That’s why having a team of professionals by your side—experts in the banking world and ready to tackle any challenge—is essential: from migrating hundreds of branches, even during a full lockdown, to onboarding NPL portfolios.
Regulations, evolving market conditions, and the drive to increase efficiency and create value have led to a significant increase in banking sector interventions, including mergers, acquisitions, and changes to information systems.
These activities require considerable effort from banks: complex operations that demand in-depth knowledge of both the outgoing and target systems, as well as a broad understanding of the regulatory environment and, most importantly, the ability to develop a tailored strategy for each specific case.
In this context, the key is to turn constraints into opportunities for profound renewal. To achieve this, change must be approached with methodology, expertise, flexibility, and speed a combination of factors that fosters continuous improvement, leveraging past experiences as an evolutionary driver for refining our methodology project after project.
The complexity of a migration is not only technological. A system migration has a profound impact on a bank's structure: changing an information system means modifying operational logic and adopting a new way of thinking. The biggest challenge is organizational and requires a deep understanding of the banking environment.
To support a Bank through this crucial transition, a competent, expert and dedicated team is essential to help it change perspective, overcome resistance, and be able to lead it in the delicate and challenging process of defining new operating methods.
At Deda Bit, this team is known as Migration Machine, and it has a long history dating back to the early 1990s. It was initially formed to help the then "Fondo Comune delle Casse Rurali Trentine" (now Allitude) expand its proprietary information system beyond the Autonomous Province of Trento..
Since then, Migration Machine has successfully completed nearly 300 projects - 110 since 2016 alone - gaining specialized expertise across diverse clients and systems. Over the years, it has developed a structured methodology powered by an advanced engine that automates data transformation processes.
Today, the team comprises over 100 professionals, including developers, consultants, and project managers, all with deep technical and functional expertise in banking processes, regulations, and technology. This optimal mix allows us to work effectively with both small local banks and large banking institutions.
The Migration Machine supports banks throughout the entire migration process, from the kick-off phase to project completion. The process starts with an assessment to identify gaps between the two systems and highlight any unique situations requiring specific solutions. Then, we manage the technical aspects, ensuring seamless data migration from the legacy system to the target platform.
At the same time, we handle the parameterization of the new system, adapting it to the bank’s processes, characteristics, and operational needs, all while ensuring that daily banking services continue without interruption. As the go-live date approaches, we provide comprehensive training to the bank’s employees, ensuring they are fully prepared to operate the new system. Even after migration, part of the Migration Machine team remains available to support the bank until it becomes fully autonomous.
From start to finish, the process typically takes about six months.
One of our most recent migration projects was for Banca della Marca, a BCC within the ICCREA group, which successfully completed its information system migration in six months with the support of Deda Bit.
The migration process began with the formation of the project team and preliminary analyses, including the development of a comprehensive activity planning framework. This was followed by an in-depth data and operational analysis of Banca della Marca, leading to the setup of the Migration Engine and the parameterization of the target system.
Training for 370 employees was conducted primarily remotely, facilitated by a pool of key users-bank employees who received advanced training and then transferred their knowledge to branch colleagues.
During the migration process, two data release phases were carried out to perform reconciliations and verifications before the actual system switchover. During the go-live weekend, the final data conversion was executed, followed by final reconciliations and checks.
If the Banca della Marca project exemplifies Migration Machine's operational efficiency, the case of Banca Popolare delle Province Molisane in March 2020 demonstrates how the team continuously evolves and strengthens its capabilities with each project. The bank's information system migration was scheduled for the end of March, but three weeks before the go-live, a nationwide lockdown was imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To stay on schedule, we designed a completely new procedure that enabled the final - and highly sensitive - phases of the migration to be completed entirely remotely.
This was an emergency situation, requiring a shift in perspective and a significant effort to develop solutions, such as direct remote connections to branch cashiers' computers.
Operating remotely meant ensuring an even stronger presence, making sure the bank felt fully supported throughout the transition.
To achieve this, we created virtual rooms where the Migration Team was constantly available to provide real-time assistance.
This experience, successfully completed, gave rise to a new service: today, remote migration is one of the solutions offered by Deda Bit. Similarly, all training is now fully digital, creating a new standard that delivers the same results with greater flexibility.
Adaptability and the ability to evolve over time are among our most defining characteristics.
The wide range of projects we have handled - including acquisitions, divestitures, full-scale migrations, portfolio data acquisitions, securitizations, and system integrations - has allowed us to develop two additional key differentiating capabilities: flexibility in interpreting contexts and identifying the most suitable solution for each specific scenario; speed in designing and executing projects efficiently, leveraging a proven methodology.
Regardless of the technology used, what makes all this possible is our commitment to change and our drive to learn constantly adding new building blocks to our continuous improvement process alongside our clients.
Today, the Migration Machine, which started as a local initiative, has become an industry benchmark in Italy for Merger & Acquisition operations. It is now further refining its expertise by specializing in the onboarding of distressed credit portfolios. According to the latest Market Watch NPL report, the value of distressed loans increased by 5% in 2020, with €38 billion in non-performing loans sold that year, a figure expected to rise to €40 billion in 2021 and remain high in 2022.
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