Interview: Why migration shouldn't be a project after thought

Anton Brisuda is part of the Data Transformation team at bancon, this is a smaller team working with customers who want to transform their existing data or the data system and specifically migrate financial data. bancon have their own toolkit of bTools which includes bPostingEngine. Anton is the product owner of the bPostingEngine software that is able to automate the posting process, therefore replacing a large manual task with technology. Not only speeding up the project timeline but also removing the risk of human error.

Anton doesn’t have a finance background, instead his role is working with the technology and software itself. He has worked in this area for almost 13 years in several different roles - from delivery to project owner working directly with customers.

Tell us a bit more about your background…

I studied Nuclear and Particle Physics in Slovakia, which was the start of a long path to working with bPostingEngine. My first ever interview was for an SAP IT company, now one of the biggest data companies in the world. I started as a consultant in SAP BW, immediately I felt like I could do the job well and was keen to learn as much about SAP products as possible. From here, I quickly chose a Data Transformation career path as it suited my skills. Like physics - data behaves in a particular way and has certain rules, so this is where I felt most comfortable. I joined bancon over 4 years ago, and have mainly worked with bPostingEngine since.​

Out of all the different roles you’ve had, which have enjoyed the most?

I’ve enjoyed each for different reasons. My path has given me experience in every part of the process. I do enjoy a challenge, so working at the front end of the business on customer projects, which I am doing now, means finding new solutions and adapting bPostingEngine to work with different criteria and data sets. We work very closely with the client to understand their business, the purpose of the migration and their processes rather than going in and applying the same tool and way of working each time.

Currently my role is product owner for bPostingEngine from a management and service perspective. However, I share the responsibilities with the team, for the know-how it would be my colleague Dilan Latif and I work closely with Viviane Correia, who has the finance knowledge and prepares the business concept for me to translate to the technology.

When a client comes to bancon with a project that requires bPostingEngine, what are the challenges they are often facing?

Finance migration is never the primary purpose. These projects rarely start with finance, it is often an after thought and the requirement for change comes from sales or operations. Once they have set a clear goal, finance is one of the consequences they need to address. For example, they may need to replicate transactions. Many of our customers face the same questions at this point; do they have capacity internally? And is the volume of data manageable? This is where they will start to look at options. They may come across a consultancy who specialise in data migration but they have a solution that is semi-automated and only works with traditional data sets and processes. This would still require extra resources, delegating to a person or consultant which is a big job; they still need to distribute tasks, make someone responsible, build reports, project maps, connect the dots and have someone overseeing the entire project at a senior level to make sure the data will match the new system.

Why would a customer pick bancon bPostingEngine?

Customers often come to us because an internal project is having issues, has failed to launch or lacks the support and capacity needed internally. bPostingEngine becomes a much simpler solution and allows for flexibility, it isn’t restricted by a template, it allows the customer to take what was good from the initial system and remove what was bad. We ask them for a wish list of what they would like to have but don’t have today, opening up possibilities to make modifications and transform the system so it works better for the business. An example of these modifications could be enriching the data to provide further data sets that give the customer a different view of the data and enable them to create different reports to analyse the business in a new way.

So what does bPostingEngine do?

The software is fully automated. It takes the scope of the entire data transformation and migration project and the specific requirement from the finance team. It extracts the data from the source, transforms as per the requirements set and posts the data into the target system. We help the customer reconcile the data in the new system and support the customer with getting their internal users up to speed and confident with the new system. This is part of the hyper-care phase where we are responsible for any issues for a period until the next financial end-of-month accounts and reporting, to ensure 100% audit proof accuracy. This marks the end of a complete month cycle so we know that everything has been transferred successfully. Working with bPostingEngine provides a complete end-to-end service.

What projects have you worked on recently?

Most recently a leading contract catering company needed to transfer financial data from the French financial system and replicate all the processes in the Italian financial system. During the project we faced some common challenges, where the current system was highly customised to their business so a lot of processes needed to be replicated. It was a short timeline to deliver and my colleague Viviane Correia played a key part in ensuring it went smoothly and there were no errors as she was able to speak to the customer in their language, which when you are talking in very technical jargon was a huge help. She travelled to be on-site in their Milan office so became integrated with the team during the project which built a great relationship with the customer. The result was a success, we averaged 99% quality in their last financial cycle of the new data. The customer was so happy that no issues were raised during the hyper-care phase, and they want to continue working with bancon in the future.

What would you say to someone who is thinking about joining bancon?

If you like a challenge and enjoy problem solving bancon is the right company for you. Each project is different and provides variety, unlike working in a big company you will see the bigger picture of the project and be involved from start to finish which provides a lot of job satisfaction.

If you’re looking for a new career opportunity, take a look at our careers page or get in touch with Claudia Hoffmann.