As experts in performance, which ultimately translates into business improvements, we have participated in the last two bank mergers to take place in Spain to guarantee the capacity and service after integration. Based on this knowledge and experience, we have systematised the path to success in this type of process that, from a technology/business point of view, requires: first, identifying the capacity limitations of the target technological environment; second, addressing the adaptations and carrying out the necessary changes to support the increased operational load; and third, anticipating the behaviour of the target environment through the development of tests that simulate real operations.

This requires action in four major areas, all of which are critical: infrastructure, software, batch processing (mainframe) and online. Our Technical Performance Office / Performance Operations Centre (POC) carries out these tasks through the BOA platform and by applying the DevPerOps methodology, the only continuous performance improvement standard on the market.

In short, the aim is to guarantee that the target systems will be ready for the migration, that is, that they have been sized to support the load from the source information and offer the capacity to process all operations normally from the day after migration (D+1). Thus, errors that were previously “forgiven” are no longer allowed and, moreover, the objective in terms of costs is for 1+1 not to add up to 3, as tends to happen in these processes, but to less than 2.

In this context, performance monitoring and capacity management make it possible to discover what is going wrong and to identify opportunities in business terms (efficiency, compliance levels, response times, costs, etc.). These weaknesses and opportunities cannot go unnoticed, so they must be kept under control and continuously improved during and also after the merger.