In our first blog of our ecosystem orchestration series, we explored why fragmented platforms may be holding your organisation back and how to navigate them through ecosystem orchestration. In this blog, we uncover the signs of website sprawl arising, how it may be affecting your organisation, the hidden costs of these signs and how consolidation can help mitigate them. 

Website estates rarely sprawl and fragment overnight. The gradual accumulation of websites is often the result of growth through business acquisitions or new sites being launched for different departments, products, campaigns or geographical regions. Each new site introduces its own hosting, security requirements, content workflows and maintenance demands.  

Over time, what may once have seemed like manageable expansion becomes a complex web of disconnected platforms, duplicated content, siloed data and rising operational overheads. The actual cost of fragmentation becomes more than technical, negatively affecting your team’s productivity and resulting in disjointed user journeys and a poor overall customer experience with limited ability to personalise and capitalise on AI.  

The impact on both B2B and B2C businesses is profound, with 20-30% of annual revenue lost due to inefficiencies caused by siloed systems and over 25% of customers defecting after just one bad experience. 

When digital expansion happens without a clear long-term governance strategy, a plethora of disconnected sites and technologies that are both difficult and expensive to maintain arise alongside fragmented user journeys and an inconsistent user experience. 

In most organisations, the website estate sits at the centre of the customer journey. When it becomes fragmented, the knock-on effects show up across the wider ecosystem, from how content is managed and how performance is measured to how CRM and customer data are used to enable personalisation. 

So, what are the warning signs that organisations should be on the lookout for when it comes to website sprawl and how might consolidation be the solution to this?

Fragmentation warning signs 

If these signs sound familiar, website sprawl may be taking effect:  

Inconsistent brand experience 

Users expect a seamless journey regardless of where and when they engage with your organisation. When different sites across your estate have different look-and-feels, inconsistent messaging or tone and navigation discrepancies, a lack of trust may arise and lead to reduced engagement.  

Duplicated content and publishing effort 

With every increase in the number of your websites, there is an increased likelihood of content duplication and discrepancies. This ultimately becomes harder to manage and makes the job of updating content across your sites a time-consuming minefield. Without strong governance or systems in place to manage this amount of content debt, conflicting and inaccurate information will continue to snowball and leave both your internal teams and users frustrated. 

Greater risk of security and compliance breaches

The more fragmented the estate, the more security vulnerabilities and increased likelihood of a malicious cyber-attack that devastates your business. This is especially true when it comes to older or forgotten websites that may not be fully patched. Similarly, as regulations tighten on key experience requirements like accessibility and data protection, the risk multiplies. Unless you have the operational bandwidth to monitor and maintain all your websites, you are opening yourself up for sanctions and fines. 

Rising maintenance costs

Each website introduces its own infrastructure requirements, costs and challenges. Managing the maintenance, hosting and support of multiple platforms is time consuming and leads to duplicated efforts.  

Hard-to-govern CMS landscape

If websites are built on different technology platforms, the operational burden grows substantially. Overhead increases when it comes to maintaining and building those sites. Integrations become more difficult and content and design changes require your team to learn multiple tools, workflows and processes.  

Poor data visibility 

Not only does a fragmented estate complicate gaining a unified customer view, but it obfuscates your websites’ analytics performance. Potential earnings are at stake because of the inability to provide users with personalised experiences and your team the ability to identify trends or insights to optimise experiences. 

These signs often indicate that your organisation needs a refreshed ecosystem orchestration and governance strategy to ensure that you can continue to scale and meet the ever-demanding needs of your users. 

The hidden costs for your organisation

The hidden costs of a website sprawl creep up in various places within an organisation. The operational drag of publishing and maintenance overhead can be felt by teams, while users grapple with inconsistent journeys that impact conversion and trust. Governance risks from compliance failures to accessibility issues and security exposure can arise and data fragmentation across platforms leads to measurement inconsistency.  

This cumulatively blocks personalisation, as relevant experiences cannot be scaled without a consistent foundation. 

What “good” consolidation looks like

Consolidation is about more than just reducing the number of websites in your ecosystem. It is about creating a coherent, manageable and scalable environment for your business to thrive digitally. When executed correctly, consolidation will unite each part of a digital estate under one governance model, ensuring consistency with content and design management. Its reusable components and shared design system, supported by a clear website and brand architecture, amplify this union.  

A composable headless CMS is central to this. It can create a single source of truth and eliminate one of the biggest causes of website sprawl: duplicate content across multiple systems. By centralising content and enabling its reuse across multiple websites, organisations can reduce reliance on fragmented legacy platforms. Separating content from presentation allows organisations to manage multiple sites from a single platform while delivering consistent user experiences across channels. This modular approach also enables legacy systems to be migrated gradually, which improves governance and reduces duplication.  

A shared measurement framework with analytics and tagging offers team comparable data and a single source of truth to work from. With accessibility built in by default, digital experiences can be enhanced and scaled confidently.  

Why consolidation is the entry point to orchestration

Website consolidation is often where fragmentation becomes most visible, but it is rarely just a website problem. True value comes when consolidation is approached as part of a wider ecosystem direction.  

Consolidation matters beyond websites because it: 

• Reduces digital sprawl and the “surface area of complexity” 
• Improves operational efficiency across teams and workflows 
• Streamlines the connection between journeys, data, CRM and personalisation 
• Creates a stronger foundation for consistent experiences, connected data and future orchestration 
• Sets up a scalable foundation for the future of orchestration and AI-driven experiences

How CACI can help with your website & CMS consolidation

CACI’s approach to website sprawl and consolidation is grounded in practical experience, helping organisations regain control and build a foundation for sustainable innovation.  

We start by understanding your current environment, mapping out where sprawl and hidden costs are lurking. We then work with you to design governance frameworks, implement visibility tools and optimise your workloads. You gain ongoing support, regular reviews and continuous optimisation to retain your focus on what matters most: delivering meaningful experiences and fostering innovation. 

Speak to our specialists today to assess where sprawl is creating the greatest operational drag and where consolidation can help you unlock the most value. 

Download our ecosystem orchestration infographic to find out whether your platform still supports how you need to operate today. 

Next in our series, we will explore another common blocker to orchestration: how disconnected CRM and digital platforms limit personalisation, create inconsistency and what organisations can do to overcome them.

In our first blog of this service design series, we assessed the impact of service design on end-to-end performance and why it is critical for leaders to understand its intricacies. This blog looks at the key role that discovery plays in service design.
 
Many organisations have already invested in service design: running a discovery, mapping journeys and building personas, uncovering pain points and presenting the findings. Yet despite the effort, very little remains unchanged in the day‑to‑day reality of how a service works. If that sounds uncomfortably familiar, you are not alone. Many leaders find themselves in the same position: plenty of insight, but not enough impact.
 
While service discovery is invaluable, it does not fix broken services, reduce operational costs or improve customer experience on its own. Insight is only powerful when it leads to action. This is the moment where most organisations stall and where the real work of service design begins.

What discovery will help your organisation achieve

Discovery surfaces the truth about how your service performs today, exposing friction, inconsistencies and unnecessary complexity. It reveals gaps between what users expect and what your organisation delivers through tried‑and‑tested methods:

• Identifying pain points and experience failures.
• Journey mapping to highlight where user effort is wasted or where support breaks down.
• Service blueprinting to show the operational, policy and system-level issues creating that friction.

While these methods create clarity, clarity alone does not deliver change. It must be translated into decisions, prioritisation and delivery execution. Insight becomes valuable only when it moves beyond documentation and into operational improvement.

The most common point of failure in service design and transformation is not generating insight, but implementing it. This implementation gap is well recognised across large‑scale public service and organisational change, where strong discovery, policy or design intent often fails to embed into day‑to‑day delivery.

Why organisations struggle to move forward

• No clear ownership of delivery, leaving recommendations without accountable leaders to drive them
• Insights disconnected from a funded roadmap, so promising ideas never become prioritised work
• Lack of governance or performance mechanisms to sustain improvements once they move into live operations
• Misaligned teams (digital, ops, policy, technology) working on different goals, timelines and incentives
• Operational complexity and legacy constraints that make changes difficult to implement at scale
• Technology limitations that block even simple service improvements.

None of this is a failure of service design, but a failure of translation, from insight into action, from concept into delivery, and from isolated improvements into sustained, measurable performance gains.

What successful service transformation looks like

The organisations that unlock real value from service design treat discovery as the start, not the end. To convert insight into measurable operational improvement, they establish:

• Clear prioritisation
• A defined delivery roadmap
• Alignment between digital, operational and customer teams
• Governance and ownership
• Measurement frameworks

How CACI helps turn discovery insights into operational changes

When it comes to service design, many organisations see the fastest wins by starting small. CACI’s quick‑start service design sprints are intentionally lightweight, low‑risk and designed to show value within weeks, not months. These are focused, time‑boxed engagements that target a single service, customer journey or operational hotspot, giving you immediate clarity on where improvements will deliver the highest return.

Because each sprint blends user insight, operational analysis and pragmatic delivery planning, you get tangible outputs fast: a prioritised set of improvements, clear owners and actions your team can implement straight away to maximise impact.

Whether you need a Rapid Service Assessment, a Blueprint Sprint or an AI‑Readiness Review, these agile engagements allow you to test the value of service design, prove ROI early and build momentum without heavy internal lift or long procurement cycles.

It is the fastest, safest way to turn insight into operational improvement with CACI supporting you every step of the way.

Discovery is essential, but value is only realised when insight leads to action and when service design is connected to delivery, governance and operational realities. For organisations that have already invested in discovery but now need to turn recommendations into measurable outcomes, this is the moment to bridge the gap.

CACI can help your organisation move from insight to implementation and from implementation to impact, translating discovery into decisions, decisions into action and action into service performance.

Contact CACI’s Service Design team to get started.

Why Share of Wallet matters now 

Customer acquisition costs continue to rise, and the dynamic is even more pronounced in financial services, where competition for deposits, primary current accounts, and long-term savings has intensified. Research from the Harvard Business Review shows that it can cost up to five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Meanwhile, customer expectations have increased, switching barriers have fallen, and digital competitors are often just a click away. Within financial services, Open Banking has further accelerated switching and multi-banking behaviour, giving customers more freedom to distribute their balances across multiple institutions 

Organisations that focus only on acquisition risk spending heavily without ever realising sustainable growth. This is particularly true in financial services, where the cost of onboarding, KYC, AML checks, and compliance activities makes new customer acquisition especially expensive. As noted by Deloitte Insights, financial institutions that prioritise deepening existing customer relationships outperform those that rely heavily on acquisition-led strategies. 

Through Share of Wallet, financial institutions can also: 

• Identify the value of balances customers hold elsewhere, giving institutions insight into hidden opportunities for deposit and investment growth. 
• Understand which demographics, products and regions are outperforming the base, simplifying the identification of priority growth segments. 
• Access aggregated SOW metrics and periodic reporting, enabling customer-level and portfolio-level performance tracking. 
• Track KPIs linked to long-term strategic initiatives, connecting balance growth with broader business outcomes. 
• Use granular data to inform personalised communications, targeting customers based on wealth indicators, behaviours and potential. 

This guide explains what share of wallet means in a financial-services context, how to calculate it using balances and asset concentration, why it matters strategically, and the practical, analytics-driven methods institutions use to increase it. Drawing on use cases across banking, savings, credit, and wealth management — including work CACI delivers — this guide shows why leading FS organisations now treat balance-based SOW as a cornerstone of sustainable growth. 

What is Share of Wallet? 

Share of Wallet (SOW) in financial services refers to the proportion of a customer’s total account balances or savings “wallet” that they hold with your institution across products such as current accounts, savings, ISAs, investments, mortgages or personal loans. 

For example, if a customer has total liquid savings of £40,000 and holds £10,000 of those balances with your bank, your SOW is 25%. 

This measurement applies across the sector: the percentage of a customer’s investable assets held with a wealth manager, the proportion of deposits concentrated with a building society, or the share of credit balances placed with one provider. 

SOW provides a more complete understanding of customer value by: 

• Revealing the total wealth picture, rather than only internal balances. 
• Highlighting how much money customers hold elsewhere, enabling accurate opportunity sizing. 
• Filling gaps in financial understanding that internal data alone cannot provide. 

Share of Wallet vs Market Share

The two metrics assess very different dynamics:

• • Market share measures your institution’s total balances or products across the market. 
  • Share of wallet measures the proportion of each individual customer’s financial life that you hold. 

A bank may have high market share yet a low share of wallet per customer — signalling weak relationship depth. Conversely, a smaller provider might have very high wallet share among a loyal customer base. 

SOW also supports strategic decision-making by enabling: 

• Tracking of balance growth KPIs across segments and product lines. 
• Monitoring long-term performance such as deposit acquisition, wealth onboarding and cross-product engagement. 
• Identifying “headroom” — the additional balances customers are likely to hold elsewhere that could be captured. 

How to calculate share of wallet 

The Basic Formula 

SOW (%) = (Balances held with your institution ÷ Customer’s total balances) × 100

Example: 
• Total savings: £60,000 
• Balances with your bank: £15,000 
• SOW = 25% 

Data Sources for Calculation

• Internal account and balance data 
• Open Banking and aggregation tools 
• Customer research panels 
• Predictive modelling and machine-learning estimation of held-away balances 

A strong SOW calculation enables institutions to: 

• Combine customer-level balance estimates with postcode-level and product-level data for a 360° view of financial behaviour. 
• Use CACI Retail Finance Benchmarking to understand typical wallet sizes, competitor penetration and localised patterns. 
• Integrate wealth estimates into modelling, segmentation and pricing cohorts. 

Common Challenges

• Hidden balances not visible to individual providers 
• Volatile liquidity movements 
• Categorisation differences across product types 
• Life-stage and macroeconomic factors influencing wallet size

Why Share of Wallet Matters

Cost-Efficient Growth 

Deepening customer relationships by capturing more of their financial life is significantly more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. Increasing balance concentration boosts revenue per customer while lowering cost-to-serve. 

Customer Retention and Loyalty 

Customers who place a higher proportion of their savings or investment assets with one institution demonstrate far stronger loyalty and lower churn. 

Lifetime Value 

As wallet share increases, so does Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Customers with deeper financial relationships are more likely to take mortgages, lending products, savings accounts and wealth services. 

Strategies to increase Share of Wallet

Segment Customers by Potential 

Not all customers have the same growth potential. SOW helps identify:

• High potential, low share customers with substantial held-away balances 
• High value customers to defend and deepen 
• Lower potential segments requiring reduced investment 

CACI helps institutions uncover these opportunities using demographic, geographic and behavioural insight. 

Cross-Selling and Upselling 

Examples include: 

• Encouraging current-account-only customers to open savings products 
• Moving savers from low-yield accounts to higher-value fixed-term or investment products 
• Introducing ISA or wealth solutions to customers showing investment readiness 

Next best product models identify optimal timing. 

Loyalty, Rewards and Relationship Pricing 

Mechanisms include: 

• Preferential rates for customers consolidating savings 
• Bundles linking savings, current accounts and credit 
• Incentives for salary mandates or account funding 

Bundling and Value Propositions 

Product bundles and integrated financial management tools increase stickiness by offering convenience, clarity and control. 

Customer Experience 

Ease, trust and service quality materially influence wallet share. Positive digital and branch experiences translate directly into balance consolidation. 

Financial Services use case: Share of Wallet in banking 

Customer-Level Coding 

Banks assess the percentage of customer balances they hold to identify:

• Customers with significant held-away funds 
• Investment assets managed by competitors 
• Opportunities to deepen primary relationships 

Savings Behaviour and Headroom 

Balance-based analysis distinguishes between:

• Fixed savings 
• Variable savings 
• Investment holdings 

Customers with large variable balances but low SOW offer clear growth potential. 

Segmentation by Demographics 

Older customers often consolidate more; younger customers diversify more widely. 
CACI’s Fresco segmentation adds further behavioural and life-stage context. 

Monitoring and Tracking 

Modern analytics track: 

• Balance concentration shifts 
• Flow of funds in and out of held-away accounts 
• Changes in product mix and adoption patterns 

How Institutions Use SOW

• Identify and quantify customer-level opportunities 
• Use CACI Retail Finance Benchmarking and location intelligence to find geographic hotspots 
• Target segments with low share but high growth capacity 
• Avoid unnecessary rate rises for customers already showing high SOW Provide frontline teams with estimated SOW indicators for personalised engagement 

Sector perspectives beyond Financial Services

 Retail and E-commerce  

Supermarkets compete to become the primary shopper destination. Loyalty cards, personalised coupons, and basket-building promotions all increase wallet share. E-commerce platforms use recommendation engines and premium memberships to keep customers buying within their ecosystem.  

Telecoms and Media 

Quad-play packages dramatically increase wallet share by consolidating multiple services into one bill. Customers who bundle are less likely to switch because of the perceived inconvenience of managing multiple providers.  

B2B and Professional Services  

For B2B firms, wallet share often means expanding into adjacent service areas. A consultancy may start with strategy and then cross-sell into analytics, technology, or managed services. Increasing wallet share in B2B builds long-term, multi-service relationships that are resistant to competitor approaches. 

Share of Wallet pitfalls and limitations 

Financial services face additional challenges: 

• Over-marketing: too many rate-driven offers can reduce trust. 
• Cannibalisation: shifting balances between products may not increase total value. 
• Balance volatility: savings can move rapidly in response to macro-economic signals. 
• Privacy and regulation: strict rules govern the use of customer financial data. 

Institutions should balance ambition with transparency and ethical standards. 

Advanced Share of Wallet analytics: The CACI approach 

Real differentiation comes from analytics: 

• Predictive modelling: estimating total wallet and held-away balances. 
• Uplift modelling: identifying which customers are likely to consolidate more funds. 
• Controlled experimentation: validating rate changes or marketing interventions. 
• Dashboards: tracking SOW in real time across segments and product lines. 

CACI’s data science services help banks turn SOW from a descriptive measure into a predictive, prescriptive engine for long-term balance growth. 

Share of Wallet implementation roadmap 

• Assess: measure baseline balance concentration. 
• Prioritise: identify customers with high potential and low current share. 
• Design: develop targeted financial strategies — pricing, product prompts, digital journeys. 
• Execute: deploy at the right moment with meaningful personalisation. 
• Measure: track responses, adjust propositions, and optimise. 

Evolving Dynamics of Wallet Share 

Wallet share in FS is evolving through: 

• AI-powered personal finance tools influencing balance allocation. 
• Open Banking transparency enabling better competitor comparison. 
• Cross-category mapping (e.g., savings vs investments). 
• ESG-driven decision-making shaping where customers place their assets. 

Conclusion 

Share of Wallet is more than a KPI — it is a growth framework grounded in balance concentration and trusted financial relationships. By accurately measuring and acting on SOW, institutions can increase profitability, reduce churn, and deepen their role in customers’ financial lives. 

CACI’s expertise in data science, segmentation, and customer insight helps banks move from generic cross-sell to intelligent, targeted strategies that materially increase the proportion of savings, balances, and financial value customers hold with them. 

Share of Wallet FAQs 

1. What is share of wallet in banking? 

Share of wallet in banking refers to the proportion of a customer’s total account balances or savings that they hold with a specific financial institution. 

2. How do banks calculate share of wallet? 

Banks calculate share of wallet by dividing the balances a customer holds with them by the customer’s estimated total savings or assets, including held-away funds. 

3. Why is share of wallet important for financial institutions? 

A higher share of wallet increases customer lifetime value, improves retention, and strengthens the institution’s role as the customer’s primary financial relationship. 

4. What is a good share of wallet percentage for banks? 

A strong share of wallet typically means holding the customer’s primary current account and a significant portion (often 50% or more) of their liquid savings. 

5. How can banks increase share of wallet? 

Banks increase share of wallet by offering competitive savings rates, personalised product recommendations, relationship-based incentives, and frictionless digital experiences that encourage customers to consolidate balances. 

6. What are held-away balances in financial services? 

Held-away balances are savings or investment funds that a customer holds with other institutions, which represent potential share of wallet growth opportunities. 

7. What affects a customer’s share of wallet? 

Factors include trust, interest rates, digital experience, financial goals, risk appetite, and the convenience of managing multiple financial products in one place. 

8. How does share of wallet relate to customer loyalty? 

Customers who allocate more of their balances to one institution typically show higher loyalty, lower churn, and longer relationship tenure. 

9. What tools do banks use to measure share of wallet? 

Banks use predictive modelling, Open Banking data, demographic profiling, and internal balance analytics to estimate total wallet size and identify held-away funds. 

10. What is a share of wallet strategy in financial services? 

A share of wallet strategy focuses on increasing the proportion of a customer’s total balances, deposits, or investable assets held with the institution through targeted engagement and personalised offers. 

Why Share of Wallet analysis matters

Most financial institutions recognise that retaining customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Yet few have a reliable method for understanding how much of a customer’s total savings, deposits or investment balances they actually hold, or how much value sits hidden in other institutions. This is where Share of Wallet Analysis becomes indispensable. 

In financial services, Share of Wallet (SOW) reflects the proportion of a customer’s total financial holdings—savings, current account balances, fixed-term deposits, investments or unsecured lending—held with your institution. Share of wallet analysis refers to the methods, data and models used to measure, estimate and interpret a customer’s total balance wallet, including held-away funds. Done well, it uncovers hidden balance headroom, identifies consolidation opportunities, highlights attrition risk, and provides a roadmap for profitable balance growth. 

In this article, we explore what share of wallet analysis means within financial services, how it is conducted, common analytical methods, and how advanced modelling transforms SOW from a static metric into a powerful engine for deposit growth, cross-sell, retention and customer value expansion. 

👉 If you’re new to the concept of wallet share itself, start with our Definitive Guide to Share of Wallet for Financial Services and then return here for the measurement and analysis deep dive. 

What is Share of Wallet analysis? 

Share of Wallet Analysis in financial services is the process of calculating and interpreting the proportion of a customer’s total account balances held with your institution versus competitors. It goes beyond the raw SOW percentage to understand why customers distribute balances the way they do, what balance growth potential exists, where consolidation opportunities lie, and which customers present the strongest long-term value. 

In practice, SOW analysis involves: 

• Measuring balances held with your institution 
• Estimating total customer wallet size, including held-away savings and investments 
• Identifying patterns across customer, product and demographic segments 
• Using predictive analytics to model future balance consolidation and risk 

Methods of Share of Wallet analysis 

1. Survey-Based Approaches 

Historically, banks and building societies often relied on surveys asking customers where else they held savings or investments. 

Strengths: 

• Useful for capturing attitudinal data (trust, preference, propensity to consolidate) 
• Can identify perceived gaps in relationships 

Weaknesses: 

• Self-reported balances are often inaccurate 
• Customers underreport or forget held-away accounts 
• Hard to scale reliably 

📖 Research published in the Journal of Marketing Research shows that self-reported financial behaviour often underestimates total balances. 

2. Internal Transactional and Balance Data 

Banks, building societies and wealth managers hold accurate information about the customer’s primary account balances—current accounts, savings, term deposits, ISAs, loans and investments. 

Strengths: 

• Highly accurate, real-time data 
• Enables granular behaviour analysis (flows in/out, volatility, deposit stability) 
• Supports segmentation and life-stage profiling 

Weaknesses: 

• Limited to balances held with your organisation 
• Does not show the size of competitors’ holdings 

This is the foundation for customer-level SOW coding but requires external data or modelling to understand the full wallet.

3. Third-Party Panels and Benchmark Data 

Industry benchmarks—such as regulatory publications, anonymised credit bureau data or aggregate financial panels—help institutions estimate likely total wallet sizes across segments. 

Strengths: 

• Offers a market-level perspective 
• Useful for comparing your penetration against competitors 

Weaknesses:

• Panels may not align perfectly with your customer mix 
• Insights are directional, not customer-specific

A Deloitte report on financial services highlights that panel data supports competitive context but must be calibrated to segment differences. 

4. Predictive Modelling 

This is the most advanced and reliable approach for FS. Predictive models estimate total customer wallet size, including balances you cannot see, using behavioural indicators, demographics, product mix, income signals and external datasets. 

Techniques include: 

• Regression models linking known balances to inferred total wealth 
• Machine learning models using hundreds of variables to predict wallet size 
• Uplift modelling to assess which actions drive incremental consolidation 
• Propensity-to-save and propensity-to-move models 

At CACI, we combine internal balance data, segmentation, geography and market-level insight to produce a highly accurate picture of held-away balances, wallet potential and consolidation opportunity. 

The process of Share of Wallet analysis

Step 1: Define the Financial Category 

Define what counts as the “wallet”: 

• Liquid savings 
• Fixed-term deposits 
• Current account balances 
• Investment assets 
• Unsecured lending exposure 
• The category definition shapes both measurement and modelling. 

Step 2: Collect and Integrate Data 

Bring together: 

• Internal balance data 
• Product holdings 
• Customer demographics 
• External panels and benchmarks 
• Predictive model outputs 

This is where CACI’s expertise in customer data integration and Retail Finance Benchmarking becomes essential.

Step 3: Calculate Current Wallet Share 

Apply the adapted FS formula: 

SOW (%) = (Balances held with you ÷ Estimated total customer wallet) × 100 

Step 4: Segment and Prioritise

Segment customers into actionable groups: 

•  High wallet, low share (big consolidation opportunity) 
• High wallet, high share (protect and retain) 
• Low wallet, high share (profitable but low headroom) 
• Low wallet, low share (limited upside)

Step 5: Apply Predictive Analytics 

Model: 

• Total wallet value 
• Likely held-away balances 
• Customer headroom 
• Propensity to consolidate 
• Product-specific opportunities (savings, ISAs, term deposits, investments) 

Step 6: Translate Insight into Action 

Actions include: 

• Targeted savings growth campaigns 
• Relationship pricing for consolidation 
• Fixed-term renewal strategies 
• Investment readiness triggers 
• Personalised engagement sequences 

Why advanced analytics makes the difference 

Basic wallet share tells you the percentage you currently hold. Advanced analytics tell you how much you could hold, how to win it, and where the risks are. 

Predictive Power 

Models forecast wallet potential for each customer, identifying those most likely to consolidate balances. 

Uplift Measurement 

Uplift modelling isolates the true incremental effect of actions—ensuring incentives are only offered where they change behaviour. 

Dashboards and Visualisation 

Dynamic dashboards allow product, marketing and risk teams to track: 

•  Wallet share 
• Flows in and out 
• Consolidation patterns 
• Segment-level performance 

Forrester research highlights that organisations adopting advanced analytics see significant improvements in customer experience outcomes. 

Sector examples of Share of Wallet analysis

Banking and Financial Services 

Banks use SOW analysis to identify: 

• Customers with large savings held externally 
• Deposit consolidation opportunities 
• ISA or investment readiness 
• Mortgage customers without savings or wealth relationships 

For example, a customer with high income and low internal savings may hold significant deposits elsewhere—representing high wallet headroom.

Retail and E-commerce (Contextual Comparison Only) 

Retailers use similar principles, but FS analysis focuses on balances, not spend. 

Telecoms and Media (Conceptual Parallel) 

Bundling logic informs FS strategies such as linking current accounts, savings and credit. 

B2B Services

Professional services firms use wallet analysis to expand into adjacent advisory domains. 

Pitfalls in Share of Wallet analysis

• Over-reliance on surveys
• Poor data governance or misuse of Open Banking data
• Treating all customers as having equal wallet potential
• Short-term incentives that erode long-term margin
• Misinterpreting volatility in savings (seasonality, life events)

Future of Share of Wallet analysis 

The next decade will further accelerate SOW capability through: 

• AI-driven next-best-action models 
• Real-time balance monitoring through connected data ecosystems 
• Cross-category household finance modelling 
• ESG-aligned financial behaviour analysis 

Organisations using AI-led wallet prediction will outperform those relying on historical balances alone. 

Conclusion

Share of Wallet Analysis turns a simple metric into a strategic growth engine. In financial services, it reveals how much of a customer’s total savings, deposits and investments you truly hold, where your hidden opportunities lie, and what actions will maximise customer lifetime value. 

By combining advanced analytics, data integration, segmentation and customer insight, financial institutions can unlock held-away balances, increase consolidation and strengthen their role in customers’ financial lives. 

At CACI, we help institutions turn SOW analysis into measurable growth—building models, integrating data and designing targeted interventions that drive long-term, profitable balance expansion. 

Service design may be a familiar term among senior leaders, but clearly articulating what it means in practice can be a challenge. While awareness of service design is high, only around 3% can define it accurately, highlighting a long‑standing understanding gap.  

As the market currently stands, this is costly. In 2025, 70% of executives said customer expectations are evolving faster than their organisations can keep up, with 52% of consumers stopping using a brand due to a poor experience. Internal pressure is simultaneously mounting, with two‑thirds of leaders describing their organisations as overly complex and inefficient and only half feeling prepared for external shocks.  

Clarity around service design is imperative for performance. So, how does understanding the intricacies of service design impact your organisation’s end-to-end performance? 

What is service design?

In commercial and operational terms, service design is the discipline of improving end‑to‑end service performance. It aligns the entire service ecosystem, people, processes, technology, data, policy and experience, ensuring services function accordingly.  

Where a UX designer focuses on research and purely digital components like websites, a service designer will consider all touchpoints (telephony, physical spaces, technology infrastructure, etc.) for both its users and employees, discovering and fixing pain points.  

Service design is: 

• Understanding how a service works today (across frontstage and backstage) 
• Identifying what users need and where the service breaks down 
• Designing how the service should work: consistently, efficiently and at scale 
• Aligning digital, operations and experience into a unified service model 
• Creating a roadmap that is actionable, measurable and ready for delivery

Service design is not: 

• Just journey mapping 
• An isolated discovery exercise 
• A purely creative or theoretical activity 
• A handover document expecting someone else to deliver it 
• A UX‑only discipline

At its core, service design is about making services more efficient for end-to-end customers users and the teams delivering them while enabling growth. 

Understanding the impact of service design on end-to-end performance

While service design has become popularised across digital transformation, customer experience, and operational change, understanding its place (whether it mirrors journey mapping or UX), where it fits within your organisation’s objectives and whether it will improve performance remain in question. 

Many organisations invest in fragmented discovery work, generate compelling artefacts and still struggle to fix the operational issues that matter. This deduces service design to a capability, not a driver of performance. 

Meanwhile, AI is accelerating change faster than most companies can absorb. Nearly two‑thirds of organisations yet to scale AI effectively, emphasising the need for a clear, practical and end‑to‑end approach to service design. When service design is poorly understood, opportunities are missed along with potential performance gains. When integrated from discovery through to delivery, organisations see:   

• Modernise faster with less rework 
• Adapt to market disruption 
• Reduced programme risk and operational waste through meaningful change that sticks 
• Deliver services that are easier for users and more efficient for teams 
• Cut costs to unlock value across your entire service ecosystem. 

Service design is more than just a way to fix broken experiences. It is a strategic lever for growth, efficiency, resilience and competitive advantage. 

How CACI enables service design built for implementation

At CACI, service design begins the moment insight turns into direction. Unlike traditional models where discovery and delivery sit far apart, our approach embeds service design thinking directly into the core functions that drive change. From data and analytics to digital engineering, architecture, technology delivery, operational transformation, change management and programme assurance.

By integrating these capabilities, we remove the gaps and hand‑offs that typically slow organisations down. It means the services we design can be implemented without translation, the solutions we deliver are measurable from day one, and the insights we capture continually feed improvement. Ideas don’t get diluted as they move downstream, they gain momentum. 

Why this matters for modern organisations 

Leaders typically operate in environments defined by rising expectations, increasing complexity, legacy constraints and mounting pressure to deliver seamless, reliable and efficient services. 

Service design plays a critical role in enabling this by helping organisations: 

• Align services with strategic intent, policy goals or commercial outcomes 
• Improve operational performance and reduce friction across journeys 
• Deliver measurable, user‑centred improvements that stand up to scrutiny 
• Modernise processes and technology to unlock value from existing and future platforms 
• Strengthen accessibility, compliance, trust and resilience 
• Enable data‑driven transformation that can scale across teams and channels

CACI’s integrated model blends service design, research, data, engineering and delivery to translate insights into meaningful operational change. Organisations across complex, high‑stakes environments rely on CACI to redesign, modernise and optimise the services that matter most, improving experience, reducing cost‑to‑serve and accelerating performance through practical, evidence‑led transformation. 

Organisations in complex, high‑stakes environments work with CACI to address root‑cause issues across their services, improving experience, reducing operational cost and driving performance gains that hold up in delivery.

Contact our team to get started.

Stay tuned for the next blog in our service design series, exploring the importance of discovery and leveraging insights for operational change. 

“Our digital transformation is failing because it is fragmenting”. This was the defining statement from a recent roundtable with C-suite leaders from global enterprise organisations, met with nods and echoes of agreement across the room.  

Many of these leaders went through mergers and acquisitions, regional expansion and business proposition changes. The end result was the same: hundreds of disconnected tools and platforms, masses of digital sprawl, rising inefficiencies, disjointed customer experiences and a tangled web of overlapping technologies.  

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Over 40% of organisations now operate four or more separate systems, and while multiple platforms can signal maturity, the lack of integration between them often introduces operational friction—slowing delivery, increasing costs, limiting personalisation and constraining AI adoption.  

This is where ecosystem orchestration becomes strategically imperative in designing how your entire digital ecosystem works together. 

What is ecosystem orchestration?

Ecosystem orchestration is the discipline of designing, connecting and governing all digital platforms, experiences and data as a unified system rather than a disparate collection of isolated tools and journeys. It defines how these technologies should work together to deliver efficient operations, connected customer experiences and AI-ready foundations. 

For most organisations, this ecosystem spans experiences, content, data and their supporting platforms. 

Ecosystem orchestration focuses on: 

• How data flows across your CRM, CDP, CMS, analytics and personalisation 
• How experiences are assembled across channels, regions and brands to make them seamless 
• How your platforms integrate, scale and evolve alongside your organisation  
• How governance, security and performance are embedded by design. 

What is digital fragmentation? 

Fragmentation rarely appears as a single problem. Instead, it develops gradually as new platforms, regions and business needs are layered on existing digital estates. If one layer is weakened, it reduces the effectiveness of the entire structure and ultimately damages both your business outcomes and perceived value to your customers. This inefficiency prevents your organisation from reaching its potential.

Fragmentation tax: The unwanted cost of disconnected systems

When digital ecosystems grow without orchestration, the impact compounds over time. You may start to see: 

Operational inefficiencies rise 

When your teams jump between multiple systems, duplication and manual work skyrocket. Delivery slows and administrative load increases. 

Maintenance outweighing innovation 

Technology teams spend more time maintaining integrations, bug fixing and patching software than building new value-generating features. 

Data reporting inconsistencies

Inaccurate data creates reporting inconsistencies and data teams spend more time reconciling data than generating insights.  

Personalisation becoming impossible

Disconnected CMS, CRM and data platforms mean your organisation does not have a single customer view. This leads to segmentation being non-existent or superficial. 

AI-readiness severely constrained

AI requires unified data, modern architecture and consistent governance. Poor data hygiene and siloed insights create unstable foundations for predictive modelling and limit automation at scale. 

Brand and experience consistency breaking down

Multiple regions and brands lead to inconsistent UX, duplicated content and disconnected customer journeys. 

Costs quietly increasing

Duplicated platforms, unnecessary licences, security vulnerabilities and inefficient workflows inflate spend. 

Leadership is struggling to make data-driven decisions

Fragmented data erodes trust, making it harder for leaders to drive strategy or prove ROI. 

What ecosystem orchestration will enable

Fragmented digital estates can derail even the most ambitious digital transformation plans. Ecosystem orchestration is the solution to ensuring your business is future-ready, laying the foundation for scalable experiences, operational efficiency and AI-ready growth. 

If the challenges described here feel familiar—from disconnected journeys to rising operational effort—it may be time to reassess how your ecosystem is designed to work together.  Speak to our team about simplifying your digital ecosystem. 

In my first blog of this two-part series, I broke down the five automation metrics and principles I rely on most to help leadership demonstrate value. This second blog builds on that thinking. In my e-book, ‘Network automation in 2026: building resilience, assurance and future-ready networks’, I explained that one of the biggest challenges that network and operations leaders face today is making every change safe. 

Automation is not just about efficiency, but maintaining control within modern networks that are dynamic, distributed and tightly-connected to cloud platforms and third-party services. While automation is essential, speed without control creates risk. By unifying the three capabilities of assurance, observability and lifecycle management, it becomes possible to execute network changes in a safe and repeatable way.

Assurance: Validate before and after every change

For me, assurance is the foundation. Validate every change is safe and compliant before it goes live, then confirm it behaves as intended after deployment. Continuous validation before and after every change is now expected, helping to ensure changes are safe and compliant. Streaming telemetry and service mesh architectures provide real-time visibility, making it easier to spot issues and respond quickly

How to implement assurance:

• Define policies as code and embed them in your pipeline. 
• Run intent checks to catch misconfiguration and drift early. 
• Use change windows that include automated validation and safe rollback paths.

Outcome: Fewer failed releases and emergency fixes and better audit outcomes because evidence is generated as part of normal work. 

Observability: Real insight from streaming telemetry

In my first blog, I covered MTTR and MTTD with the time it takes you to detect issues and restore normal service. Observability is what drives this. Move beyond static, device-centric health checks to provide continuous visibility across paths, services and users.

How to implement observability: 

• Stream telemetry from network and edge assets into a common model. 
• Use service mesh patterns where appropriate to trace requests end-to-end. 
• Align dashboards to service objectives, not individual devices. 

Outcome: Faster detection, clearer root cause and performance data that stakeholders can actually trust. 

Lifecycle management: Remove tech debt as you modernise

Teams often try to automate on top of legacy risks. Lifecycle management prevents that. You plan upgrades, renewals and retirements proactively to prevent new changes from piling risk onto legacy.

How to implement lifecycle management: 

• Maintain an accurate inventory and map controls to business risk. 
• Standardise on reference designs that are easier to secure and support. 
• Budget for renewal and decommissioning alongside new projects. 

Outcome: Lower exposure, simpler operations and a platform that adapts as the business evolves. 

How to implement a safe automation framework

To bring assurance, observability and lifecycle management together for safe automation, I recommend organisations consider the following best practices:  

1. Start with responsibility: Assign clear owners for providers and controls. Everyone should know who approves what. 
2. Use reference designs: Build simple patterns that map known threats to specific controls, then reuse them. 
3. Automate safely: Codify configuration and policy, prevent drift and escalate recovery with tested rollbacks. 
4. Adopt Zero Trust: Assume breach, verify access and enforce least privilege across sites and clouds. 
5. Strengthen monitoring: Track performance, changes, access and compliance in one place. 
6. Keep governance practical: Set standards that teams can follow, measure them and iterate. 

What to measure

To make progress visible and defensible, you can refer back to the core metrics from my e-book and previous blog:  

• Change success rate and rollback avoidance 
• MTTR and MTTD
• Compliance score and drift
• Latency and packet loss against service objectives.

These metrics will help you determine whether your automation is actually making change safer.  

Two quick wins for the first 30 days

If you want to quickly build momentum, I recommend: 

• Pre-change validation on one high-traffic service: Add automated checks for policy compliance and performance impact, then track the effect on change success rate. 
• Drift detection with weekly remediation: Choose a critical domain, enable drift alerts and close gaps to raise your compliance score. 

Where SD-WAN and SASE fit

At the edge, SD-WAN and SASE extend consistent policy and observability to every site. They simplify operations, support identity-led access that aligns to Zero Trust and reduce risks from technical debt and legacy systems so networks can adapt securely as business needs evolve. 

How we can help

In my work with clients, I see the same challenge time and again: network change needs to move faster, but it also needs to be safer and more predictable. At CACI, we help organisations bring structure, visibility and governance to complex networks so change can happen with confidence. 

We support teams in putting practical assurance and observability in place, improving lifecycle management and reducing configuration drift, without slowing delivery. That means fewer regressions, clearer accountability and a more predictable change pipeline.
 
If you’d like to explore how this approach could work in your environment, visit our Network Automation page to start the conversation with our specialists. 
 
You can also download my new Network Automation in 2026 eBook for a deeper dive into how assurance and automation work together to build resilient, future-ready networks. 

In my new e-book ‘Network automation in 2026: building resilience, assurance and future-ready networks’, I uncover how network automation is no longer just about speed, but about reducing operational risk, strengthening compliance and stabilising services when the unexpected strikes. To meet the expectations of leadership, network automation must clearly demonstrate its ability to deliver on outcomes.  

This first blog in a two-part series breaks down five automation metrics and principles I rely on to help advise leadership: practical, executive-friendly and aligned to how boards evaluate resilience, risk and customer experience.

1. Change success rate and rollback avoidance 

What it is: This is the proportion of changes that complete as planned without causing incidents or requiring rollback. 
Why it matters: In my experience, this is one of the fastest ways to prove to leadership that automation is about increasing safety and predictability, not just throughput. 

How to improve:  

• I always begin with applying pre-change validation, policy gates and standardised reference designs that map controls to threats with simple, repeatable patterns. These give teams simple, repeatable patterns that map controls to threats. 
• Instrument your pipelines to capture change outcomes automatically.
• Assign clear ownership to execute each change and align teams.  

What good looks like: A steady rise in successful, first-time changes and a consistent fall in rollbacks over consecutive release cycles. 

2. Mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to repair (MTTR)

What it is: The time it takes you to detect issues and restore normal service. 
Why it matters: I find that detection and recovery are very important for leadership, especially because automation and observability deliver measurable business value. 

How to improve:  

• Stream all of your telemetry into a single view, then use intent checks to highlight drift or policy violations and automate first line remediation where safe.  
• Strengthen monitoring by tracking network performance, changes, access, compliance and security events.

What good looks like: Faster detection windows followed by runbook-driven recovery that is measured in minutes, not hours.

3. Compliance score and configuration drift

What it is: A combined indicator of how closely your estate aligns to policy and how far it strays from approved configurations. 
Why it matters: Boards and auditors need confidence that controls are enforced consistently across hybrid estates. 

How to improve:  

• Treat policies as code and run continuous checks.  
• Block non-compliant changes before they land.  
• Generate audit evidence automatically to save a huge amount of time.  
• Keep governance practical by setting clear standards, control owners and measurable policies. 

What good looks like: A rising compliance score with drift trending down. Exceptions are documented and time-boxed. 

4. Alert volume reduction

What it is: A measure of how many alerts actually correlate to meaningful incidents. 
Why it matters: High alert volume hides real risk and drains team capacity. 

How to improve:  

• Consolidate tooling, de-duplicate at the source, only measuring what maps to user or service objectives.  
• Safely automate by applying Infrastructure as Code and Policy as Code to prevent drift and speed up recovery.

What good looks like: Fewer alerts, higher signal quality and a clear link between alerts and customer impact. 

5. Latency and packet loss against service objectives

What it is: End-to-end performance measured against the targets that matter most for your services. 
Why it matters: User experience is the ultimate goal. Device health means little if transactions stall. 

How to improve:  

• Set service-level objectives (SLOs) for your priority journeys, instrument path visibility and factor network changes into performance reviews.  
• Adopt Zero Trust principles to assume breach, verify access and enforce least privilege.  

What good looks like: Stable or improving latency and loss for your top services, even during high change periods. 

How to get started 

I recommend teams start small when adopting these metrics, but take the following into consideration: 

1. Select two high impact metrics that you can measure today. 
2. Automate the collection and reporting so data is timely and trusted.
3. Share a simple scorecard with trend lines and short commentary.
4. Only add more metrics when the first set is stable. 

How we can help

In my work with CIOs, one of the biggest challenges I see is turning network automation into something that’s measurable, governed and trusted. At CACI, we help organisations align automation with business goals, reduce operational risk and create real clarity around performance and compliance. 

We bring proven architectures, practical operating models and clear measurement frameworks, so teams can track success rates, reduce configuration drift and improve incident response. We also help teams build simple, outcome focused scorecards that connect day-to-day network activity to executive priorities. 

If you’d like support establishing a metrics baseline or shaping an automation roadmap around the principles in this blog, visit our Network Automation page to learn more or get in touch with our specialists. 

You can also download my Network Automation in 2026 eBook for a deeper look at the frameworks and metrics that high performing organisations are using today. 

In the next blog in this series, I’ll explore how assurance, observability and lifecycle management work together to make every network change safe. 

CACI Ltd is delighted to announce it has been selected by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an official launch partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC), a major AWS initiative designed to help organisations meet stringent European digital sovereignty, security, and compliance requirements.

This appointment further reinforces CACI – a global AWS Premier Tier Partner – as a trusted advisor for organisations looking to adopt sovereign cloud solutions while leveraging the scale, resilience and innovation of AWS.

The European Sovereign Cloud is purpose-built to ensure the highest levels of governance and assurance, making it particularly suited for mission-critical and highly regulated sectors such as public services, national security, defence, financial services, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. This is also essential in supporting large commercial organisations navigate regulatory landscapes, protect sensitive data, and maintain customer trust at scale.

Why are the AWS ESC Principles Important?

The AWS ESC applies the principles above in the European context, giving organisations absolute confidence that their data and operations remain under tight European control, while enabling innovation without compromise.

Key capabilities include:

• EU-only operations: managed exclusively by EU-based personnel, ensuring governance and operational independence.

• EU data residency: all customer data – including metadata – remains within the EU, supported by isolated service environments.

• Independent European infrastructure: physically EU-based facilities with separate control systems including independent billing, security, and multiple Availability Zones for resilience.

What Being an AWS ESC Launch Partner Means for CACI Clients

CACI brings proven expertise in cloud transformation, security, and compliance. Becoming an ESC launch partner further enables CACI to:

• Guide organisations through sovereign cloud adoption using AWS best practices.

• Deliver secure and compliant solutions tailored to EU regulatory requirements.

• Enable innovation without compromise, by combining sovereignty with AWS scalability and resilience.

To prepare for this milestone, CACI has invested in advanced training for its teams on AWS Digital Sovereignty competency and principles, ensuring clients receive expert guidance in planning, migrating to, and operating sovereign cloud environments.

Tracy Weir, Chief Executive of CACI Ltd, comments: “We’re proud to be named an AWS launch partner for the European Sovereign Cloud. This partnership reinforces our dedication to helping organisations across public and private sectors meet stringent sovereignty requirements, whilst leveraging the power of AWS. It also underlines our commitment to delivering excellence and best practice across every stage of AWS cloud adoption.”

CACI AWS Credentials and Sovereign Cloud Expertise

CACI pairs deep AWS expertise with secure cloud delivery experience across defence, public services, finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. Our powerful capabilities include:

• First AWS Trusted Secure Enclave Vetted Partner the UK providing trusted National Security & Defence sensitive solutions

• Other AWS Competencies including Migration, DevOps and Government Consulting

• A partner ecosystem of 36+ strategic partners across all verticals

• Jezero Landing Zone Accelerator: AWS validated secure cloud LZA enabling rapid deployment on AWS, and compliance with global security standards

• 400+ AWS certifications: held by expert CACI engineers.

AWS ESC launch timeline, locations, and investment

AWS ESC begins its roll out from January 2026, starting with its first region in the State of Brandenburg, Germany, expanding capabilities and coverage to additional regions over time. This phased approach reflects AWS’s commitment to supporting European organisations with scalable, sovereign cloud solutions.

AWS has also committed €7.8 billion in investment in Germany by 2040 as part of this initiative, reinforcing its long-term support for European digital sovereignty and innovation.

With over five decades of delivering complex programmes across commercial and public sectors including highly regulated, mission-critical industries, CACI is well-positioned to help organisations adopt secure, compliant cloud solutions on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

For help with ESC or any AWS or other cloud projects, get in touch today.

When it comes to strengthening your network security posture, doing so is no longer a nice-to-have, but a strategic necessity. The notion of strengthening your network may sound time-intensive and lengthy, however, there are some immediate changes that can lead to quick wins. In this blog, we uncover four key steps IT leaders can take to strengthen network security posture and immediate quick wins that can be achieved upon doing so.  

Four steps to strengthen your network security posture

Security is no longer optional. These four foundational actions will help you reduce risk and build resilience: 

1. Adopt zero trust principles

Zero trust means “never trust, always verify.” Every user and device inside or outside the network must be authenticated and authorised. This approach limits the impact of breaches and is now recommended by the NCSC and leading global providers.  

• Implement strong authentication for all users and devices.  
• Segment networks to limit lateral movement.  
• Continuously monitor for unusual behaviour.  

2. Automate detection and response

Manual processes cannot keep pace with modern threats. Automation can reduce response times by up to 40%, demonstrating its ability to help defenders stay ahead. 

• Use AI-driven tools for threat detection and alert triage.  
• Automate patching, backup, and incident response workflows.
• Regularly test and updated automated playbooks.

3. Operational load

With many IT teams stretched thin, managed network services allow organisations to focus on strategy while experts handle day-to-day operations, monitoring and compliance. 

• Consider managed firewall, detection and response and vulnerability management services.  
• Ensure providers offer transparent reporting and clear SLAs.

4. Secure hybrid work

With two-thirds of UK employees working remotely at least part-time, endpoint protection and secure remote access are essential.  

• Enforce multi-factor authentication for all remote access.  
• Protect endpoints with up-to-date security software and policies.
• Educate staff on secure working practices. 

Quick wins: Immediate actions UK IT leaders should take 

Not every improvement requires a major investment or a long-term project. The following actions can quickly reduce risk and strengthen your security posture:  

Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) 

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the most effective ways to prevent account compromise, blocking the majority of phishing and credential stuffing attacks.  

• Enforce MFA for all users, not just administrators.  
• Use app-based or hardware tokens for stronger protection. 
• Regularly review and test MFA coverage.  

Read NCSC guidance on MFA  

Patch the basics consistently and quickly

Most breaches exploit known vulnerabilities. Even delays in patching of a few days can be costly.  

• Maintain an up-to-date inventory of all assets, including cloud workloads and remote endpoints. 
• Apply critical patches within 14 days, as recommended by the NCSC.  
•  Automate patch deployment and monitor for failures.  

Back up critical data securely and test your restores

Ransomware is only effective if you cannot recover your data. Secure, tested backups are essential.  

• Use immutable, offsite or cloud-based backups.  
• Regularly test restores to ensure data integrity.  
• Protect backup credentials with MFA and restrict access.

Review firewall rules and access controls

Firewall policies can become cluttered over time with unused or overly permissive rules, creating hidden vulnerabilities.  

• Schedule regular firewall reviews to remove unused or risky rules.  
• Align policies with current business needs.  
• Use automated tools to analyse policies for overlaps and compliance gaps.   

Run a tabletop incident response exercise 

Plans are only effective if teams can execute them under pressure. Tabletop exercises simulate real-world incidents, allowing teams to rehearse roles and identify gaps.  

• Involve both technical and business stakeholders.  
• Use realistic scenarios tailored to your organisation.
• Capture lessons learned and update your incident response plan.  

See NCSC’s guidance on incident response exercises 

How CACI can help enhance your network security

CACI has helped UK businesses protect their networks for decades. From network security to data centre solutions and IT consulting, our expertise delivers secure-by-design architectures, automation, and incident readiness for robust network security.  

Download our 2026 Network Security Survival Guide today to learn more about how your organisation can set its network environments up for success. 

The demand for cloud-based offerings and cloud adoption has accelerated, with the importance of flexibility and agility now being realised. Without adapting, businesses risk being left behind. What are the benefits, however, and how do you know if it’s the right solution for you? 

We shared the key advantages of cloud adoption in our previous blog. This time around, we identify the biggest challenges of cloud security. 

Cloud adoption has become increasingly important in recent years, with 64% of all enterprises now regarding cloud security as a pressing security discipline. Despite its integral role, more than half of all enterprises find securing cloud environments to be more complex than securing on-premises venues. 

As cybercriminals increasingly target cloud environments, the pressure is on for IT leaders to protect their businesses. Here, we explore the most pressing threats to cloud security you should take note of. 

Limited visibility

The traditionally used tools for gaining complete network visibility are ineffective for cloud environments as cloud-based resources are located outside the corporate network and run on infrastructure the company doesn’t own. Furthermore, most organisations lack a complete view of their cloud footprint. You can’t protect what you can’t see, so having a handle on the entirety of your cloud estate is crucial. 

Lack of cloud security architecture and strategy

The rush to migrate data and systems to the cloud meant that organisations were operational before thoroughly assessing and mitigating the new threats they’d been exposed to. The result is that robust security systems and strategies are not in place to protect infrastructure. 

Unclear accountability

Pre-cloud, security was firmly in the hands of security teams. In public and hybrid cloud settings, however, responsibility for cloud security is split between cloud service providers and users, with responsibility for security tasks differing depending on the cloud service model and provider. Without a standard shared responsibility model, addressing vulnerabilities effectively is challenging as businesses struggle to grapple with their responsibilities. This not only obfuscates incident response, but increases the likelihood of risks and misconfigurations. 

Misconfigured cloud services

Misconfiguration of cloud services can cause data to be publicly exposed, manipulated or even deleted. It occurs when a user or admin fails to set up a cloud platform’s security setting properly. For example, keeping default security and access management settings for sensitive data, giving unauthorised individuals access or leaving confidential data accessible without authorisation are all common misconfigurations. Human error is always a risk, but it can be easily mitigated with the right processes. 

Data loss

Data loss is one of the most complex risks to predict, so taking steps to protect against it is vital. The most common types of data loss are: 

• Data alteration – when data is changed and cannot be reverted to the previous state. 
• Storage outage – access to data is lost due to issues with your cloud service provider. 
• Loss of authorisation – when information is inaccessible due to a lack of encryption keys or other credentials. 
• Data deletion – data is accidentally or purposefully erased, and no backups are available to restore information. 

While regular back-ups will help avoid data loss, backing up large amounts of company data can be costly and complicated. Nonetheless, ransomware attacks swelled by 126% earlier this year, reiterating the necessity for businesses to conduct regular data backups.  

Malware

Malware can take many forms, including DoS (denial of service) attacks, hyperjacking, hypervisor infections and exploiting live migration. Left undetected, malware can rapidly spread through your system and open doors to even more serious threats. That’s why multiple security layers are required to protect your environment. 

Insider threats

While images of disgruntled employees may spring to mind, malicious intent is not the most common cause of insider threat security incidents. Worryingly, the frequency of insider-led incidents is on the rise. According to a report published this year, nearly half of the organisations surveyed noticed an increase in the frequency of their insider threats. The financial repercussions of this increase have led to costs increasing by 109% between 2018 to 2024, posing serious financial risks to affected organisations. 

Compliance concerns

While some industries are more regulated, you’ll likely need to know where your data is stored, who has access to it, how it’s being processed and what you’re doing to protect it. This can become more complicated in the cloud. Furthermore, your cloud provider may be required to hold specific compliance credentials. 

Failure to follow the regulations can result in substantial legal, financial and reputational repercussions. Therefore, it’s critical to handle your regulatory requirements, ensure good governance is in place and keep your business compliant. 

API vulnerabilities

Cloud applications typically interact via APIs (application programming interfaces). However, insecure external APIs can provide a gateway, allowing threat actors to launch DoS attacks and code injections to access company data. 

In 2020, Gartner predicted API attacks would become the most frequent attack vector by 2022. With over half of all enterprises reporting an increase in direct attacks to compromise infrastructure as of 2025, this prediction has become a reality. Addressing API vulnerabilities will therefore be a chief priority for IT leaders in 2025 and beyond. 

Check out our comprehensive guide to cloud security for more insights on overcoming these challenges and safeguarding your business against evolving threats.

Cloud innovation trends: Why optimisation must come first

In the race to modernise, many businesses make a critical mistake: innovating before optimising their cloud infrastructure. It’s an easy trap to fall into – new technologies promise speed, agility and competitive advantage. However, without a solid foundation, those promises can quickly unravel.

So, what difference will optimisation make to cloud innovation? How do complex hybrid environments affect optimisation and what are the repercussions of innovating too soon?

Why optimisation should come first

Cloud optimisation isn’t just a technical exercise – it’s a strategic imperative. Before you invest in AI-driven tools, advanced analytics or multi-cloud deployments, you need to ensure your existing environment is efficient, secure and cost-effective. Otherwise, innovation becomes a gamble rather than a growth driver.

How the complexity of hybrid environments affects optimisation

Modern IT landscapes are rarely simple. Most organisations operate in hybrid environments, combining:

• Cloud-native workloads
• Semi-native applications
• Containerised services
• Legacy systems migrated via IaaS.

This mix introduces complexity that can quietly erode ROI and performance. Without optimisation, you risk inefficiencies that undermine every future initiative.

Common pitfalls of innovating too soon

When businesses rush to innovate without first optimising, they often encounter:

Duplicated workloads

Hybrid setups frequently lead to duplication of environments or services, especially when containerised and legacy systems overlap with cloud-native tools. This consumes bandwidth and burdens IT and DevOps teams with managing multiple versions of the same workload.

Latency issues

Poor workload distribution across cloud environments increases latency, slowing response times and masking compliance or security issues. For customer-facing applications, this can directly impact user experience and brand reputation.

Security saps

Unoptimised containerised and legacy workloads are vulnerable to governance and compliance risks. Differences in data storage and flow between environments complicate tracking, while unresolved legacy issues can carry over post-migration.

Mounting costs

With up to 30% of cloud spend wasted, inefficiencies inflate monitoring and security costs, draining budgets that could fund innovation.

Why this matters now

Cloud strategies are under pressure to deliver more – faster, cheaper and greener. Without optimisation, businesses risk inefficiency, higher costs and vulnerabilities that stall progress. In an industry where every second counts, building on shaky ground isn’t just risky, it’s expensive.

How to get started

Before chasing the next big trend in cloud innovation, take time to:

• Audit your current architecture: Maintain visibility by understand what’s running, where and why.
• Identify duplicated workloads and inefficiencies: Determine whether any services or resources are the cause behind draining budgets.
• Align resources with business priorities: Ensure any spending on cloud innovation drives value for the business.
• Implement governance and security best practices: Establishing best practices early on will ensure that innovation is scaled effectively.

This foundation ensures innovation is sustainable, not just a short-term fix.

The CACI approach: Building a cloud that enables innovation

Ready to build a cloud foundation that enables innovation?

Don’t leave your cloud strategy to chance. Our specialist cloud architects and optimisation experts have helped leading organisations modernise, streamline and unlock innovation without compromise. Contact us today to start your cloud optimisation journey.

As attitudinal segmentations are usually based on surveying a smaller sub-group and not based on data which can be easily applied to customers on your database, bridging attitudinal segmentations can be a challenge and is not always a straightforward process. However, it is a great way to provide a consistent customer experience.

So, what is attitudinal segmentation and what considerations should an organisation have when it comes to their approach for bridging an attitudinal segmentation?

What is attitudinal segmentation & how to bridge an attitudinal segmentation

Attitudinal segmentations are typically created using data from quantitative surveys. They can be a powerful tool for delivering rich insights into customer and prospect mindsets and provide a valuable framework for organisations to engage customers effectively through an in-depth understanding of their needs, attitudes and motivations.

Being able to treat customers consistently throughout the marketing funnel helps to establish a relationship with them and deliver resonating messages that will drive increased engagement. Once someone becomes a customer, they will expect to see the same messages that originally struck a chord with them reflected and developed in their ongoing journey with you.

The economic and social disruption since the pandemic has permanently changed consumers and their expectations of brands, so ensuring your online messaging aligns with these changes is increasingly important. We consistently see organisations that are personalising messaging for their customers increasing their market share, net promoter scores, return on investment and profitability. With this in mind, being able to make your attitudinal segmentation actionable on your database should be a key part of your customer engagement strategy.

Key questions to address the challenges of bridging an attitudinal segmentation onto your customer base

There are no two ways about it – data is key to tackling this challenge and making it actionable. To achieve this, you should ask the following five questions to get started:

• Where and who created the segments? Were the segments created by your organisation or a media/research partner? This is pertinent to understanding if you can get to the raw data or in understanding the level of granularity of data you can obtain.
• What data is there? Do you have access to the responder level data or tables by segment or Pen Portraits? The data you can reach will determine the method of bridging that can be used.
• Were questions only posed to your customer base or to the wider population? What types of questions were asked and were they personal to the organisation or more generalised? This can impact the resulting solution.
• Are there any behavioural traits reported within the data that were part of the same survey? Wider data beyond pure attitudes can be helpful to model this back to the database.
• Were any demographic questions asked or was postcode captured? This can help the process of creating the link between segments and customer base.

While bridging an attitudinal segmentation can be challenging, these questions will help identify how simple or complex the solution will be.

Key techniques for bridging attitudinal segmentation

Depending on the granularity of the data your organisation has access to, the following techniques can be leveraged:

• Responder level data: As this is the most granular form of data, it produces the most accurate results. Techniques here include modelling each of the segments by using a mix of the responder data and CACI’s own data to score this up against a customer database before validating this against the responder panel.
• Tables by segment: We can compare each customer’s results to the segment averages based on a combination of multiple data points. Validation is key through profiling and sense checking the segment distribution.
• Pen Portraits: Here we would use a rules-based approach to recreate segments based on high-level views of the segment to capture the different blend of information that you have to bridge the data. As before, the final step of validation is key to ensuring the solution’s accuracy.

If raw data is inaccessible or unavailable, the following alternative methods can support:

• Adding golden questions to market panels: This will provide more demographic and behaviour traits which support the bridging process.
• Surveying the whole customer base with golden questions: Responses can often be skewed to particular segments, however, and some consumers may be more inclined to answer than others.

Considerations at the start of an attitudinal segmentation journey

Including key customer traits

When beginning an attitudinal segmentation, our first recommended consideration would be to include some key customer traits. Including additional questions such as demographic markers (postcode, gender and age band) will support segmentation mapping on to the database.

Cross-team engagement

Cross-team engagement will be invaluable to ensure the segmentation meets goals and drives value. This will help flesh out what the segmentation will be used for now and in the future, as well as gauging what you need from the segmentation and building it accordingly. It is also pertinent in getting buy in as early as possible to ensure teams are engaged when the solution is rolled out.

Backing segmentations with research

Another solution would be to build the segments first and then use research to enhance them with attitudinal values. This solution can work well with one of the benefits of running focus groups to bring life to the segments rather than using the attitudes to drive the segmentation.

Ultimately, it is about finding the right balance that works for your organisation based on wants and needs. Attitudinal segmentations can bring excellent insights but are limited in their applications across a database. Fundamentally, it is a process of ensuring that through engaging the whole organisation, your solution is optimised to meet strategic aims.

How CACI can help

CACI is in a unique position with a UK-wide dataset on all adults, encompassing over 800 variables that we can use to profile and create proxy variables to support the possibility of a successful bridging exercise. We help solve the challenges associated with bridging attitudinal segmentation for leading organisations many times each year.

To learn more about getting the most out of your segmentation and how CACI can support you through this journey, get in touch and we can discuss your challenges in more detail.

Cloud adoption is no longer seen as a means for storage, but a foundation for intelligent business capabilities. Businesses that have adopted the cloud are able to reap benefits far beyond cost savings, enhancing operational flexibility, enabling faster disaster recovery and much more. In the first blog of our cloud security series, we explore the key advantages of cloud adoption. 

Flexibility

Cloud infrastructure is the key to operational agility, allowing you to scale up or down to suit your bandwidth needs. The pay-as-you-go model offered by most cloud service providers (CSPs) also means that you pay for usage rather than a set monthly fee, making IT spending a more manageable operational expense. The ability to scale resources according to demand also ensures performance will be optimal during peak times and eliminate waste during downtime. 

Reduced cost

Kind to your cash flow, cloud computing cuts out the high hardware cost. The availability of the aforementioned pay-as-you-go models can significantly cut costs. Not to mention the cost-savings of reduced resources, lower energy consumption and fewer delays.  

Disaster recovery

From natural disasters to power outages and software bugs, if your data is backed up in the cloud, it is at a reduced risk of system failure as the servers are typically far from your office locations. You can recover data anywhere to minimise downtime by logging into the internet’s cloud storage portal. 

Accessibility

We’ve all heard that the office is dead. Workers want the ability to work anytime, anywhere. With cloud (and an internet connection), they can. The cloud enables workforces to be distributed through secure access to data and applications from any location, which is critical in today’s hybrid working world. 

Greater collaboration

Cloud infrastructure makes collaboration a simple process, changing the parameters of how and where teams can work. The cloud can drastically improve workplace productivity, from online video calls to sharing files and co-authoring documents in real-time. It offers a centralised, secure and real-time working environment that bolsters communication and helps streamline workflows. These cloud-native applications are designed to make our lives more efficient through greater collaboration.  

Strategic value

Ultimately, businesses that have adopted the cloud typically experience greater cost efficiencies, faster speed to market and enhanced service levels. Adopting the cloud not only reimagines business models and builds resilience but also enables organisations to be agile and innovative. For example, adopting DevOps methodologies can be an essential element for businesses looking to get ahead of their competitors. 

But what about security? Earlier this year, a reported 61% of organisations felt security and compliance were their primary barriers to cloud adoption. Rushed application and the resulting lacklustre security have only intensified security concerns as cybercriminals increasingly target cloud environments. 

Download our comprehensive guide to cloud security and start securing your cloud today.