Migrating to the cloud? There are many advantages, especially for businesses in the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance sector (BFSI). First, it can help you lower costs.
According to a McKinsey report, adopting cloud computing can reduce IT overhead costs by 30% to 40%.
However, during this challenging process, you shouldn’t forget about documentation. While documentation takes a back seat during cloud migration, it is essential for end-users. In this article, we are going to show you what happens during cloud migrations and how to avoid overlooking documentation from this process.
Why documentation gets overlooked in cloud migrations
When it comes to the BFSI sector, documentation isn’t always a top priority and that’s understandable. BFSI organizations prioritize stringent security measures, regulatory compliance, and maintaining uninterrupted services during cloud migrations. Security is most of the time the main reason for switching to the cloud. According to Oracle’s Security in the Age of AI Report, 6 in 10 note security as the top benefit of cloud computing.
Source: Oracle’s Security in the Age of AI Report
Unfortunately, the focus on security is not the only reason why documentation might be overlooked during cloud migration. Another issue is that existing documentation is often scattered across various platforms such as internal wikis, PDFs, and outdated Confluence pages. A survey revealed that 52% of organizations utilize three or more document management systems, leading to data silos and inefficiencies.
This makes it even more challenging to gather all of the data and verify if the documentation is up to date. A report by Neontri noted that nine in ten businesses encounter problems during cloud migration, with larger banks experiencing extended timelines, partly due to disorganized documentation.
BFSI firms operate highly complex IT ecosystems, often spanning decades-old legacy systems alongside modern digital services. Without structured documentation, teams struggle to identify dependencies between applications, databases, and services, causing bottlenecks during migration.
Poor documentation is a risk during BFSI cloud migrations
Forgetting about documentation is not an option during cloud migration. While financial institutions focus on infrastructure, security, and cost optimization, poor documentation often becomes an overlooked risk that can lead to severe consequences:
Increased risk of compliance violations
BFSI firms must comply with strict financial regulations such as GDPR, PCI DSS, SOC 2, and FFIEC guidelines. Migration requires detailed documentation of data handling practices, security configurations, and access policies to ensure regulatory adherence. Poor documentation increases the risk of non-compliance, leading to hefty fines and legal consequences.
In 2020, Capital One was fined $80 million by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency due to poor cloud security controls and documentation failures following a major data breach that exposed 100 million customer records.
Operational disruptions
Cloud migrations in BFSI involve complex legacy systems with multiple dependencies. Poorly documented API structures, infrastructure blueprints, and data flow mappings can cause service outages, transaction failures, and broken integrations.
In 2018, TSB Bank’s failed cloud migration resulted in 2 million customers losing access to their accounts for weeks. The outage was caused in part by inadequate documentation of legacy systems and unstructured migration workflows, leading to integration failures and extended downtime. The bank was later fined £49 million.
Increased costs
A lack of structured documentation often results in unexpected costs due to rework, troubleshooting, and extended project timelines. A McKinsey & Company report highlighted that organizations spend over $100 billion more on their cloud migrations than initially projected. Also, 75% of cloud migrations exceed budget and more than one-quarter experience cost overruns greater than 20%.
Example Case: a bank migrating from on-premise systems to the cloud
Let’s take a hypothetical example. A mid-sized regional bank started migrating its core banking system from on-premise servers to a cloud-based infrastructure to enhance scalability and security. However, outdated and fragmented documentation led to significant challenges during this transition.
The bank's legacy system relied on custom APIs, but incomplete documentation made it difficult for developers to understand dependencies, resulting in integration failures and service disruptions. Security teams encountered outdated policies misaligned with cloud standards, raising compliance concerns and potential vulnerabilities. These issues extended the migration timeline by six months and increased operational costs by 30%, while also affecting customer access to online banking services.
This scenario is not unique and is very similar to TSB Bank's 2018 IT migration failure. But what can you do to avoid these issues during the challenging process of data migration? Maintaining documentation at every step of the process.
Best practices for maintaining documentation during migration
Effective documentation management is critical for successful cloud migration. It ensures a smooth transition, minimizes risks, and maintains regulatory compliance. A structured approach at each phase—pre-migration, during migration, and post-migration—helps avoid costly setbacks and operational disruptions.
Pre-migration: laying the foundation for success
The first step begins even before migration starts: Conducting a thorough audit of existing documentation. This includes reviewing infrastructure diagrams, API references, security policies, and compliance reports to identify outdated, missing, or incomplete information. Make sure that all of your documentation is in one place. Using a documentation platform like Archbee can help you gather all of your docs. You can then update them and keep track of the changes over time.
Quantfolio, which offers "Deep Alpha," a digital platform for investment advisory, had this issue. Their documentation was scattered across different platforms. They chose Archbee because it “is markdown-based and supports both internal and external sharing”. Now, Quantfolio has more up-to-date documentation and they’ve noticed an increase in engagement from both readers and contributors.
Financial institutions often rely on a mix of legacy and modern systems, making documentation gaps inevitable. According to a Forrester report, 97% of organizations had minimal or no digital document processes. Addressing these gaps early helps avoid last-minute troubleshooting and ensures that teams have the necessary insights into system dependencies and workflows.
During migration: ensuring accuracy and collaboration
As the migration progresses, real-time updates to documentation are important to track infrastructure changes, security configurations, and data flow adjustments. Documentation platforms with version control mechanisms like Archbee help teams maintain accurate documentation without losing historical data.
Collaboration among IT, security, and compliance teams is key to preventing inconsistencies. Cloud migration projects often involve multiple stakeholders, including third-party vendors, system integrators, and compliance auditors. Implementing real-time documentation updates can ensure smooth communication across teams.
Post-migration: aligning with new cloud workflows
Once migration is complete, documentation must be aligned with the new cloud infrastructure, security protocols, and compliance requirements. Financial institutions must update IAM (Identity and Access Management) policies, network configurations, backup and disaster recovery plans, and data encryption protocols to reflect the cloud environment.
Regulatory audits in the BFSI sector require up-to-date documentation to demonstrate compliance with frameworks like PCI DSS, GDPR, SOC 2, and FFIEC guidelines. Failure to maintain proper documentation can result in penalties. In October 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fined Citibank $400 million for deficiencies in enterprise-wide risk management, compliance risk management, data governance, and internal controls.
Automating documentation updates can significantly reduce human errors and inefficiencies. Tools like AWS Config, Azure Policy, or Kubernetes Operators can help automate infrastructure documentation and ensure compliance.
How can documentation platforms support BFSI cloud migrations?
Cloud migrations in the BFSI sector require meticulous documentation to ensure regulatory compliance, operational continuity, and security. Traditional documentation methods often lead to fragmentation, outdated information, and inefficiencies. Documentation platforms, such as Archbee play a crucial role in maintaining documentation during cloud migration.
Centralizing documentation for compliance and governance
BFSI institutions must comply with strict regulations such as PCI DSS, GDPR, SOC 2, and FFIEC guidelines. Documentation platforms ensure that security policies, IAM roles, encryption standards, and compliance reports are stored in a single, accessible location.
Also, automatically tracking compliance by connecting with cloud governance tools like AWS Config is a great option. Lastly, you can keep audit-ready logs that make it easy to show regulators how your infrastructure and data policies are being followed.
Real-time updates to track cloud migration progress
Cloud migrations involve multiple teams (IT, Security, DevOps, Compliance) and require real-time updates to prevent miscommunication and delays. Documentation platforms allow team-wide collaboration with role-based access to ensure only authorized personnel make changes.
It also enables version-controlled documentation to track infrastructure modifications and rollback if needed. Keeping migration timelines, risks, and dependencies up to date with live tracking dashboards.
Reducing integration failures with centralized API and infrastructure documentation
Migrating legacy BFSI systems often involves reconfiguring APIs, updating data pipelines, and integrating third-party services. A documentation platform ensures that API endpoints, authentication mechanisms, and data flow diagrams are well-documented to prevent integration failures.
Documentation platforms allow for cloud infrastructure blueprints, network configurations, and IAM roles to be clearly defined for smooth transitions.
Plus, developers and IT teams have a single source of truth, reducing misconfigurations and post-migration downtime.
Automating infrastructure documentation for accuracy and compliance
Instead of relying on manual documentation, BFSI organizations can leverage cloud-native tools integrated with documentation platforms.
For example, you can auto-generate infrastructure documentation for compliance tracking. You can also link migration tickets to technical documentation by integrating Archbee with Jira.
Improving disaster recovery and incident response readiness
Unstructured documentation can make recovery after failures slow and difficult. Documentation platforms help by keeping clear disaster recovery (DR) runbooks with rollback steps, so teams know exactly what to do. They also track automated change logs to quickly spot misconfigurations and fix them. Plus, they allow teams to test DR plans and update them as needed, ensuring faster and more effective recovery.
Integrate documentation in your cloud strategy
Cloud migration offers BFSI institutions greater scalability, security, and efficiency, but without proper documentation, the process can lead to compliance risks, security gaps, and costly delays. A structured documentation strategy helps financial firms stay organized, compliant, and operationally resilient during and after migration.
By using centralized documentation platforms, institutions can track changes, ensure security compliance, and improve team collaboration. This reduces errors, simplifies audits, and ensures a smooth transition to the cloud.
Financial institutions must make documentation a key part of their cloud strategy to avoid risks and maximize the benefits of cloud adoption.
Learn more about how Archbee can make cloud migration faster and safer with structured documentation. Book a demo or try our full-feature trial for free.
