Custom Services

Specialized Advisory Services

TowerGroup's Specialized Advisory Services serves the banking and payments, securities and investments, and insurance segments of the financial services marketplace with customized project-based advisory services.

Advantages of TowerGroup Specialized Advisory Services

  • Custom projects leverage the expertise of the TowerGroup Research Directors and Analysts and the Specialized Advisory Services Team.
  • Dedicated project teams focus on helping your company achieve desired results.
  • A TowerGroup SAS project team is composed of highly experienced consultants and financial services professionals.
  • Specialized Advisory Services is entirely independent — TowerGroup has no product, systems integration, or outsourcing agenda.
  • We work closely with both the financial services institutions and the IT suppliers to the industry, an approach that gives us a unique perspective

How We Help Clients with Our Custom Services

TowerGroup's custom engagements are unique, combining the world-class expertise of TowerGroup financial services industry analysts and Research Directors with exceptional project delivery skills. The result: faster, better engagements that bring clients exceptional insight and actionable results.

The core competencies of TowerGroup's Specialized Advisory Services team are in analyzing the forces and trends that shape strategic business direction, identifying the best practices and innovations that can change the landscape, and supporting the implementation of technology and business programs. These competencies enable us to help our clients identify winning concepts and apply them effectively for successful project execution.

TowerGroup Specialized Advisory Services Helps Clients by:

  • Identifying disruptive trends and innovations and developing new target states for your business that offer greater revenue growth and efficiency
  • Identifying best practices and the gaps from best practices in your current operations
  • Building road maps that enable successful implementation
  • Identifying opportunities for operating enhancement in the IT organization
  • Evaluating the feasibility of entering new markets

Sample Project Offerings from Specialized Advisory Services

Develop Business Target States

TowerGroup Specialized Advisory Services develops business target states for clients that embrace new business concepts and disruptive technologies, encompassing people, process, and technology — such as mobile banking, communities, cross-channel activities, time to market, and innovation processes.

Identify Best Practices and Innovations and Multiclient Studies

Clients engage TowerGroup to perform objective, detailed studies of operating areas and functions, for which we gather information by surveying multiple companies and present “blinded,” confidential results. Topics can be proposed and sponsored by TowerGroup clients.

Perform Gap Analysis

Our "gap analysis" entails identifying gaps between best practice or a business target state and a client's current operating state as the basis for the development of a business road map.

Develop and Validate Business Road Maps

TowerGroup develops business road maps for individual clients (or validates a client’s existing road map) to help the client conceive, formalize, and adopt new business concepts and/or technologies.

Project and Program Management

TowerGroup Specialized Advisory Services team offers management of major initiatives, using best-in-class program management techniques for driving progress and managing risk.

Develop and Syndicate Requirements

Through workshops and interviews aimed at ensuring the definition of the optimal target state solution for a client, TowerGroup facilitates the definition of business and technology requirements and the syndication of the requirements among the client's stakeholders.

Identify and Assist in Selection of Vendors

TowerGroup offers management of the process to identify, review, and select product vendors within either a request for information/request for proposal (RFI/RFP) process or a request for solution (RFS) process. Our work with both financial services institutions and product vendors positions us uniquely to separate facts from marketing positioning and to identify emerging product vendors that might otherwise be overlooked. Our analysis is supported by TowerGroup’s Vendor Selection Processor, a proprietary tool for managing and accelerating the scoring process when it has become highly complex with multiple vendors, multiple scorers, and extensive categories of requirements.

Perform IT Health Check

TowerGroup offers critical assessment of the performance of a client’s IT organization and its alignment with the business strategy, in comparison with best practices. The IT health check includes analysis across seven dimensions: business and IT architecture; IT policies and services; IT governance; organization; operational effectiveness; product/service delivery; and shared services, including risk management. The health check results in our identification of pragmatic corrective actions to remediate or improve critical areas.

Develop and Validate IT Strategy and Road Map

To develop the IT strategy for a client, we identify and distinguish the roles of IT, governance, organization, capabilities, sourcing strategy, processes, standards, and policies. The resulting information is the basis for a clear and achievable road map of strategic IT initiatives and a master plan to implement strategy. We also can validate a client’s existing road map or project portfolio assessments to align IT projects and priorities to business strategies, reduce costs and maintenance of legacy systems, and manage IT as a business.

Provide Interim CIO Staffing

Sometimes an organization needs a trusted advisor to manage throughout a challenging IT change. TowerGroup has relationships with professionals who have fulfilled challenging interim roles at a wide range of banks in North America and overseas.

Strategic Investment Analysis

We help financial services and technology firms gauge the viability of entering new markets and developing new products and services.

If you would like additional information regarding the TowerGroup's Specialized Advisory Services, please contact us.

Membership

TowerGroup offers an annual, subscription-based membership service that provides clients with in-depth Advisory Research Reports and presentations, as well as inquiry time with analysts for actionable advice on industry trends, opportunities, and threats.

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Subscribers to TowerGroup research enjoy access to all written research in a service including in-depth Advisory Research Reports, ViewPoints, and presentations, as well as inquiry time with Analysts for actionable advice on industry trends, opportunities, and threats. Learn more about how TowerGroup can help your business.