Every technology dollar, justified.
Strategy Go maps what your technology costs to the business capabilities it serves, then finds the spend your strategy doesn't need. Capability-based costing, zero-based budgeting and true total cost of ownership, for banks, utilities and government.
Results
- $102Msaved in two years at a global bank
- 533applications retired, $12M a year in licences gone
- 20% to 46%adoption of shared solutions across countries
- 20x to 34xreturn on our fees, booked by the client's finance team
What we do
Six ways in. Most engagements begin with the audit, because everything else depends on knowing what each capability costs.
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Know what every capability costs. A technology spend audit maps every dollar of run and change spend to a business capability, so the first question, what does this capability cost us, finally has an answer.
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Retire the applications your strategy doesn't need. Application rationalisation sorts every system into tolerate, invest, migrate or eliminate, then makes owners state what each one is worth. Most can't, and the licences go.
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Justify every technology dollar from zero. Zero-based budgeting and true TCO replace last year plus a few percent with a budget built from what each capability actually costs, and a process that keeps challenging it.
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Reuse before you build. A capability check in project approval: before a team builds, it shows why nothing you already own can do the job. About a third of what gets built is written off within two years.
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Compare capability by capability, not budget by budget. Benchmarking at the capability level: what you spend on payments, onboarding or regulatory reporting against what your peers spend, and what explains the gap.
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Make it stick after we leave. An operating model and playbook that give every capability an owner, a budget and a review, so the savings keep coming after the engagement ends.
How it works
Capability-based costing is the method behind every service. Spend is mapped to the applications it pays for, applications to the business capabilities they serve, and the decisions are made capability by capability, where the duplication and the regrettable spend are visible. For banks we use the BIAN business capability model; everyone else gets a model built from their own functions. The model lives in CO-ASTRA, our own system, so it stays current after we leave.
Where it has worked
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Application rationalisation at a large global bank →
3,000 applications costing $750M a year. 1,000 candidates found, 533 retired, $12M a year saved: 24 times the fee.
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Technology cost optimisation at a large global bank →
Every application mapped to a business capability, reuse written into project approval, $102M saved: 34 times the fee.
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IT financial management at a North American utility →
Excel reporting, 186 untracked contracts and a $3M overrun. One dashboard, one contract book, and the next overrun prevented: 20 times the fee.
Who it's for
Banks and capital markets, where BIAN gives us a common language. Utilities, where a rate filing makes every technology dollar a public matter. Government, where zero-based budgeting is policy. Anyone with a technology budget in the tens of millions or more and a general ledger that can't say what it buys.
Who we are
Two principals in Toronto. Omar Shakil, a financial strategist with more than a decade in financial management, risk and transformation. Seamus Birch, who ran technology portfolio and product operating models inside global banks for two decades. Between us, careers at Scotiabank, TD, RBC, CIBC, Deutsche Bank and Barclays: we have done this work from the inside, and we do it now as Strategy Go. About us →
Let's make your strategy go.
Tell us the problem first, then what you want to be true a year from now. We'll tell you plainly whether we can help and what it would take.
Email us +1 437 523 8585 LinkedIn Toronto, Canada