more information or a conversation on how CES can implement a Design Language System to help enable a consistent brand and user experience, please contact us at sales@cesltd.com.

3 Things CIO’s and CTO’s Should Focus on for Their Journey to Cloud

Posted on November 2, 2020April 28, 2025 by Ces_creative

If you have delayed your cloud journey till now, you should do this.

Cloud environment is scalable, reliable, convenient, cost-effective, and easily accessible. To reduce operational costs and mitigate security risks, to meet the rapidly increasing capacity needs and accommodate new geographies, a company must shift to the cloud. Cloud migration gives a company competitive edge and keeps it ahead of business rivals. The time to migrate to cloud was yesterday.

It is difficult to imagine that a business has not started their cloud journey yet. But, in case business priorities did not allow the organization to look deep and hard into cloudifying the IT stack and business applications, we have a few suggestions to make.

The CIO/CTO of such organization should immediately form a taskforce to create a business case for cloud migration. The taskforce may even be asked to develop a roadmap for migration. The taskforce could comprise of IT Executives, Architects, and Business Function representatives. The CIO/CTO may head the taskforce.

” The CIO/CTO should immediately form a taskforce that will create a business case for cloud migration. “

The journey to cloud will be long and cumbersome. There must be different people in charge of different aspects of this journey. A CIO/CTO may be the overall in-charge but there are a few key areas that the CIO should focus on to ensure success of cloud migration. Below are top 3 focus areas that should be close to a CIO/CTO’s chest:

Technical and Domain Knowledge
Migration Methodology
Program Governance

Focusing on these areas will help with assessment of the staff capabilities, development of an approach to the target state, and progress-tracking of the cloud journey.

Technical and Domain Knowledge

Assessment of current team capabilities is an important aspect in planning the cloud journey. The current employees are well versed in the legacy technology. Their business domain knowledge is critical to the successful migration of the applications to the cloud. But they would need training and retooling to upgrade their skills. IT will have to understand the skills gap. They will have to involve business in explaining and justifying the budget needed to fill this gap. This assessment will also help in determining sourcing requirements to fill the gap. The IT department should work closely with the HR department in this assessment.

Migration Methodology

Agile or iterative methodology is the norm, however, the IT will have to go a step further and decide a specific one from the various flavors of these methodologies. With any business in any industry, documentation of the legacy systems is conspicuous by its absence or incompleteness. A business may have to use Test-Driven Development methodology for migration. This would ensure that a verifiable Definition of Done (DoD) is captured upfront for every application and every business scenario.

There are several vendors/System Integrators who bring their own methodology to assist with cloud migration. Some bring just a framework comprising best practices while others bring a methodology which is tightly coupled with the toolset that they sell. A business has to decide whether they can handover the keys to an SI (Systems Integrator) and let the SI drive the show. Or, the business could leverage the SI’s expertise only as a consulting partner for cloud migration.

” IT will have to work closely with HR to determine skills gap, training and sourcing requirements. “

Program Governance

Cloud journey is long and arduous. A robust set of Program Management and Governance practices may have to be institutionalized. A few important practices are:

ROI calculators and prioritization framework
Guides, checklists and templates
Stakeholder communication plan
Program dashboard to monitor progress and measure success

Communication with the business stakeholders and field operations is one of the most important activities of such endeavor. Communications to update the end-users may also be needed. A good stakeholder communication framework would be necessary and must be established upfront.

If the entire cloud migration project is outsourced to an SI, a good set of delivery milestones and tollgates must be established in the contract. The business must be ready to provide the needed support and attention to the SI partner.

The above are just a few of the key focus areas in developing a cloud migration approach. These help provide guiderails for a company starting on a cloud journey. The CIO/CTO will have to keep adjusting the plan as BAU is still important while the journey takes place. Ultimately, Customer Experience (CX) would be the yard stick for defining and measuring cloud migration success.

” The CIO/CTO will have to keep adjusting the plan as BAU is still important while the cloud journey takes place. “

For a detailed discussion and to know the key considerations for Cloud Migration, you may refer to our other article – Cloud Migration: Lessons From Cyber Trenches And Foundries. For more information or a conversation on how CES can help with Cloud Migration, please contact us at sales@cesltd.com.

Let’s talk!