Rethinking the role of IT to foster innovation and cross-collaboration
The largest pension group under public law in Germany, the Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK), jointly manages the business of 12 liberal professions´ and communal pension schemes that provide occupational pension provision, occupational incapacity and surviving dependant’s pension to insured persons. BVK’s activity involves cross-functional processing of vast datasets, complying with strict insurance regulations while delivering high-quality services to Group members and policyholders. As a result, the BVK relies heavily on its IT, internally named “Division IV”, as the central point that connects all business units and helps them to cooperate, ensuring timely and proper functioning of systems and applications.
Evaluating existing roles and processes and redesigning a new IT governance
BearingPoint supported BVK with a comprehensive analysis of the existing procedures and conducted a series of interviews with the management board and several other areas of the business to collect governance requirements. Together with the BVK specialists, BearingPoint then ensured that all business stakeholders were actively engaged and aligned on the IT governance concept, scope, and objectives. The analysis identified specific functions and roles that IT governance should include, such as IT risks and compliance, IT quality assurance, resource allocation management, and IT architecture.
BearingPoint then designed the future IT governance using the COBIT 2019 framework tools. The team coordinated the target maturity level for the IT governance implementation in accordance with COBIT 2019, developed the action plan roadmap, and defined roles and responsibilities for the IT processes. At the same time, the team outlined specific recommendations for project management and communication activities, such as focused agenda topics for meetings and committee structures, escalation conventions, and key performance indicators.
Facilitating IT transformation by leveraging new rules and procedures
BVK is currently integrating new roles in its IT structure, such as IT architecture, central demand, and test management for comprehensive IT quality management. The new IT governance clearly defines roles and ownership of every task and process, therefore enabling more transparency across the entire organization, objective KPI measurement, and higher service quality. It also describes how the various functions involved in each process should work together, how to conduct effective meetings, and actively involve all stakeholders, consequently leading to significantly improved productivity and responsiveness of IT teams.
BVK’s new IT governance will deliver tangible business results where its IT decisions create real value for the whole organization. It has now better aligned its business with its IT division, and BVK is in the right position to create a much bigger return on its IT investments going forward. The project showcased how IT governance can transform an organization and align it to meet its goals.
Giso Hutschenreiter, Partner at BearingPoint
Client
The Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) is a public authority of the Free State of Bavaria in the division of the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior. As Germany´s largest pension group under public law, it is the service and competence center for first or second pillar schemes for liberal professions´ and communal pension schemes. It is also the joint executive body of twelve pension schemes.
