defining and delivering a modern data strategy 

Engagement overview

While undertaking a multi-year modernisation of its core operating platforms, Momentum Investments was confronted with the challenge of operating within a legacy on-premise data environment, which hindered agility and innovation.

They wanted to reduce dependence on a centralised data team with competing BAU priorities which impeded responsiveness to business needs. They aspired to transition to a domain-specific data ownership model and lacked the modern data architecture and capabilities needed to harness the full potential of their data assets effectively.

To help them pivot towards a data mesh architecture and data product thinking to drive differentiation, Momentum Investments decided to appoint a strategic data partner. The partner would help them work with business domains to evolve from an early-stage data maturity level and focus the investment on data capabilities which would be closely aligned with strategic objectives and stakeholder needs.

Momentum Investments collaborated closely with BSG to drive a transformative journey. We began with a deep understanding of the business's strategic objectives. Together, we partnered with Executive sponsorship in both the business and IT domains, prioritising the essential capabilities required to steer the program towards success. This alignment of IT modernisation with business strategic goals laid the foundation for the practical delivery of an advanced insights capability.

In partnership with AWS, BSG and Momentum Investments, designed and delivered a state-of-the-art data mesh platform architecture tailored for the financial services sector. This encompassed a comprehensive suite of services including S3, Lambda, Athena, Step Functions, Lake Formation, Glue, ECS, AWS Batch, Cloud Watch, Eventbridge, SNS, SQS, PowerBI EC2 Gateway and other services, managed via Terraform/Terragrunt to facilitate easier deployment and management of related infrastructure.

The program also introduced a data model, domain-centric core data products, robust standards and ownership structures, and governance and capability maturity frameworks, as well as several communities of practice.

Throughout the engagement, Momentum Investments and BSG are driving the adoption of data product thinking. BSG collaborated closely with Momentum Investments to institute a robust data governance framework that facilitated effective data management practices, reinforcing data quality and security. Additionally, BSG provided guidance to Momentum Investments to establish a series of advanced data capabilities for cloud platform engineering, DataOps, and advanced insights.

With Executive sponsors in business, Momentum Investments and BSG incubated and incrementally funded business cases to establish the advanced insights capability. The objective was clear: to deliver actionable insights generated from data science and machine learning directly into software used by intermediaries, clients, and employees. This manifested in the form of real-time personalised recommendations, significantly elevating the impact of an innovative new product. The team delivered a successful pilot, illustrating the potential of the transformative investment.

Benefits of the change

We stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Momentum Investments, leveraging our four pillars of practical data and AI to deliver tangible value that was tightly aligned with their business strategy and in support of their transformative journey. We linked data management and architecture investments directly to targeted business objectives to focus our scope, and funded new capabilities through well-defined business cases.

Our partnership embraced a marathon mindset, valuing not only individual business use cases but also re-usable patterns and products, modern data management, and robust governance. We forged a scalable data platform, cultivated new data and insights capabilities, and nurtured a data-driven culture.

Comprehensively supporting Momentum Investments transition to a data mesh, BSG enabled early and consistent value realisation projecting a 20x ROI from the first advanced insights use cases. We practically established analytics and machine learning capabilities, refined product management and business case processes, and implemented effective value measurement and interaction tracking practices.

In just 18 months, AWS rated Momentum Investments data maturity was improved substantially, validating the rapid progress and enduring impact of our collaboration. Our strategic partnership, built upon a foundation of innovation and practicality, continues to drive results that directly align with the executive committee’s strategic objectives.