Working in PwC and IBM, there were many clients that I had dealt with - for example Bells Control at TISL, Teastall.com in PwC, British Petroleum at IBM - but the one that I remember most fondly was the HSBC project that spanned our transition from PwC to IBM. This was an epic project because of its geographic spread, the complexity of delivery and the rewards that we picked up as a team.
It all began in 1999 when PwC US decided to embrace the eBusiness paradigm wholeheartedly. In India I had embarked on TINTIN - The Internet Initiative, within the firm and when I was elevated to the partnership of the firm, I was given the mandate to lead this new practice as an offshoot of the ITSI - Information Technology & System Integration - practice. However most of our managers and partners were still wedded to the huge cash cow of SAP and were reluctant to explore the uncharted territory around the web. For these intellectual laggards to understand the immense possibilities of the web, I had created an animated Powerpoint presentation that was shown in the Partner Manager meeting at Goa. This presentation was such a huge hit that our management decided that this presentation should be carried to every potential client so that we could sell them eBusiness services.
One such presentation that I made was to HSBC in Mumbai and this was attended by, among others, Lawrence Webb who headed HSBC Payment and Cash Management Systems from Hongkong. He was so overwhelmed by this presentation that he immediately asked PwC to send me to their HK office so that I could make the same presentation to their executives. This was the first time that I flew Business Class on client's money and was picked up at the airport in a Rolls Royce taxi -- but that could be another story. Shortly afterwards HSBC Philippines floated an RFP for Cash Management System and Webb, who remembered me from the eBusiness presentation asked PwC India if they would like to put in a bid.
This was a little awkward because of territorial jurisdiction issues. PwC India, which was a part of the PwC Americas territory, could not put in bid for a Hongkong client, which was in the territory of PwC Hongkong. However, HSBC put its foot down and said since PwC HK was nowhere as cost competitive as any Indian vendor, they would go to either PwC India or to some other Indian vendor like TCS or Infosys, but certainly not to PwC HK. That is when PwC HK backed down and allowed us -- PwC India -- to bid. Our pitch was pretty good and I, along with my colleague Anupam Haldar, travelled to HK to make the final presentation, which -- thanks to Lawrence Webb, I am sure -- was accepted after some tough negotiations.
The project was quite complicated. It was managed out of HSBC HK by Antony Solimini and Pei Fong but software would be designed and built in PwC Calcutta and would had to be delivered - that is installed, tested and commissioned in HSBC Manila. It was a browser-based application software to be developed Microsoft tools -- IIS, VB and a SqlServer backend. We had a project manager, Debashis Ghosh on our side but the real technical lead was Chinmohan Biswas and I was the project partner but unfortunately none of us had ever worked on a banking system before. Our so-called banking experts, based in PwC Mumbai were all paper tigers who would talk themselves blue in the face about systems but had never touched a keyboard in their lives. There were some peculiar requirements like Triple DES and RSA encryption for data that only Chinmohan could figure out and he did. Anyway, at some point of time the application was ready and our plan was that our deployment team would travel to Manila and start the user acceptance testing and subsequent processes.
Then disaster struck! There was an attempted coup in the Philippines in January 2001 and the government decided to stop the issuance of all visas except tourist visas. This was a huge problem for us because our six member team could not travel and for HSBC it was an even bigger problem because the new system was supposed to go live from April 1. The other problem was the encryption issue. Our understanding of implementing Triple DES was quite different from what HSBC was expecting and we did not have the time to rebuild everything in the way that they wanted. The whole project was suddenly in jeopardy.
First things first, we decided to use a free, open source product, namely PGP - Pretty Good Privacy to temporarily plug the encryption issue. But the visa problem was severe. If our team could not reach Manila then there was no way that the software could be installed or tested. I requested our Project Manager and Chinmohan to go to Manila on a tourist visa and start the process but our Project Manager was reluctant because of personal reasons. Chinmohan was prepared to go alone but I felt that pushing him out to the frontline alone would have been unfair. So I decided to join him as a tourist in Manila.
Manila was a bit dicey. Even though the coup had been quashed, there was a sense of unease in the city. Unlike in other assignments, where we had the luxury of looking around the city, Chinmohan and I kept ourselves restricted to our hotel and the HSBC office next door. But what was most important was that the implementation finally got going even though the our team had been reduced from six to two. Also, this was perhaps the first and only PwC project where the Project Partner was seen crawling under the table plugging in wires to routers and switches.
HSBC Manila was very helpful but their testing was extremely rigorous. They performed actions that no sane banker would ever perform but justified it by referring to a little black book that had records of all kinds of foolish things that people had done in the past. The idea was of course to see whether our software could handle such unlikely scenarios and very often it did not. However Pei Fong assured us that this was not a problem as long as we could fix them in time. Chinmohan, alone in Manila and his backup team in Calcutta rose to the occasion and did a great job of fixing bugs as and when they were reported. By and large the HSBC Manila team was happy and the Manila Branch manager -- I forget his name -- took me out for lunch where we had Bird Nest Soup!
But there was one nagging issue that refused to go away and this was about the encryption problem. We had given a patch and solved the problem but HSBC IT department were not happy with such a solution. So I left Chinmohan in Manila, to continue with the user acceptance testing and flew to Hongkong to meet the head of HSBC IT. This was a long and difficult meeting where I alone had to argue our case with a whole bunch of HSBC IT folks for whom such a novel and non-standard idea was truly scandalous. Nevertheless, I persisted and eventually, they agreed that the third party based solution that we had offered was indeed safe, secure and trustworthy and met their Bank's technical requirements.
However, we were not yet done, because then, one of their internal auditors through another curve ball, or in our parlance, a googly, in the shape of another, non technical but nevertheless complex issue. Since PGP was piece software that would be used by HSBC, that was built by a third party their auditors would need to see an invoice, evidence of payment against the invoice and a contract for the support of the software. PGP however, was a free, open source product that could only be downloaded from the web and so there was no question of an invoice, payment or support. Hence it would be unacceptable. For a moment, there was a pin drop silence and all discussion came to a halt. That is where, I thought for a moment and played my trump card, or as they would say in bridge, a 'ruff'. I said that PwC India would "sell" this software against an invoice of HK$ 10, accept the payment and issue the warranty under my signature as an equity partner of PwC India. For a moment everyone was stunned at the novelty of the idea and then, much to the relief of everyone around the table, the audit team accepted this as a valid solution.
Meanwhile, Chinmohan's testing was going very well and all bugs were being swatted successfully. The project was on course and there was no danger of missing the 31st March / 1st April deadline. Everybody -- from HSBC Manila, HSBC HK and PwC India -- was very happy. In fact, the success of the project had percolated upward into the HSBC hierarchy and it was being said that this was perhaps the first software project in HSBC that was going live on schedule. So much so, that Aman Mehta, the CEO of HSBC had indicated his desire to meet me for a dinner in his private penthouse
This came as a shock or a surprise for the HSBC team because no vendor had ever been invited to the CEO's penthouse on the top floor of the iconic HSBC building that was a landmark in Hongkong. The HSBC was so tall that the top floor would generally be above the cloud and the lifts that went up there had had its walls plastered with paper so that people would not get dizzy by having to look out.
Dinner with Mr Mehta was a grand affair and I had the honour of being accompanied by Lawrence Webb. Sipping champagne with the CEO in that penthouse was something that I, as one of the junior most partners of PwC, could never dream of. I do not remember what was on the menu but I do remember that Mr. Mehta was delighted to know that the work had been done from Calcutta because he had been a manager at the HSBC Branch in Dalhousie Square. I do remember that we talked about what Calcutta was, what it had of late become and perhaps what could be done to bring it back to its former glory. One idea that was discussed was whether the vast premises of HSBC in Dalhousie could be converted into an in-house software development facility with the assistance of PwC. We all thought that it would be a wonderful idea but unfortunately it never happened. People moved on and the idea died a natural death.
What happened instead is that after I got back to Calcutta, we started a second auxiliary project to support the software that we had developed, for another three years. Under the leadership of Arindam Chatterjee we set up a mechanism of having two of our staff being on standby. Their task would be to fix any new bugs that were reported after the system had gone live or more importantly carry out any other enhancements that may be required. This support project was carried out successfully for another two years until the consulting practice of PwC India was bought over by IBM. The funny thing was that even though the contract value of the support project was lower than the development project, our profits were far higher because there was hardly any problem with the original software but we were billing HSBC for the support staff.
