SoftwareOne case study

Financial institution minimises IBM audit risk

A global financial institution facing an IBM audit and contract renegotiation turned to SoftwareOne for support, reducing its potential exposure from more than USD 14M to just USD 7K.

When a global financial services organisation received an audit letter from IBM, it recalled previous experiences of paying extensive financial penalties as part of the audit settlements. It immediately contacted SoftwareOne, its longstanding technology services partner, to get advice and guidance on how to reduce its exposure.

USD 14M+
in financial risk mitigated
100% visibility
on financial risks and commercial opportunities
Audit readiness
achieved before audit deadline

Client: Global financial institution
Industry: Finance
Services: IBM Advisory Services, Compliance Assessment, Audit Defense
Country: United States

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Preparing for an IBM audit

A financial institution based in the US but operating globally, provides a global settlement infrastructure to the world’s most important financial institutions. Its mission is to be the trusted partner at the centre of the exchange market.

With trillions of dollars flowing through its systems every day, the company minimises systemic risks while improving funding and operational efficiency for making FX safer, smoother and more cost effective for its members.

As a long-standing IBM customer and a significant user of IBM blockchain and hyperledger technology, it was imperative that the company understood its IBM usage against the terms of its licenses and that any risks and opportunities to optimise were addressed prior to undergoing an audit with Deloitte, IBM’s audit partner.

SoftwareOne is an IBM Platinum & Red Hat Advanced Partner and has significant experience with license compliance and audit defense, as well as working with clients who are maturing in their use of IBM technologies, and have strategic objectives to modernise their applications and adopt hybrid cloud.

SoftwareOne’s experts are IBM Cloud Pak & hybrid cloud certified and provides IBM Advisory Services with more than 30+ members team across the globe. The consultants supporting IBM engagements have extensive experience of delivering more than 120+ engagements which have saved over USD 157 million in the last three years.

For these reasons, the financial institution was in good hands asking SoftwareOne to help prepare them for their impending audit.

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Advisory services spot the gaps

The primary objective of this engagement was to guide and support the client through its compliance audit, to ensure that any exposure to risk was minimised and that the outcome left the business in a favorable position with IBM to enable its longer-term objectives: to continue modernising its IBM estate and increasing its adoption of hybrid cloud.

SoftwareOne engaged with the client to agree audit and communication processes and advised on priority actions to limit any inadvertent risk exposure. This included providing guidance to employees about the audit.

SoftwareOne assisted the client throughout the audit, reviewing data collection requests from the auditors and optimising the outputs prior to these being shared, avoiding risk to the value of USD 2.3 million. At SoftwareOne’s recommendation, the client removed blockchain from the scope of the audit, which resulted in an additional risk avoidance of USD 2.5 million.

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Additionally, as a result of sub-capacity optimisation and remediation services, a risk value of USD 10 million was mitigated.  In total, USD 14.8 million in financial risks were avoided.

SoftwareOne along with the client jointly minimised the findings against the customer to just 60 PVU of InfoSphere Data Replication for non-production at a cost of USD 7,000.

Through our services the customer ensured its IBM licensing infrastructure (ILMT) and compliance position ahead of audit deadlines. SoftwareOne collaborated closely with the customer throughout and beyond the audit completion until risks and opportunities were addressed, findings were agreed, and successful outcome negotiated with IBM.

The specific IBM Advisory Services SoftwareOne delivered were:

ILMT health-check, remediation and optimisation to ensure sub-capacity licensing benefits were fully leveraged
IBM compliance position, risks assessment & mitigation strategy
Audit strategy & process support
IBM contract & commercial review

IBM Advisory Services
We help optimise your software spend and prepare you to understand and comply with your IBM licensing terms and conditions.
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A potential USD 14M bill reduced to just USD 7K

SoftwareOne helped turn a risk of over USD 14 million to an audit settlement figure of just USD 7,000. This allowed the customer to spend this capital on wider initiatives and investments in support of the technology investment programme.

Without SoftwareOne as an advisory partner for its IBM audit support and optimisation, the client would have been exposed to significant financial risks, the impact of which would have been material, potentially impacting operational resilience, and limiting future technology funding.

In addition, given the very risk aware and highly regulated industry that the client operates in, any reputational risks associated with non-compliance were avoided.

Following the success of the engagement, SoftwareOne developed a solution that enhances the assurance of the client’s IBM environment, supports its technology investment programme and is designed to accelerate the modernisation of its IBM portfolio where appropriate to maximise the business value.

Financial institution minimises IBM audit risk

USD 14M+

100% visibility

Audit readiness

Preparing for an IBM audit

Advisory services spot the gaps

Can we do this for you?

Can we do this for you?

IBM Advisory Services

A potential USD 14M bill reduced to just USD 7K

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