Founded in France in the 1970s as a local card payment transaction processor, this company has grown exponentially over the decades, into a multi-service payment transaction company spanning most of Europe and employing over 18,000 people. During this period of growth, they’ve acquired services and companies from around the world, expanding their portfolio. Most of which were subsequently combined into distinct divisions focusing on a specific part of the full payment value chain. 

To optimise and integrate key processes throughout the many services, processes, and divisions, in the late 2010s, the company embarked on a partially successful lean transformation. This, along with the adoption of Agile frameworks (SAFe, Scrum, LeSS) within silos, led to the improvement of certain parts of their organisation and ways of working, while other parts of the company continued to follow the same operating model. 

In 2021, ALTEN Nederland was asked to help mature a local platform within the company’s Financial Services branch, Acquiring NL, that operated under a model very much resembling that of SAFe. Initially, ALTEN was only asked for guidance in implementing CI/CD, however, the assignment grew into a full-scope Agile/SAFe and DevOps transformation, following a thorough assessment based on the DORA DevOps capabilities model. 

Two ALTEN Agile/DevOps coaches were assigned to the project, to strengthen the, at the time, weak Agile and SAFe framework and to pave the way towards future DevOps adoption. This project, finalised in 2023, was a success and was crowned with a DASA DevOps Transformation Award that same year. 

The company then embarked on a large-scale transformation journey, spanning all four divisions within the financial services branch, to unify processes and methods of working in order to be more efficient, to deliver faster, and to be able to adapt to a fast-paced market all while maintaining their market share. 

One of ALTEN Nederland’s coaches joined in on the design process to arrive at a uniform target operating model and an implementation plan. The biggest challenges during this phase were the vast differentiation of processes, the highly siloed environment (many teams were organised according to key capabilities instead of around product or service), and the different maturity and adaptation rates of Agile and DevOps within the teams and divisions. 

In 2024, a new target operating model was implemented, removing silos and optimising Agile bottom-up with extensive coaching and training. More coaches were hired, including coaches from ALTEN Italy and France, to bridge the cultural and linguistic barriers. Currently, a team of 14 coaches are guiding the different divisions from all levels, working on uniform processes, tool adaptation, and leadership and transforming this world-leading Fintech from a traditional project-oriented organisation to a service-minded Agile/DevOps product-oriented organisation based on optimised flow throughout all layers of the organisation.