what for and what the consequences are,' emphasised Dias. 'Changing just one adaptor might damage the entire package.'
The bulk of the project has been done by the BES internal team, although some local consultants and integrators are sometimes brought in to assist with certain tasks. Today, the bank turns to the vendor for assistance only in critical situations. Dias observed that the product and associated services model that Calypso offers has changed in the last few years, largely due to multiple customer requests. But at the time, Calypso's strategy did not include implementation and was limited to the software licence sales, he said. He acknowledged that this was made clear by the vendor from the beginning: it would provide the platform's licence and support, but not the implementation services.
When the bank initially purchased services (such as time and materials) it expected a 50/50 effort in 'bringing the product to life'. But that wasn't the case. BES had to purchase additional consultancy services from the vendor (some related directly to the implementation, but the major focus was on training the bank's IT team to work with the system so they could undertake the implementation themselves). It had some senior consultants visiting the site at the start of the project, but then the seniority and proficiency levels from the Calypso side decreased, said Pessoa. The bank's in-house team had to take on a lot of work it did not anticipate at the outset. However, Dias emphasised that Calypso's proposition today is very different from the one BES signed for back in 2005. 'It has changed for the better.While it is not the "model bank" offering, you are at least not starting from scratch: the package is more off-the-shelf and includes a team of Calypso specialists geared up for the implementation. It makes the implementation quicker and easier. This team presents you with a project plan, drives the project and applies the expertise it has built up during previous implementations.' He also felt that the vendor team could help the bank to manage its expectations. At BES, for example, the IT and business teams knew exactly what to expect from its long-standing legacy system, Atlas, in terms of developments, timescales and resources, but Calypso was unchartered waters. 'All we had was the feedback from other Calypso users.' Also, Calypso's technology was new to the BES team, which made it very hard to make predictions about delivery timeframes and resources.
