Unlocking Financial Clarity: How Keyrus Transformed Data into Profit-Driving Insights for a Global Payments Leader

Background

A global leader in digital payments—boasting a diverse team of over 560 professionals across 30 nationalities, with headquarters in London and offices across Europe and the US—was facing critical challenges with its data and analytics capabilities. Despite significant investment in its existing solutions, key business units, including Finance, Operations, and Marketing, were not receiving the actionable insights they needed. To address growing concerns around delivery gaps and development inefficiencies, the company engaged Keyrus to conduct an independent audit of its data ecosystem and underlying practices.

Challenge

To understand the root causes behind the underperformance of the client’s data and analytics initiatives, Keyrus conducted a comprehensive 4-week assessment. This included interviews with C-level executives, key business and IT stakeholders, and members of the development team, along with a technical review of the existing solution. The result was a detailed gap analysis and a practical roadmap supported by clear, strategic recommendations. The assessment revealed that the primary obstacles were not technical, but rather organisational and strategic. Key findings included: Lack of Data Governance and Alignment: There was no formalised governance framework in place, resulting in misalignment between Business and IT throughout the project lifecycle. Limited Business Engagement: Business teams were not sufficiently involved in the design and delivery process, leading to poor adoption and unclear value realisation. Misconception of Data Access: There was a prevailing belief that simply providing open access to all operational data would solve analytical challenges, without defining clear business objectives or use cases. Misapplication of Agile Practices: Agile delivery lacked structure and leadership. There was no empowered Product Owner, sprints lacked focus, and the product backlog was disorganised, making it ill-suited for managing the complexity of data and analytics initiatives. Suboptimal Solution Architecture: The existing solution did not follow best practices in design or architecture, leading to inefficiencies and scalability issues. Absence of a Strategic Data Vision: There was no data and analytics strategy or roadmap aligned with business goals. Governance structures were missing, key processes were undefined, and organisational roles were unclear. Mismatch Between Ambition and Maturity: While there was strong ambition to scale analytics and empower business users, the organisation lacked the maturity—both in structure and capability—to support successful data and AI adoption. This misalignment between vision, execution, and organisational readiness was preventing the client from turning data into actionable value.

Approach

Keyrus performed the following activities: • A 360-degree assessment of their current data and analytical solution, organisation, and processes in place • A blended Keyrus-Client team was formed to rebuild and extend their data platform functionalities • Initial roadmap for defining AI use cases

Key results

Benefits

Keyrus delivered a fully integrated data and analytics platform to satisfy internal clients’ needs and support the management in their financial, product & marketing, and operational teams. Providing for the client: • Trusted but flexible analytics and easy ad-hoc analysis • Visibility on revenue, cost, and margin per customer and product • Full reconciliation with statutory financial reports • Marketing campaign ROI • Chargeback and bad debt analysis and prediction • Initial set of AI use cases

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