A tight stopwatch for Switzerland 

In 2011 BNP Paribas launched the Neos programme whose aim is to deploy a unified Windows 7 platform for all the group's 200'000 workstations around the world. The bank is represented in Switzerland by more than 2000 active collaborators in the fields of investment banking and private management.

My task is to take charge of the local part of this programme and to steer the Swiss Neos project from the implementation of the first infrastructure pre-requisites up to the on-field operations via the qualification phase of hundreds of applications used in the country. We must end the shift of the last workstation before april 2014, end support date of Windows XP.

To achieve this type of project, I must establish contacts with stakeholders of very different profiles. The group's engineering teams provide us with baselines, which need adapting to the country's specific constrainsts, especially security-based. The heads of applications, present locally or on distant sites, are solicited to test and eventually adapt their developments.

The needs of end users must also be taken into consideration in order to limit the change impacts on their daily working tool.

An exemplary mission

My experiences gained for more than 15 years in the management of disparate projects (helpdesk implementation, consolidation of servers, collaborative messaging solution, project portfolio management), enable me to coordinate these different axes to advance towards the goal. We are now midway through and, despite the difficulties met in the course of the applications' compliance, the first Neos workstations are in service.

The steering of this type of project, very clear to BNP Paribas, is a good example of a mission that 

The communication skills with different types of contacts, the experience gained with a variety of projects and the capacity to distance onself facing everyday difficulties are strengths recognised by the client.

The client's renewed confidence

Alongside the Neos project management, I am now asked to accompany the organisational change of the team who will take the operational technical maintenance of the workstation.

Francois-Pierre LEMER