onwindows.com

Branch of the future | Unleashing the high street heroBusiness intelligence | How to make better use of data, fast

Mission-critical applications | migrating from the mainframe

“we are certainly seeing a growing appetite from our customers for

cloud computing” Mark Gunning, Temenos

finance on windows

microsoft tecHnology in banking, capital markets and insUrance

windowsgives the edge

steve bonanno on direct edge’s decision to choose microsoft for ultra-low latency

spring 2011 £9

1

finance on windowsa decade

of success Welcome to the Spring 2011 edition of Finance on Windows. This issue marks our

tenth anniversary of the magazine, and what a ten years it has been! Since it was

launched in 2001, the magazine has gone from strength to strength, highlighting Microsoft

and its partners’ commitment to helping financial institutions take advantage of the latest

technology developments.

For those who attended Finovate in February and witnessed how leading solutions

providers are continuing to innovate, I’m sure most would agree the opportunities for the

financial services industry have never been so great. In this issue we cover a range of these

new opportunities.

In addition to our news, views and case studies, you can read in our cover story about

how US stock exchange Direct Edge has reduced its latency by a staggering 83 per cent. In

our feature, ‘The high street hero’, we discuss how banks are looking to improve the branch

experience – and are turning to technology to modernise operations. We also discuss how

cloud computing is delivering on its promise to reduce cost, improve agility and help

financial institutions stay at the forefront of technology.

Finance on Windows is proud to have been covering developments like this over the last

decade. Thank you to everyone who has made and will continue to make this possible.

I hope you enjoy the issue.

Karen Cone

General Manager, Worldwide Financial Services

Microsoft

forewordspring 2011

Editor rebecca lambert, rebecca.lambert@tudor-rose.co.uk Features editor lindsay James News and online editor karen mccandless Senior writer michele witthaus Editorial assistant sam ballard Head of editorial adam lawrence

Editorial contributorsalbert van den broek, figlo, mark gunning, temenos, pekka Häkkinen, model it, maurice Hancock, altius consulting, aleksander milosevic, asseco, sami Uski, tieto Advertisingfor advertising enquiries, please contact tudor rose on +44 116 222 9900 or info@tudor-rose.co.uk Publication manager ricky popat, ricky.popat@tudor-rose.co.ukPartner managers claire brown, christian Jones, amandip singh

Subscriptions michael geraghty, michael.geraghty@tudor-rose.co.uk Reprintsstuart fairbrother, stuart.fairbrother@tudor-rose.co.uk Publishertoby ingleton Art direction bruce graham Design paul robinson Creative direction leigh trowbridge Photography cover photograhy by paul sirochman photography, www.sirochmanphoto.com, additional photography by www.istockphoto.com, www.canstockphoto.com Web site development chris Jackson Circulation ritwik bhattacharjee Business management richard pepperman, rachael Heggs

Microsoft Tag scan or snap the tag below for more information on Finance on Windows magazine and microsoft technology for enterprise businesses. to get a tag reader, visit http://gettag.mobi on your mobile phone browser.

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published by tudor rosetudor House 6 friar lane, leicester le1 5ra, englandtel: +44 116 222 9900 fax: +44 116 222 9901info@tudor-rose.co.uk www.tudor-rose.co.uk managing director: Jon ingleton

follow us: twitter.com/onwindowsbecome a fan on facebookconnect on linkedin

issn 1473-2173Finance on Windows is microsoft's quarterly enterprise customer magazine for the financial services industry. for further information and to subscribe, please visit: www.onwindows.com/financeonwindows

printed in great britain by the manson group.

© 2011 tudor rose Holdings ltd. all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be stored or transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means, including whether by photocopying, scanning, downloading onto computer or otherwise without the prior written permission from tudor rose Holdings ltd.

active directory, biztalk, microsoft, outlook, sharepoint, Visual studio and windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of microsoft in the Us and/or other countries. the names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of microsoft or the publishers. acceptance of advertisements does not imply official endorsement of the products or services concerned. while every care has been taken to ensure accuracy of content, no responsibility can be taken for any errors and/or omissions. readers should take appropriate professional advice before acting on any issue raised herein.

the publisher reserves the right to accept or reject advertising material and editorial contributions. the publisher assumes no liability for the return or safety of unsolicited art, photography or manuscripts.

BRANCH

THE HIGHSTREET HERO

06

36

58

24

News 06

we report on the global release of dynamics crm online, find out why temenos has moved t24 to the cloud and look at how Finance on Windows has evolvedsince it was launched ten years ago

Viewpoints 16

thought leadership from tieto’s sami Uski on the rise of mobile banking, model it’s pekka Häkkinen on xrm, plus insight from maurice Hancock at altius consulting, figlo’s albert van den broek and aleksander milosevic at asseco

Cover story

The edge to succeed 24lindsay James finds out how, with help from microsoft, Us stock exchange direct edge has reduced the latency of its system by a staggering 83 per cent

Solution focus: Mission-critical applications 32rebecca lambert looks into microsoft’s long-term commitment to supporting mission-critical operations

Features

The high street hero 36as more customers choose to bank online, linday James investigates what this means for the branch

Understanding the bigger picture 44How financial services companies can gain better visibility of their operations through familiar, easy-to-use technology

Exceeding expectations 54we look at some of the major financial institutions already benefiting from cloud computing

In practice 58

from geico on its use of windows phone 7 to improve customer service, through to it implementations at crédito agrícola group, denizbank and abn amro, we profile the latest technology rollouts across the industry

Signing out

A natural progression 64rebecca lambert catches up with mark gunning to find out more about temenos’s latest move with its core banking solution t24

contentsspring 2011

5

Industry Partners

Publishing Partners

Finance on Windows is produced in partnership with microsoft (nasdaQ ‘msft’), the world leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential. the company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – anytime, any place and on any device.

Sponsors

figlo offers unique, easy-to-use, customer-centric and transparent financial planning software, based on the Hawanedo approach. figlo’s solutions are built with microsoft silverlight and suitable for banks, insurers and financial advisors globally. Hawanedo is available on the latest microsoft surface and touch technology, guaranteeing an amazing user experience for both consumer and the financial industry.

founded in 1993 and listed on the swiss stock exchange (siX: temn), temenos group is a global provider of banking software systems in the retail, corporate and correspondent, universal, private, islamic and microfinance and community banking markets. Headquartered in geneva with more than 60 offices worldwide, temenos serves over 1,100 customers in more than 120 countries.

tieto is the leading it service company in northern europe providing it and product engineering services. its highly specialised it solutions and services complemented by a strong technology platform create tangible business benefits for local and global customers. as a trusted transformation partner, tieto is close to its customers and understands their unique needs. with more than 17,000 experts, it aims to become a leading service integrator creating the best service experience in it.

partnersspring 2011

the european financial marketing association was formed in 1971 by bankers and insurers to share experiences, promote best practice and build collaborative partnerships.

swift is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect more than 9,000 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in 209 countries.

the acord implementation forum is an interactive event uniting acord implementers from every line of business and every corner of the industry. novice or experienced, business or technical, the acord implementation forum gives you the skills and networking opportunities you need.

established in 2008 to establish and promote a common architectural framework for banking interoperability issues, the banking industry architecture network (bian) is an independent, member owned, not-for-profit association. bian's goal is to define soa and semantic definitions for it services in the banking industry.

www.onwindows.com 7

marketwatcHtHe latest news in banking, capital markets and insUrance

“we are excited to see a market leader like temenos actively taking their clients to cloud-

based solutions on the windows azure platform”Karen Cone, Microsoft

Dynamics CRM Online goes global Microsoft has launched its cloud-based

customer relationship management (CRM)

offering outside North America for the first

time. Dynamics CRM Online is now available

in 40 markets and 41 languages.

Steve Ballmer made the announcement at

a launch event in Redmond where he also

delivered the news that Dynamics CRM Online

is available for free on a 30-day trial and can

be purchased at a promotional price of US$34

per user per month for the first 12 months.

Salesforce.com and Oracle customers that

switch before 30 June 2011 can take advantage

of the ‘Cloud CRM for Less’ offer. Through this

offer, Microsoft will rebate eligible customers

up to US$200 per user.

Taking Dynamics CRM Online worldwide

shows the company’s commitment to

delivering more value to more customers, said

Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft

Dynamics CRM Product Management Group.

“Our goal with Dynamics CRM has always

been to give customers the power of choice,”

he said. “Ours is one of the few solutions

in the market that enables customers to

get CRM how it best fits them, whether

on premise, on demand in the cloud, or a

combination of both.”

Mike Ehrenberg, Microsoft technical fellow

and chief software architect for Dynamics,

was also positive about the company’s cloud

potential: “As we look forward, a key focus

for us is on the cloud and its vast potential

to transform business applications for the

future. We’ve already delivered a successful

Dynamics CRM Online offering.”

As part of the company’s cloud strategy, Office

365 will also be expanded this year to include

Dynamics CRM Online. Dynamics CRM 2011

for on-premises and partner-hosted deployments

will be available globally on 28 February 2011.

More than 11,500 customers and 400 partners

took part in a successful beta programme.

Benoit de la Tour, vice president, EMEA,

Microsoft Business Solutions discussed

the advantages of selecting the company’s

CRM offering: “Dynamics CRM is unique

in the area of flexibility, as well as price. We

have a significantly lower base price than

Salesforce.com or Oracle. We also have a very

compelling power of choice between online

and on-premise deployment. There are no

hidden fees in what Dynamics CRM is offering,

everything is included, even the storage

space. What is unique to Microsoft is also the

integration of Dynamics CRM. The high level

of integration with the productivity tools that

companies are using internally comes with

our product. Another strong differentiator

is the business intelligence capabilities. We

are offering access to real-time information,

which is something our customers have been

expressing a lot of interest in.”

The Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace

has also been made available in 20 markets

including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany,

France, India, the UK and US. The new

Marketplace is a critical component of the

Dynamics CRM and ERP strategy.

Delivering the keynote speech at the launch

event, Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president,

Microsoft Business Solutions, said: “This is the

first time the cloud-based version has gone

out first,” said. “We are very excited about the

degree of innovation that we are able to bring to

market through this cloud introduction.

“Delivering complete symmetry between

cloud-based deployment and on-premise

deployment is another part of what is new

and what is groundbreaking in Microsoft

Dynamics CRM 2011 and the online version

powered by it. Nobody else in the industry

has ever done anything like that. It allows

unprecedented flexibility; you can run

some deployments on premise and some

in the cloud. The product takes advantage

of the multi-billion dollar investment

that Microsoft has been making in data

centres to make sure that we provide the

global infrastructure at scale, enabling our

customers to get the most out of the cloud

initiatives and the most out of the Internet.”

Kirill Tatarinov announces Dynamics CRM Online at launch event in Redmond

Temenos has launched T24 on Windows

Azure, making it the first core banking system to

go into production with customers on Azure. This

technological development builds on Temenos’

experience of core systems applications in

hosted environments and will offer far reaching

operational and financial gains to certain banking

markets across the globe.

The combination of T24 and the Windows

Azure platform allows banks to remove the

high data centre costs associated with running

a multi-application environment by moving

these operations to a consumption-based pricing

model. Banks will no longer need to expend

time and budget on provisioning and operating

hardware resources, as running T24 natively in

the cloud enables them to scale effectively and

increase volume according to customer demand.

As part of the launch, Temenos is migrating 12

Mexican financial institutions from a traditional

hosted environment onto the Windows Azure

platform. Five of these – Sofol Tepeyac, Grupo

Agrifin, Findeca, Soficam and C.Capital Global

– are in the first phase of migration, which is

expected to be completed by Q2 2011. The

remaining seven will migrate later in 2011.

“We are excited to see a market leader like

Temenos actively taking its clients to cloud-

based solutions on the Windows Azure platform.

This will provide a differentiating edge to banks,

helping them lower costs, enhance operations,

and build new, mission-critical business

opportunities with flexibility and a rapid time to

market,” said Karen Cone, general manager of

worldwide financial services, Microsoft. “This is

a natural progression for Temenos, whose T24

platform and its architecture offer a close fit to a

cloud environment.”

Speaking about how this development builds

on Temenos’s relationship with Microsoft,

Andreas Andreades, the company’s CEO, said:

“We are extremely pleased to be taking T24 into

the cloud – a move which will offer an exciting

future for specific banking markets and open

up new opportunities for Temenos. We are

delighted to be leveraging our relationship with

Microsoft, which not only reinforces T24’s close

compatibility with Microsoft technologies to offer

banks a core platform that operates extremely

effectively in the cloud, but also highlights our

dedicated investment to evolve T24 in response

to market and customer change.”

Temenos takes T24 to the Microsoft cloud

of CRM software will be delivered as a service by 2015Source: Gartner

32%

24 per cent of IT decision makers have used the cloud to help start a new line of business, according to a survey conducted by 7th Sense Research and funded by Microsoft.

The survey found 41 per cent of enterprise companies have at least one cloud project planned or that is currently underway.

€177.3 billion per year could be added to Europe’s major economies (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) by 2015 thanks to cloud computing, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research and EMC.

40 per cent more CIOs are expected to adopt cloud computing in the next five years, according to Gartner.

Cloud computing: in numbers

www.onwindows.com

marketwatcHtHe latest news in banking, capital markets and insUrance

HP and Microsoft have introduced four new

appliances that fuse applications, infrastructure

and productivity tools in a single system.

The appliances, which are the industry’s first

systems designed for IT professionals as well as

end users, deliver application services such as

business intelligence, data warehousing, online

transaction processing and messaging.

The jointly engineered appliances, and related

consulting and support services, enable users to

deliver critical business applications in as little as

one hour, compared with the potential months

needed for traditional systems.

“Customers are looking to significantly

reduce implementation and decision times,”

said Mark Potter, senior vice president and

general manager, Industry Standard Servers and

Software, HP. “With our converged application

appliances, both companies enable customers to

shorten the time required to deliver information,

which helps to reduce risk and cost.”

“We are helping IT professionals fight

their biggest foes: time and complexity,” said

Ted Kummert, senior VP, Business Platform

Division, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft.

“With these appliances, we’re putting critical

information in our customers’ hands when they

need it.”

New appliances increase productivity

Microsoft and HP have launched the new appliance portfolio to speed app development

Asseco SEE, a software provider based in

south eastern Europe, has completed phase

two of a project to overhaul the legacy IT

infrastructure and improve the sales strategy

at Privredna banka Beograd in Serbia.

Following a successful pilot implementation

of Asseco’s flagship banking solution

Experience Branch back in September 2010,

the bank decided to roll out the software

across all its bank branches and is now fully

operational on the new system.

“Experience Branch is the ultimate sales and

service tool for retail banks,” said Aleksandar

Milosevic, Asseco’s chief software architect. “Built

on the latest Microsoft technology including

.NET 4.0, SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows

Server 2008 R2, the service oriented architecture-

based solution has a rich user interface and has

been designed to improve the sales, marketing

and customer service processes in branch

networks, as well as optimise traditional front

office and administrative processes to really

transform the branch and help the banks exceed

customer expectations.”

“We chose to migrate to a new banking

system as part of our transformation from a

traditional bank into a modern, sales-oriented

organisation,” said Cedo Petrovic, president

of the executive board of Privredna banka

Beograd. “This process is only possible with

the maximum use of the latest generation

technology, which brings increased efficiency,

high automation and cost reductions.”

At the moment Privredna banka Beograd is

using the new solution to improve the sales

experience within its branches and empower

staff with better information to serve

customers. Eventually the bank also plans

to use Experience Branch to consolidate

its multi-channel processes and unify its

systems to ensure a consistent experience

for the customer.

Serbian bank updates branch experience

Privredna banka Beograd is using Experience Branch to improve its sales culture

www.onwindows.com 11

SunGard manages risk at YBS

Tesco Bank is now live on the Fiserv Signature

bank platform, having announced its selection

of the financial services technology company

in November 2009. The bank launched its first

product, the Tesco Bank Fixed Rate Saver, on

the Fiserv platform on 6 October 2010.

In addition to the Signature account

processing and servicing platform, the strategic

implementation will introduce enhancements

in online banking with Corillian Online

and customer interaction and campaign

management with Aperio. More Fiserv

solutions are also being provided to the bank

in the areas of financial crime prevention,

reconciliation management and electronic

document management solutions.

“In working with Tesco Bank, we can see that

the company is visionary in its plans to align

business processes, IT, data and analytics and

service delivery,” said Tony Catalfano, division

president, Bank Solutions, Fiserv.

“By choosing us as a technology provider,

the supermarket bank benefits from a secure,

reliable environment, operating on a service-

oriented architecture model to deliver new

and existing solutions enterprise-wide,” added

Catalfano. “Our solutions can be readily

integrated, speeding implementation and giving

maximum flexibility to meet the needs of Tesco

Bank’s customer-focused business model.”

Tesco Bank is the UK’s largest supermarket

bank with 6.5 million customer accounts.

YBS is using SunGard Ambit to help measure and manage interest rate risk

Dates for your diary

9 march 2011; grand millennium Hotel, dubaiCloud Computing World Forum, Middle East & Africa

19-21 april 2011; earls court, london Infosecurity Europe

21-22 June 2011; olympia, london3rd Cloud Computing World Forum

Global spending on retail

banking technology will

increase over the next five

years to US$132 billion.

Source: : Ovum

$132 bn

Tagetik has announced its vision for making

business intelligence (BI), performance

management (PM) and disclosure

management processes as integrated

as possible. The rise of collaboration in

managing business performance has led

the company, in partnership with Microsoft,

to develop a collaborative performance

management (CPM) concept.

The outcome of this partnership is Tagetik

3.0 Enabled by Microsoft SharePoint Server

2010, a solution that aims to deliver a unified

performance and disclosure management

system, with specialised BI, collaboration

and communication tools. It also ensures

compliance with XBRL and also with iXBRL,

which will be mandatory in the UK from April.

“PM extended to collaborative decision-

making is the new challenge for complex

organisations that want to manage business

performance more efficiently, facilitate

teamwork across multiple systems or

stakeholders, and improve the quality of

operational and strategic decision making,”

said Manuel Vellutini, executive vice president

and chief operating officer at Tagetik.

“Microsoft and Tagetik have joined forces to

fill this growing need to integrate collaborative

technologies into performance management

and BI processes – which we call ‘CPM

Evolution’. Above all, we want to support

companies that are looking to implement

corporate strategies more effectively while

adding value to the way in which they manage

and control all business areas.”

“We have long shared the vision to

make BI and PM processes as collaborative

as possible. We’ve now achieved this

with a single collaborative performance

management platform to improve business

communication and decision-making

across the enterprise,” concluded Pierluigi

Pierallini, president and CEO of Tagetik.

Tagetik releases CPM solution

Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) in the UK,

has standardised its asset liability management

(ALM) practice across the whole organisation

with SunGard’s Ambit ALM solution, which runs

on the Microsoft .NET Framework.

The solution’s implementation has been

expanded to include the recently acquired Chelsea

Building Society (CBS). Mark Smith, head of asset

liability management at YBS, said: “We have been

using this SunGard solution since 2000 and

were eager to deploy it across CBS. This will help

to measure and manage interest rate risk at the

group level and provide the necessary input for

new business decision making.”

YBS also hopes to drive efficiencies in its

mortgage management process, as well as in

pricing for new and existing clients.

Andreas Hug, managing director of SunGard’s

Ambit Risk and Performance Management

business unit, commented: “Firms like YBS

can rely on our solution to help measure and

manage risk, forecast balance sheet performance,

meet regulatory requirements and make critical

business decisions.”

Headquartered in Edinburgh, Tesco Bank is using Fiserv solutions to enhance online banking

Princeton Financial Systems has released a new version of its unit value pricing and trading solution, PAM for Unit Value Trade. The product, which now contains an integrated reporting suite, has been ported to a new graphical user interface technology platform, as well as a new database platform. It uses the Microsoft .NET Framework and runs on SQL Server.

Legal & General America has chosen Epicor’s financial services solution for implementation across its entire organisation. The Epicor 9 end-to-end financial management suite will replace the insurer’s current manual financial reporting procedures, enabling the company to streamline and automate business processes.

Figlo has announced that its platform is now officially powered by Windows Azure. The company is implementing the production release to host public and (on request) private clouds for its customers, leveraging its vertical industry expertise in providing flexible solutions for financial advisory services.

Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie has joined Fidessa’s global connectivity network, enabling it to extend its trading business by attracting international flow. The deal strengthens the two companies’ relationship and builds on Pictet’s use of Fidessa’s front-end technologies at its US and Canadian locations.

Cleardata, a UK document management company, is to deploy the PaletteInvoice supplier invoice processing solution to power its new, hosted invoice management service. The new service will enable Cleardata to offer businesses of any size an automated, paperless processing solution, helping to improve customers’ accounts payable efficiency and reduce costs.

Tesco Bank: focusing on customers

marketwatcHtHe latest news in banking, capital markets and insUrance

Bravura Solutions has agreed a new five-

year contract with Schroders Investment

Management (Luxembourg). The agreement

is to extend Schroders’ use of the solution

provider’s GFAS transfer agency platform to

support its global operations.

Gary Janaway, head of operations at

Schroders Fund Services Luxembourg, said:

“Our relationship with Bravura Solutions

is essential to the continued success of our

business. This has been demonstrated through

the successful implementation of a number of

straight-through processing enhancements,

as well as a new alternative investment suite.”

Tony Klim, EMEA CEO of Bravura Solutions,

said: “Our teams have built a strong and

dynamic partnership, which we look forward

to continuing to build on in the future.”

Schroders signs contract with Bravura Solutions

www.onwindows.com

marketwatcHtHe latest news in banking, capital markets and insUrance

Avanade manages partner relationships

Tieto delivers for consumer banking

Tieto and Finnish digital personal finance management company Balancion have partnered to boost personal finance management services for banks. The two companies will focus on enabling banks to modernise their service offering for the retail banking industry.

Sami Uski, Tieto’s business advisor for financial services, said: “This cooperation complements our total concept for the finance sector. Banks can now broaden their services portfolio and improve customer satisfaction, to strengthen their position in the highly competitive consumer market. With Balancion’s help, we can enable banks to offer user-friendly and dynamic service based on real consumer needs.”

Jussi Muurikainen, founder and CEO of Balancion, said: “This is a win-win situation for everyone involved: Tieto can strengthen its offering with our fast-developing solution and we get the extra clout our white label solution needs for wide-spread adoption by banks.”

E.Öhman Finland goes for mFundFactor

Öhman Fund Management Finland, the Finnish branch of the Swedish Öhman Group, has selected Model IT’s mFundFactor (mFF) platform. “We were looking for one integrated platform that runs everything from sales campaigns to fund valuations and authority reporting. mFF offers all that combined with process thinking,” said Tero Viherto, partner, Öhman Asset Management.

Viherto added: “For us it was important that we could create a cost-efficient platform which is easy to tailor to support our own service processes.”

“We were proud to win this order. It is one more proof for our concept where Microsoft xRM is extended to cover all aspects of asset and fund management,” said Osmo Jauri, partner, Model IT.

mFF is a new concept for asset management systems that was introduced to the market last year and is built on the Microsoft xRM platform. The first customer went live in August 2010.

Country spotlight: Finland

Avanade has launched its Enterprise Partner Relationship Management

(PRM) on demand offering, which is built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM

and Accenture’s PRM Capability Framework. The solution is aimed at

helping enterprises collaborate better with their channel partners.

Aziz Virani, executive vice president, Global Technologies and

Solutions at Avanade, commented on the importance of an effective

partner network: “Few companies can survive in a highly competitive

landscape without an effective and extended channel of partners.

Finding, recruiting and maintaining those relationships requires close

collaboration between a business and its channel partners.”

He added: “Traditional CRM solutions lack the ability to adequately

store and manage partner information. Our Enterprise PRM on demand

offering allows companies to accommodate rapid partner growth, as

well as increase engagement between their internal sales and partner

sales teams to differentiate programmes from the competition.”

“Leading companies are investing in collaborative PRM strategies and

applications that offer shared infrastructure to vendors and partners,”

said Ron Ref, a senior executive in Accenture’s CRM practice. “These

applications are helping organisations team effectively with partners

to achieve greater global reach, increase revenue and make significant

strides on the road to high performance.”

With the new Avanade PRM solution, companies can collaborate more effectively with partners to achieve greater global reach

www.onwindows.com 15

marketwatcHtHe latest news in banking, capital markets and insUrance

If you ask most people in the world about

one key development over the last ten

years that has affected their working lives

in a profound way, it’s quite likely that

the majority of responses would involve

something to do with technology – whether

that be our reliance on mobile phones, the

rise of the Internet or advances in computer

software that have automated many of our

key business processes. Today, technology

is firmly entrenched in our daily lives and

we depend on it for most of what we do;

suddenly take away our smartphones,

Internet connectivity, laptops, desktops

and data centres, and the world as we know

it would quickly grind to a halt.

Finance on Windows has been reporting

on Microsoft and partner innovation in

the financial services industry for ten years

now. After seeing our existing publications

Banking on Windows and Insurance on Windows go from strength to strength,

we made the decision in 2001 to merge

the two and encompass the best of both

worlds. Looking back we certainly did the

right thing, and it’s amazing to see how

far the industry and the IT supporting

it has come since then. In our first issue

in the spring of 2001 we had a feature

looking at the role of digital television

in the provision of financial services

to customers in the comfort of their

own home, we explored what the next-

generation ATM would look like, and also

explained what Bluetooth connectivity

was and how it was going to impact the

way we use common devices. Meanwhile,

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were still

outlining Microsoft’s .NET strategy for

Web services, the XP versions of Windows

and Office had just been released, Internet

banking was still in its infancy and the first

pre-commercial trial of the 3G network

was only just taking place.

In the years that followed, technological

innovation occurred at an increasing rate,

and, with the financial crisis hitting the

industry with an almighty bang, IT had

to evolve to meet the ongoing needs of

financial services businesses and their

clients. Not only were companies looking

to do more with less, they also had to

find ways of instilling trust into their

customer base, which ultimately led to a

rise in popularity of business intelligence

and customer relationship management

solutions. Risk management also took

centre stage. With new regulations and

initiatives coming into play at relentless

speed, comprehensive risk management

solutions have never been so important.

Thankfully the economy has settled

down a great deal since then, and new

technology solutions such as social

networking and contactless payments

are progressively coming into play. Cloud

computing is also making its mark, and

most are of the opinion that if we look

back on today ten years from now, we

wouldn’t be able to imagine life without

it. We can only speculate just how much

banking, capital markets and insurance

will have changed by 2021, but one thing

we can say is that the pace of technological

development for not just financial services

but all industries will undoubtedly

continue to accelerate at an increasing rate.

IT has already transformed the enterprise

environment and Finance on Windows will

continue to be there to track the ongoing

progress being made. We can’t wait to see

what’s next.

Finance on Windows turns tenrebecca lambert takes a look at how Finance on Windows has evolved since its launch a decade ago

Nearly half a million copies

of Finance on Windows have

been printed since it was

first launched back in the

spring of 2001.

0.5m

www.onwindows.com

advisor, front-end transformation, financial services, tieto

sami Uski

In an age when mobile and online functionality

is part of almost any financial services

package, front-end delivery is undergoing a

far-reaching transformation. The financial

services sector is beginning to feel the impact

of the new generation of ‘digital natives’,

who have never experienced life without

the Internet and mobile devices. They have

much higher expectations of online services

than their predecessors, demanding products

that are easy to use and proactive; and they

are more open to sharing information with,

and taking advice from, their friends or the

people that they trust – potentially including

financial service providers.

The mobile banking space in particular is

changing to offer highly interactive mobile

applications that meet the needs of today’s

customers. Transaction-, information- and data-

oriented Internet services are being dynamically

transformed to deliver better customer services

and support business growth.

The mobile channel is moving beyond

showing customers a static picture of their

finances as banks begin to leverage the

knowledge they already have of their customers.

By linking with social media, they can connect

more effectively with their customers to offer

high-quality support and advice. This makes

it possible to provide an end-to-end approach

that allows the user to initiate a process in one

channel and seamlessly continue it in another

one, having access to the same information and

the same customer experience and secure in the

knowledge that the service provider is always

working with the same data.

The goal is not just to assist customers in

undertaking transactions online, but also to help

them make financial decisions. By adding new

services that introduce more transparency and

targeted advice, banks can help them look back

at how they have got to where they are and then

advise them on the best way forward.

In order to offer these new capabilities,

providers need to develop their contact centres

into channels that provide excellent service and

advice to customers. This need can be met via

chat, instant messaging and social networking,

along with targeted solutions for the specific

channel in question.

As a leader in transaction banking, capital

markets and front-end systems, Tieto provides

services and solutions to banks and insurance

companies, helping them to transform their

front-end services. Our proactive solution,

Pocket Bank, runs on mobile applications,

offering enhanced efficiency that helps to build

customer intimacy. It keeps customers informed,

aware of their economy and enables banks to

offer a more personal service.

Pocket Bank helps financial institutions make

the best use of data they already hold on their

customers. It also helps keep the customer stay

informed of their financial situation, wherever

they are and whatever they’re doing. The benefits

realised by both parties can be significant.

For example, we recently developed a mobile

application for an insurance company that guides

users on what to do if they are in a car accident. This

is not just about extending banking functionality

or insurance products to new devices – instead, it is

about using existing assets to provide new services

such as ATM and branch locators or, for insurance

services, using the location information provided

by the phone to automatically refer customers to

the nearest service centre.

Mobile banking has in the past tended to

be static and menu-driven, focusing only on

transactional services and missing opportunities

to advise customers more comprehensively.

With the right tools that combine the business

need with enhanced technological functionality,

it’s possible to transform the services available

to customers.

Sami Uski is an advisor of front-end transformation in financial services at Tieto

“the goal is not just to assist customers in undertaking

transactions online, but also to help them make financial

decisions”

The rise of mobile banking brings opportunities for connecting with customers through value-added advisory services that boost sales, says Sami Uski

A mobile transformation

Viewpointmobility

www.onwindows.com

According to Charles Darwin’s theory of

natural selection, the individuals within

a population that best adapt to their

environment are the ones more likely to

survive and reproduce. Being the fittest is not

necessarily about being the strongest, biggest

or smartest; what allows an individual to thrive

is whether they have the right combination of

traits most suited to the environment they

are in at the time. In a sense, this theory also

applies to the business world. As market

conditions change and customer preferences

vary, today more than ever businesses must

be able to adapt and respond to change in

order to compete. The question is, are most

businesses adequately prepared for this?

It is a well-known fact that in the financial

services industry, many companies are still

relying on IT infrastructures that are unable to

support rapid process development or allow for

easy business process innovation. As the gap

widens between what the consumer wants and

how the bank is able to meet their demands,

financial institutions will find it increasingly

difficult to retain customer loyalty and succeed

in today’s highly competitive market.

What if there was a tool out there that had

strong emphasis on customer service, provided

excellent connectivity, scaled to large data sets

and offered an open database with business

intelligence tools – one platform that could

take care of all businesses on both sides of the

balance sheet? Think about the cost savings you

could achieve, the improvements in customer

service quality you could realise, as well as the

new opportunities you would have to create

new services. One such tool that allows for all of

these benefits is xRM.

xRM stands for ‘anything relationship

management’ and is the natural evolution of

customer relationship management (CRM). It’s

a framework that uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM

functionality, while leveraging the .NET platform

and a vast array of other Microsoft applications.

At Model IT, our experience shows that xRM-

based solutions have a huge amount to offer all

stakeholders.

For customers: xRM applications natively

support customer service processes and

new services are easy and quick to build.

Process thinking helps to improve quality. All

information is available without delays and is

easy to share with the customer.

For businesses: time to market for new

services is short and application lifecycle costs

are lower. Modifications can be made rapidly:

our record for a minor change is five minutes

from order to production. This means you don’t

need to pay thousands for minor changes like

adding a new field or column to a report or

database.

For users: you can work with one platform.

New applications can be built as extensions

of the current platform and this significantly

shortens the time it takes for users and system

managers to learn to use the system. xRM also

includes workflows, which can be used to turn

an application into a process-driven solution that

helps keep track of activities.

For programmers: if you are a programmer

you can focus on real content and leave user

rights administration, database enquiries and a

lot of background work for the platform to do.

And if you are not a programmer you can modify

your application and build new functionality

with no programming at all.

For system managers: xRM uses the solid

Microsoft technology stack, including SQL

Server, to allow for business intelligence, role

based security and access control, integration

with Outlook and more. And as it all runs on

one technology platform, each new application

you add does not bring with it new architecture

or tools that need to be integrated.

xRM is a scalable solution designed to give

companies the ability to manage anything. As we

are finding with our xRM-based fund and asset

management platform mFundFactor, it can be

deployed extremely quickly and customised

accordingly as business needs change. It’s a

next-generation solution that helps to keep our

customers and us in business.

Pekka Häkkinen is a partner at Model IT

“as the gap widens between what the consumer wants and how the bank is able

to meet their demands, financial institutions will find

it increasingly difficult to retain customer loyalty and

succeed in today’s highly competitive market”

Do you know how to respond to change? Is one way better than the other? Pekka Häkkinen looks at how financial services companies can stay abreast of the times

Reacting to change

partner, model it

pekka HäkkinenViewpointxrm

www.onwindows.com

sales director, altius consulting

maurice HancockViewpointbUsiness intelligence

The critical need for a single customer viewMaurice Hancock explains why banks can benefit from accurate BI information to connect with customers

It’s no secret that the financial services industry,

especially banking, has had a tough couple of

years together with its fair share of bad press.

There is an obvious correlation to be made

between business intelligence (BI) facilitating

tighter financial control and analysis on costs,

cash and liquidity. There is also the knock-on

effect from regulators, who require an ever-

changing volume of detailed information

around a bank’s financial performance.

However, looking past the headlines of

bailouts and bonuses into the real business of

banking, there is an overwhelming demand

beyond regulatory reporting that now has a

critical dependency on accurate BI information.

This is the requirement to provide enhanced

customer insight and analytics.

Improved customer insight is critical for

financial institutions to build a sustainable

competitive advantage. With low consumer

confidence and loyalty, banks more than ever

need to be able to profile and understand their

customer base. By understanding customers’

geo-demographics and buying patterns, and

in turn analysing product performance, banks

can create sensitivity models to forecast the

impact of new product launches and execute

‘propensity to buy’ models to help target the

right customers with the right campaigns.

This modelling can directly help to penetrate a

correctly targeted customer base with products,

while demonstrating to the customer that the

bank has their best interests at heart.

Today’s technology is changing the

demographics of banking customers. Advances

in areas such as e-commerce and credit card

fraud detection have now set a precedent that a

bank will implicitly know who its customers are,

what interactions they have with the bank, and

even what their needs are when they phone a call

centre or log into their online platform. These

expectations are leading to the development of

real-time business intelligence solutions that

integrate fully into the operational systems of

an organisation, providing on-the-fly analysis,

which allows for the judicious response to any

event as it occurs.

Finally, however much a financial institution

understands its customers, it is essential that it

improves and maintains consumer confidence.

Customers do not suffer gladly mistakes made

by banks. Banks are expected to be a ‘safe place’

to deposit money, so any errors (whether in

your favour or not) and data protection breeches

have a profound effect on a bank’s credibility

and associated ability to attract and keep its

customer base.

When you add these requirements to the

business challenges of integration resulting from a

spate of recent mergers and acquisitions, the ability

to achieve a single customer view for the bank is

now a ‘must have’ rather than a ‘nice to have’.

The Microsoft BI stack offers the capabilities

to address these challenges in three areas:

Single customer view data warehouse:

using the data integration capabilities of SQL

Server 2008 R2, customer data can be profiled,

extracted, cleansed, ‘fuzzy logic matched’,

stewarded and loaded into a single repository.

Advanced analytics via a simple interface: using

the advanced analysis capabilities of SQL Server

2008 R2, users can profile, segment, analyse, mine

and model customer data via an Excel interface.

This is an immensely powerful combination, which

provides advanced analytics through the most

familiar interface of all, the spreadsheet.

SharePoint integration: the integration of

SQL Server and Office with SharePoint 2010

delivers a single point of entry for users to access

scorecards, interactive dashboards, reports

libraries and data connections.

Finally, over and above the capabilities of the

Microsoft BI stack to deliver a single customer

view, the other compelling reason to use the

stack is that most institutions already have

most of the products through their enterprise

agreement. So Altius Consulting’s message to

achieve a single customer view is to turn it on,

as you probably already own it.

Maurice Hancock is sales director at Altius Consulting

“improved customer insight is critical for financial institutions

to build a sustainable competitive advantage. with

low consumer confidence and loyalty, banks more

than ever need to be able to profile and understand their

customer base”

register onlinefor the latest news and views from microsoft and its partners

onwindows.comenterprise technology on the microsoft windows platform

Covering financial services, manufacturing, and retail, hospitality and consumer goods, microsoft’s suite of industry publications Finance on Windows, Prime and Speak offer incisive, expert commentary on the issues

that matter. Visit OnWindows.com to subscribe and find out how enterprise companies today are taking advantage of the latest technology solutions from microsoft and its partners to boost business performance.

Viewpoint

www.onwindows.com 23

With more technologies entering our lives

than ever before, customer behaviour and

customer expectations are guaranteed to not

only evolve more rapidly, but change with

greater intensity too. Acquiring and serving

customers whose behaviour and expectations

are changing is a daunting task from both a

marketing and operational perspective. To

survive and thrive in this new reality, banks

need to evolve their products and channels

continually, and in a more agile manner.

But what does this agile adaptation mean for

the branch network? When customers visit the

branch they notice the staff, the store and the

technology. If you ask the average customer to

give you their vision of a bank in 2050, you will

hear stories of virtual banks, avatars, artificial

intelligence and similar. Psychologists say

that this commonly shared image is not based

solely on science fiction movies and TV shows,

but on our perception of changes around us.

Technology changes are so intense and visible

in everyday life that it is easy to see why people

ignore the physical store and human staff in

their visions.

If you carefully examine the reasons behind

the success of technology innovations that are

disrupting the way we communicate and live

our lives, you will find software. Software and

its adaptability is what makes smartphones,

social networking sites and interactive gaming

such as the Xbox so successful. However, the

branch is a lot less flexible when it comes to

continuous adaptation. Changing the location

based on seasonal footfall analysis, and adapting

the branch design to meet the needs of last

year’s graduates is not just impractical, but also

unfeasible. Physical presence and interior design

matches the hardware – it changes, but has a

much longer cycle.

With this in mind, banks need to team this

slower evolution with something that they

are able to be more proactive about – effective

customer service. Banks need to retrain their

staff to make the most of the moments of truth

they share with the customers, and this is

where technology can make a huge difference.

However, many banks are still struggling with

a mix of poorly integrated applications from

different generations, and their technologies can

rarely be seen as something agile and a catalyst

for change.

For technology to be used as a catalyst for

change, the modern branch employee workplace

has to lose the artificial seams between teller,

origination, servicing and performance

management processes, and provide integrated

tools that amplify what employees can do for

customers. Giving the accurate information and

optimal advice to demanding customers will

require democratisation of the tools already used

in head office, enabling branch employees to

predict customer behaviour and better structure

the offers and campaigns. Unlike outlet interior

design, introducing innovative use of software

in branches is limited only by the CIO’s ability

to recognise the scenarios, get the project in

motion, secure the budget and deliver.

Changes should be introduced over time

to reduce risks, ensure the best results and

reinforce the culture of rapid adaptation. As

an example – customers can be effortlessly

identified as they walk into branch with the

help of radio frequency identification-embedded

cards in their wallets and the branch application

can alert employees with real-time inbound

offers, prompts and sales scripts. Furthermore,

customer information dashboards can show the

entire relationship footprint at a glance, along

with current risk rating, credit approvals and

suggested sales offers.

With these kinds of solutions in place, branch

staff can better serve their customers, and banks

can see tremendous benefits, not only in terms

of reliability, but in profit margin too.

Aleksandar Milosevic is chief software architect at Asseco

“banks need to retrain their staff to make the most of the moments of truth they share with the customers, and this

is where technology can make a huge difference”

Introducing the innovative use of software in bank branches is critical to their success, says Aleksandar Milosevic

The role of software in tomorrow’s branch

brancH innoVation chief software architect, asseco

aleksandar milosevicViewpointcUstomer centricity

albert van den broekceo worldwide, figlo

Retail banking in a consumer-centric worldAlbert van den Broek looks at how banks can step up to give their customers what they want

Today’s connected, consumer-centric

world is putting pressure on businesses

to deliver timely, personal and compelling

communications across diverse channels.

Businesses are communicating with better-

informed and increasingly demanding

consumers via a multitude of channels,

including e-mail, Web sites and/or portals,

SMS and social media networks along with

traditional mail and telephony via call

centres. Effective customer communication

boosts loyalty, ensures brand and regulatory

compliance, and helps control a range of

costs such as reductions in IT maintenance,

printing and call centre operations.

Customers have found doing business online

simple and speedy, and they have become

very comfortable with the arrangement. The

increasing confidence in the Web is also

apparent in the retail banking sector. Driven

by the convenience and choice offered by the

Internet, retail banking customers are quickly

moving online. The number of adults using

online banking between 2001 and 2006 grew

by 174 per cent, with a 350 per cent increase

in the over 55 years age group (source: APACS,

August 2007). Internet banking does offer many

benefits for both banks and their customers.

Banks are continuously encouraging customers

to try it; at the same time, consumer demands

are changing rapidly. Because of the increasing

availability of the Internet, information is

everywhere at anytime.

Internet banking gives people more control

over their money in a very convenient way

that they find enjoyable and reassuring.

Consequently, today’s ‘always-on’ consumers

and business users have more choices than ever

before, and want product and service information

that is personally relevant, timely and delivered

via their preferred channels. Without the right

tools, technology and business processes in

place, banks can find themselves struggling to

manage increasing customer demands, resulting

in lost sales opportunities, lower customer

satisfaction rates and dwindling revenues. On

the other hand, banks that provide a consistent,

relevant customer experience across all possible

communication channels like the Web, call

centres and e-mail, can boost customer loyalty,

trim costs and improve profit margins.

Personal banking transaction data can

now be integrated in financial advice, based

on the client’s real budget situation. Figlo’s

online personal finance management solution,

which sits on the Figlo Platform and is based

on Microsoft .NET and built with Microsoft

Silverlight, offers banking clients an interactive

experience when looking at their financial

banking data. It makes personal income and

spending insightful and predictable, and

automatically structures and categorises the

client’s financial behaviour. It is also the first

cash flow analysis tool that can integrate with

financial product advice or comprehensive

financial planning. As a result, the client’s

financial understanding increases as they have

better insight into their personal situation. This

flow of information will eventually lead to more

trust and client retention, as well as uncover new

sales opportunities.

Internet banking is growing, and more and

more banks are realising the benefits of being able

to offer their customers services online. Given

the ongoing turbulence in the global economy,

personal money management is becoming more

important than ever and financial institutions

have to be prepared to connect better with their

customers and tailor their services to individual

needs in order to breed loyalty. Why not make

it as easy as possible for your customers to

understand their spending patterns, and the

services and products they need while building

a strong, trusting relationship with them, no

matter where they are or what time it is? That’s

what we call the power of financial insight.

Albert van den Broek is CEO Worldwide of Figlo

“customers have found doing business online simple

and speedy, and they have become very comfortable

with the arrangement”

www.onwindows.com 25

In 2010, Direct Edge became the newest stock

exchange in the US. Today, it’s also the third

largest in the country, after the New York

Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Reaching that

milestone represented a rapid rise for the

company, which had been founded just five

years earlier as an electronic communications

network (ECN), a platform that matches

buyers and sellers. By 2007, Direct Edge

was handling 100 million trades a day,

with each transaction requiring it to send

messages among components of its exchange

application to take an order, find a match and

settle the trade. That volume eventually led to

an average daily volume of over 200 million

shares on EDGA and EDGX combined, giving

it about three per cent of the seven billion

share annual market.

To maintain that volume of business, Direct

Edge had to offer its customers the fastest,

Lindsay James finds out how, with help from Microsoft, US-based

stock exchange Direct Edge has reduced the latency of its system

by a staggering 83 per cent

coVer storydirect edge

THE EDGE TO SUCCEED

27www.onwindows.com

coVer story direct edge

handle trading volumes of one billion messages

a day in short order. If they were successful they

could see trading volume of 2.5 billion daily

messages or more within a few years. They also

wanted to better the two millisecond order-

handling time, bringing it down to microseconds

(millionths of a second).

Another requirement of the new exchange

platform was fast time to market. Rapid

application development was essential so that

the new platform would be available before the

existing systems reached capacity. It was also

essential because every day that Direct Edge

continued as an ECN rather than as a formal

stock exchange meant higher operational

costs and lost revenues. Given the large and

complex nature of the anticipated architecture,

including two exchange platforms with multiple

layers of failover redundancy and a highly

complex application, Direct Edge set a one-year

deadline for time to market and began work at

the beginning of 2009. “It was an aggressive

schedule,” says John Ryan, chief architect at

Direct Edge.

To meet the deadline, Ryan and his 12-person

development team adopted the Microsoft

tools with which they were already familiar:

the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Microsoft

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite,

and the C# managed development language.

The team used the Microsoft tools to build the

exchange application subsystems from reusable

application blocks. That minimised the need for

time-consuming coding during development

and, the developers anticipate, will minimise the

amount of maintenance required over the life of

the exchange application.

Rather than upgrade application components

from their existing platform, the developers

“ when we put our stock exchange on windows, our number one goal was to achieve latency low enough to compete against the biggest exchanges in the country. at 340 microseconds, windows delivered”

most reliable service it could. “Among financial

exchanges, reliability is a baseline requirement,

and competition is based largely on low latency

– the speed at which you can execute orders,”

explains Steve Bonanno, chief technology

officer at Direct Edge. “Latency is also one

factor determining how many transactions an

exchange can handle in a day; the higher the

transaction volume, the greater the profits for

the exchange.”

For Direct Edge, latency was a matter of

milliseconds, and the company handled 95 per

cent of its orders in fewer than two thousandths

of a second. By 2008, Direct Edge needed to

handle higher transaction volumes with even

less latency. It was partly a matter of supporting

continued growth, but two other factors were

at play, as well. Firstly, Direct Edge acquired

the operations of the International Securities

Exchange (ISE) stock exchange. That required

Direct Edge to handle the additional business

volume as efficiently, and as cost-effectively,

as possible. And secondly, Direct Edge was

preparing to convert from an ECN to a fully-

fledged, licensed stock exchange. The company

stood to benefit in a couple of ways. As a

stock exchange, it would reduce operational

expense by minimising clearing and settlement

costs. Also, the company would have a higher

marketing profile and could increase revenues

if it could handle higher transaction volumes

without increasing latency. “Being a stock

exchange rather than an ECN means more

regulation, but also more recognition,” adds

Bonanno. “It’s better branding for us. It enables

us to do more deals.”

Direct Edge needed a technology platform

that would support more-stringent technical

requirements and that would allow it to go head

to head with the leading US stock exchanges.

In the financial services industry, those

requirements frequently meant an exchange

based on the Unix or Linux operating systems,

but not for Direct Edge. “Both the Direct Edge

and ISE platforms had been built on Windows

Server technology,” says Bonanno. “It’s where

our expertise lies. Based on our experience

with those systems over five years, we felt that

Microsoft had what it took to be a mission-

critical, high-performance platform. It had

always been a requirement of our earlier systems

to handle massive numbers of transactions, and

to do so quickly. For example, we built a real-

time processing engine on Microsoft technology

that published several hundred thousand

transaction messages per second. If Microsoft

hadn’t been able to meet our needs, we’d have

looked elsewhere – but there was no need to.”

“Direct Edge wanted a mission-critical

architecture that their customers could depend

on,” adds Joseph Pagano, Microsoft’s worldwide

managing director for banking and capital

markets. “In today’s market, specifically when

it comes to equity trading, in order to grow an

exchange must provide the fastest platform, and

a platform that is mission-critical enabled. That

is why Direct Edge chose Microsoft technologies

– to rise to this challenge. They rejected Linux

and Unix and chose the Microsoft platform

because of prior success, familiarity and available

expertise. The company also chose Microsoft

technology because it’s the most reliable and

flexible environment. It will allow Direct Edge,

for example, to quickly adapt to new regulations

in a cost-effective way.”

Bonanno and his colleagues anticipated that

their new exchange platform would need to

direct edge

steve bonanno

Microsoft’s Joe Pagano (left) and Steve Bonanno at Direct Edge are confident the Microsoft platform will continue to support the stock exchange’s growth plans

coVer story direct edge

www.onwindows.com

created new components designed to exploit

the scalability and throughput technologies in

Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008.

Those new components include the matching

engine that reconciles buy and sell orders, and

the routing engine that manages the message

flow among subsystem components.

By choosing Windows Server 2008 R2,

Direct Edge was able to use additional cores on

its multi-processor and multi-core computer

servers for processing network traffic. That, in

turn, enabled more application functions to

be handled on a single computer rather than

being sent over the network to other servers

for processing. “We really benefitted from the

new Microsoft networking stack,” says Ryan.

“It contributed directly to the low latency we

were seeking.”

Direct Edge also reviewed its daemon

and broker-based messaging middleware

technologies to further reduce latency and

boost availability. The company chose Ultra

Messaging from Microsoft partner Informatica

to create a messaging bus that enables low-

latency, highly available publish- and subscribe-

based communication between application

components spanning the front-end order

gateways, the matching engines and the back-

end compliance systems. The bus serves as the

enterprise messaging backbone for all mission-

critical traffic transiting the exchange, including

market data, order and trade flow. “Relying on

legacy messaging solutions in today’s capital

markets is a path to non-competitiveness,”

comments Ryan. “Beyond low latency today,

we wanted enterprise-class scalability, reliability

and a vendor with a vision. That’s what makes

Informatica so valuable to us.”

Ryan and his colleagues used Ultra

Messaging to develop a peer-to-peer design for

efficient communications between applications

within the exchange platform. They also used

the technology to eliminate daemon/broker

messaging components susceptible to failure.

Direct Edge boosted availability by

replicating its order-stream in real time for

zero latency failover of trading applications.

This complemented the failover clustering and

disaster recovery capability at the data centre

level that Direct Edge gained through Windows

Server and SQL Server. For continuity between

its two data centres, Direct Edge uses hardware

replication.

In mid-2010, one and a half years after it

started design and development work, Direct

Edge brought its new exchange platform

into production. “The implementation went

phenomenally well,” says Pagano. “It took

just over a year from design and development

through to production. This also included

completing the regulatory process for

conversion from an ECN to become a full-

fledged stock exchange.”

Ryan says that the aggressive development

schedule was met because of the use of

Microsoft development technologies instead of

alternatives. He estimates the time savings at 50

per cent – or an additional year of development

time and budget.

Direct Edge can now carry out end-to-end transactions on an average of 340 microseconds

coVer story direct edge

www.onwindows.com

But this was just the start of the benefits that

Microsoft technology has brought to Direct

Edge. By almost any measure – including lower

latency, high availability, increased volume,

faster time to market, and reduced hardware

costs – Direct Edge has achieved stunning

results with its new exchange platform.

Direct Edge has succeeded in reducing its

already low latency by 83 per cent, bringing the

two millisecond average end-to-end transaction

time down to 340 microseconds – a 580 per

cent increase in throughput. Bonanno and Ryan

envision using Microsoft technology to reduce

latency further. “This is an industry benchmark,”

says Pagano. “Direct Edge and its customers

now have the world-class response time they

need to differentiate themselves and succeed in

such a highly competitive marketplace.”

In addition to the sharp reduction in latency,

Direct Edge has also achieved low variation

in latency. This means that customers and

potential customers who are evaluating the new

performance numbers can understand how

likely they are to achieve the benchmark speeds

on their own stock trades.

“When we put our stock exchange on

Windows, our number one goal was to

achieve latency low enough to compete against

the biggest exchanges in the country,” says

Bonanno. “At 340 microseconds, Windows

delivered.”

The exchange has already seen an increase

in transaction volume from current customers,

which it attributes to the reduced latency.

“Customers are increasing the amount of

business they do with us because of this

breakthrough,” says Bonanno.

In addition to this, through its use of failover

technology at both the messaging and data

management levels, Direct Edge has gained

100 per cent scheduled uptime to date. “In our

business, 100 per cent availability isn’t a ‘nice

to have,’ it’s a ‘must have’ in order to increase

business,” says Bonanno. “With the Microsoft

and Informatica technologies, we have it – a

fully failover-redundant system that we didn’t

have before. Now, we can devote more of our

resources, both people and technology, to areas

of competitive advantage.”

“While everyone wants high reliability, in this

business if you’re down the entire world knows

about it – there’s no hiding,” adds Bonanno.

He points to the news media inquiries that

would immediately follow any outages on the

predecessor platform. Direct Edge met this goal

with the new exchange platform.

Bonanno goes on to say that the Informatica

technology, for example, contributes

‘persistence without penalty’. Persistence of

the message store is a requirement for recovery

after a failover. Typical high-availability systems

achieve this persistence by writing to disk, which

is effective – but at the cost of a ‘latency penalty’

because it takes time to read from disk to effect

a recovery. Because ultra messaging uses dual,

real-time messaging streams rather than writing

to disk, there is no latency penalty – hence,

‘persistence without penalty’.

Reduced operating costs and lower latency

share a contributing factor: reduced hardware

needs. The current platform reduces the server

count by 25 per cent compared to the number

of servers that would have been required to

scale the predecessor platform to support

Direct Edge’s current business volume. “That’s

a saving of around US$1 million,” says Pagano.

“This saving will be repeated with each hardware

replacement cycle.”

But the savings here may be the least of the

savings that Direct Edge saw from its rapid

application development. For example, Direct

Edge saved between US$3.5 million and US$5

million in reduced operating costs by bringing

the current platform to market a year sooner.

It also saved an estimated US$10 million, the

one-year differential in costs related to clearing

transactions. “For us, US$14 million is a

significant saving from a technology choice,”

notes Ryan.

Looking to the future, the platform will

undoubtedly support Direct Edge’s plans for

growth. “The Microsoft-based architecture is

scalable far beyond today’s requirements,” says

Pagano. “The system today can support up

to five billion shares traded daily and can be

extended to at least ten billion shares per day

with hardware additions.”

“Microsoft and Informatica give us the ability

to support vastly greater trading volumes than

we could before,” says Bonanno. “And that

ability is part of what attracts new and expanded

business to us.”

direct edge team from front to back:Steve Bonanno, Chief Technology OfficerRafi Reguer, Head of Marketing and Corporate Communications Vito trimlett, Head of it infrastructure engineeringJohn ryan, chief architect

www.onwindows.com 33

solUtion focUsmission-critical applications

In light of the recent implementation at US stock exchange Direct Edge, Rebecca Lambert looks into Microsoft’s long-term commitment to supporting mission-critical operations in financial services

Change is certainly on the horizon in

the mission-critical application space.

Defined by Gartner as a term used to

describe applications that are vital to the

survival of an enterprise, mission critical

has traditionally been about the running

of back-office processes in a mainframe

environment. Today this perception

is changing. For the financial services

industry in particular, as mission-critical

activities extend beyond the back office

to encompass such processes as online

banking and advisory services, businesses

are beginning to realise that the mainframe

can only take them so far.

“In a landscape where meeting customer

demands comes first, financial institutions

need an IT infrastructure in place that

allows them to be agile and flexible in order

to stay ahead of the competition. As a result,

they are not only looking to address legacy

modernisation, but they’re also starting

to re-evaluate what their mission-critical

operations actually are,” says Microsoft’s

worldwide general manager of financial

services Karen Cone. “Business decision

makers are realising that other processes

aside from what’s in the back office should

also be classed as mission critical. In fact,

they’re realising that today mission critical

spans the entire spectrum of business

operations – from core systems through

to interaction with counterparties, and

corporate and retail customers.”

It’s no secret that some financial services

executives, who have relied on mainframes

throughout their career, have doubted

the ability of Microsoft technology to run

mission-critical applications in the past. But

as a result of sustained investment in the

Windows Server operating system and SQL

Server database, and its delivery on a pledge

to support mission-critical operations, the

tables are turning and financial institutions

around the world are choosing to migrate

from a traditional mainframe environment

to the Microsoft technology platform.

“We have many customers in banking,

insurance and capital markets who are

leveraging the availability, performance

and low cost of ownership of the Microsoft

platform for their mission-crit ical

operations,” says Cone. “In July 2010,

DirectEdge launched a new trading platform

in the US built on Windows Server 2008

R2 and SQL Server 2008. This solution

includes ultra-low latency messaging from

our partner Informatica, and produces

speeds measured in microseconds. Another

example is Skandinavisk Data Center. SDC

is owned by 150 financial institutions across

Scandinavia and is responsible for providing

core banking services to these banks.

SDC recently migrated from a mainframe

environment to Windows Server 2008 R2

and SQL Server 2008 to run its core banking

applications, and expects to save US$20

million per year. Also, at Esurance we have

delivered a mission-critical application

platform that has significantly reduced

operational costs and provided access to a

12 terabyte data warehouse.”

“We have never been in a better position

to help our financial services customers

meet the needs of this rapidly changing

industry,” explains Joseph Pagano,

Microsoft’s worldwide managing director

for banking and capital markets. “Whether

it is the need for increased transparency of

data, innovating customer-centric solutions,

MISSIONon a

CRITICAL“in a landscape where

meeting customer demands comes first, financial

institutions need an it infrastructure in place that

allows them to be agile and flexible in order to stay ahead of the competition”

karen conemicrosoft

Karen Cone expects Microsoft to play an increasing role in the mission-critical space

35

solUtion focUs mission-critical applications

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agility one step further,” says Cone.

Microsoft expects Windows Azure to

help financial institutions adapt to change

much faster than they have ever been able

to before. “Change is happening today at

an astonishing rate, whether you’re talking

about changes to the regulatory landscape

or having to compete with new market

entrants, and businesses need to have the

technology in place that allows them to

adapt,” continues Cone. “Cloud computing

is a game-changing opportunity for financial

services institutions. Increasingly the issues

that have caused some financial institutions

to shy away from the cloud are being

addressed, and in the last few months a

number of partners have been working with

us to develop mission-critical applications

on Windows Azure.”

At Sibos 2010, Misys announced its

delivery of new banking applications via

the Windows Azure cloud platform, and just

this month Temenos made its core banking

solution T24 available in the Microsoft

cloud environment. “We are excited to see

market leaders like Misys and Temenos

actively taking their clients to cloud-based

solutions on the Windows Azure platform.

This will provide a differentiating edge to

financial institutions, helping them lower

costs, enhance operations and build new,

mission-critical business opportunities

with flexibility and a rapid time to market,”

says Cone. “We are also making use of our

industry expertise from within Microsoft

and our partners to prepare for what’s

next. Together, we will continue to offer

our customers a compelling, highly cost-

effective and agile platform on which they

can build a future generation of processing

capabilities to best fit their needs, and the

high demands of their business.”

“whether it is the need for increased transparency of

data, innovating customer-centric solutions, driving a

faster time to market, or deploying mission-critical

applications, microsoft and its partners are delivering on behalf of the financial

services industry”

Joseph paganomicrosoft

driving a faster time to market, or deploying

mission-critical applications, Microsoft and

its partners are delivering on behalf of the

financial services industry. Direct Edge is a

very compelling example of the world-class

solutions that Microsoft has to offer. The

quantifiable results are a good measure of

what is possible on the Microsoft platform.”

The Direct Edge stock exchange solution

represents a breakthrough for the financial

services industry because it directly

addresses industry needs around ultra-

low latency trading, scalability, security,

time-to-market, cost and mission-critical

reliability. “The financial industry benefits

by having a tested, battle-hardened, mission-

critical solution that creates new economics,

availability and performance capabilities that

allow financial services firms to better serve

their customers,” says Pagano. “There are

also very significant cost savings associated

with projects like this. In this case, Direct

Edge was able to differentiate service, have

a 50 per cent faster time to market, and

save US$14 million dollars. This is not an

‘or’ solution set, this is an ‘and’ solution

set. The question many financial services

firms are asking Microsoft is how can they

better serve their customers with industry

solutions like this.”

Such examples demonstrate Microsoft’s

ability to deliver solutions that are capable

of supporting the most demanding

workloads. “We are already proven in our

ability to offer the platforms necessary to get

the job done in a very reliable, flexible and

highly available manner,” says Cone. “We

carefully select partners with deep expertise

and experience in a particular high impact

area that can work closely with customers

to develop the right solution, both now and

for the future. It is this strong partnership

that ensures a high-functioning, reliable,

mission-critical solution is delivered.”

In 2010 North Shore Credit Union

(NSCU) selected Temenos and Microsoft

to deliver its new core banking solution.

By leveraging SQL Server 2008 with the

Temenos T24 core banking system, NSCU

is now benefiting from a more agile and

high-performance environment – and this

has allowed NSCU to lower operating

costs, improve business intelligence and

have better integration between back-end

systems and customer service applications.

“Combining Temenos T24 with Microsoft

SQL Server 2008 provides NSCU with an

integrated core banking solution that

supports superior banking products and

delivery channels. It also delivers the first

class data management capability they need

to better serve their members,” says Adrian

Hadley, product director of retail banking

at Temenos. “By dramatically improving

the way NSCU integrates data, staff can

now gain a more comprehensive view of

member information and deliver better

financial advice accompanied by products

and services that meet their specific needs.”

Looking to the future, Microsoft has added

another string to its bow to ensure it meets

the ongoing needs of financial institutions.

“With traditional mission-critical platforms,

it’s not uncommon for a company that

wants to make an enhancement to a critical

application to have to wait months or years.

Our architecture is already extremely flexible,

but with the power of our cloud computing

platform, Windows Azure, we are taking that

Strong partnerships enable the delivery of high-functioning, reliable, mission-critical solutions

BRANCH

THE HIGHSTREET HERO

featUrebrancH of tHe fUtUre

Today’s finance customers have evolved. They have access to their bank accounts wherever and whenever they like, and they can compare deals in a matter of seconds. Lindsay James investigates what this means for the branch

At a time when one in five banking

relationships begins online, some have

questioned the future of the bricks and mortar

bank branch. Today customers can bank

online not only from the comfort of their own

home, but also on the move via their mobile.

Furthermore, they are no longer restricted

to normal banking hours; now they have the

ability to check their balance, make transfers

and carry out many other kinds of transactions

at any time, day or night.

Osmo Jauri, CEO at Model IT, says that

traditional banking is a thing of the past.

“There are new players in the market such as

retail shopping chains that offer integrated

banking services. There are also more and more

substituting services available over the Web

such as credit lines connected to mobile phone

invoicing. Today customers expect to be served

over the Web with minimal delays.”

With all this in mind, a recent research report

by Deloitte makes for interesting reading.

According to the study, titled Winning with branches, nearly two-thirds of consumers would

not choose a bank that did not offer access

to a branch. What’s more, three-quarters of

consumers have a preferred regular branch and

fewer than one in ten of the population never

use a branch. It seems that the branch is what

37www.onwindows.com

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featUre brancH of tHe fUtUre

instills trust in the customer. It offers peace of

mind that the bank isn’t going to disappear

overnight, and, even if a customer only visits

once or twice a year, it is still vital to the

banking relationship.

A recent report by the EFMA Banking

Advisory Council, in partnership with

Microsoft, adds strength to this argument.

The report, Transforming retail banking to reflect the new economic environment, states

that, from the customer’s point of view, the

issue of trust is one of the most important

factors in their relationship with a bank.

There is a pressing need to work out how

to regain customer trust where it has been

lost. This is one reason why the branch is

often essential – because many different

discussions take place with customers at face-

to-face branch meetings, where they can feed

back their concerns and desires. The council

agreed that in the majority of cases this needs

to take place in the branch because a one-to-

one relationship is essential.

The branch is also at the crux of instigating

new business. The EFMA report concludes

that banks find it far easier to sell to people

face to face: it’s much more difficult to do

this online. Indeed, one member said that

the reason why some banks are still opening

a lot of branches was because as much as

80-90 per cent of a bank’s relationships

with its customers are developed from face-

to-face meetings, and that his bank hadn’t

had much success in forming relationships

through other channels. He just saw other

channels as being useful for cross selling,

servicing and retention.

Tony Emerson, Microsoft’s regional

industry sales director for financial services,

agrees that the branch plays a key role in

the future development of relationship

building and advising customers. “Financial

institutions are just starting to realise how

difficult it is to sell more complex products

through other channels and so, although

Transforming with technology: top retail banking solutions

The following technologies were identified by the EFMA Advisory Council as key to supporting retail banking in the shift from a transaction-centric business model to a customer-centric one:

Cloud computing: The way people consume technology is changing. Banks are looking to the cloud, both public and private, to help them leverage existing IT investments, reduce costs and create new business opportunities. In the financial services industry the cloud provides a platform to eliminate the need for large-scale capital investments and drive innovative new products and services. Most modern applications have been created on a services oriented architecture to allow them to take advantage of and be available in the cloud.

Services oriented architecture: Without a foundation to build loosely-coupled services, banks’ IT infrastructures are required to communicate with other services in very specific ways via each individual channel. This creates a costly complex infrastructure with multiple silos of information that are difficult to maintain and adapt. Banks are implementing a services oriented architecture to integrate disparate channels and create an agile infrastructure where back-end systems can be exposed to new services and channels as they emerge or evolve.

Business intelligence: Banks require business intelligence solutions to integrate and analyse their customer data and report on that information to make better-informed decisions. This will enable banks to measure and learn from customer behaviour for product development and marketing purposes – as well as performance management. Banks want to access this business intelligence using a familiar and easy to use interface.

Customer relationship management: CRM backed by strong business intelligence is critical to better serve the customer and support growth opportunities. CRM solutions should be fully integrated with

the day-to-day work environment of front-line staff and make it easy to translate customer insight and centralised marketing campaigns into successful customer interactions. Many existing systems are viewed as difficult to use with a high learning curve. Ultimately, systems should have a familiar user interface and be designed to work the way front-line staff are used to working.

Unified communications: A significant factor in building lasting customer relationships is the ability to communicate with customers in the way they prefer and in a way that is most appropriate to the stage of the sales cycle. This means the whole range of communication capabilities, including e-mail, telephone, SMS text, instant messaging and video conferencing, should be integrated and made available to front-line staff. This will also have a significant impact on real-time collaboration – between advisors and product specialists or legal expertise within the bank – required to complete a proposal or customer analysis.

Remote advice: Shared access to specialist advisors is increasingly important, given the ever-greater complexity of products being sold through branches, not to mention the greater use of collaboration across multiple channels to expedite sales and ensure efficient fulfilment. It is not economically feasible to maintain the necessary level of expertise at each branch and in each channel. As a result, banks are increasingly looking to technologies that give customers access to remote advisors, complementing the essential face-to-face contact in the branch.

Virtual call centre: New telephony standards and technology make it possible to construct virtual call centres, which allow people in the branch to become call centre agents during certain periods of the day or when a complex customer interaction requires this capability.

www.onwindows.com

many customers may conduct their day-to-

day business online, the branch is still an

incredibly important sales tool,” he says.

Sami Uski, financial services business

advisor at Microsoft partner Tieto, concurs:

“As new channels have entered the market,

banks are realising that they need to change

the focus of their branches. Instead of being

reactive and transaction or product -focused,

they need to become more proactive,

providing specialist advice on the customer

situation and help them make better financial

decisions as well as maintaining their

position at the crux of customer service.”

Clearly the branch has not yet had its day.

“Banks have the opportunity to build on what

is already a profitable asset,” says Nick Sandall,

head of retail banking at Deloitte. “Our

analysis suggests that increasing the revenue

flowing through the branch by just ten per

cent could increase branch profitability by

up to 40 per cent. This alone is a compelling

argument for re-energising the branch.”

It’s therefore undoubtedly in the bank’s

interest to get the customer into the branch so

that it can sell to them. But how does a bank get

more of its most valuable customers through

its doors? “Simply refreshing the brand and

refurbishing the branch network is unlikely

to be enough,” says Emerson. “Banks need to

create a branch that is exciting and enjoyable.”

Mediobanca, the Italian investment bank,

has launched a new retail bank, Chebanca!,

which illustrates just how exciting the in-branch

experience can be. Instead of following the

long-held belief that all branches should

look like offices, CheBanca! has its own very

distinctive style. Conventional counters and

desks have been replaced by brightly coloured

booths around a banking square, where people

are free to browse, use self-service facilities or

seek advice. The main square includes waiting

areas, comfortable seating, refreshments and a

children’s play area.

In the booths around the perimeter,

customers can sit next to the bank’s

advisors, looking at the same screen instead

of facing each other, separated by a desk.

The contemporary design of the branch and

the booths is complemented by the bright

yellow and white colours that are used

throughout. This highly visual format means

that the branch has effectively become the

bank’s brand – a uniform brand that is used

everywhere and is immediately recognisable.

CheBanca! also adopted a new approach

to staffing, with many employees being sales

personnel hired from non-banking sectors.

The bank believes that it’s easier for people to

learn about the industry and related products

featUre brancH of tHe fUtUre

The power of a single view

Critical to the branch of the future is the ability to have a 360-degree view of the customer. This not only helps branch employees to provide a superior customer experience, but can also make a huge difference to the bottom line. Let me explain why.

In a typical bank branch, customer representatives need to access numerous silos of information in order to service their customers. The representatives need to use a core banking application for answering account-related questions, credit card applications for card related inquiries, another application for investment products and yet another application for checking the status of a loan application. We’ve found that in many of our customers this can total anything up to eight different applications. This is extremely time consuming – often

representing 30-40 per cent of the employee’s entire workload. With a single view of a customer, however, this all changes. Using

VeriPark’s VeriTouch application built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can bring all the separate applications together into a single solution. With this in place, branch employees can answer customer enquiries in no more than five seconds. The servicing time and hence the servicing cost to the customer is decreased drastically. This is how the single view helps the branch make more money. But this is only one side of the coin. The other side is single view as a sales tool. Happier customers are more likely to spend more and, with a total view of the customer, employees are in a much better position to up-sell and cross sell. This generates big returns for a rather simple concept.

Ozkan Erener, general manager at VeriPark, discusses the importance of connecting information

“by providing customers with tailored information

that illustrates their financial position in

a client-friendly way, banks can offer more

targeted advice and not just increase loyalty, but

increase revenue too"

Jenze bosmafiglo

www.onwindows.com 43

key moments of truth when dealing with

customers – such as buying a house, getting

married, having children or retiring from

work,” he explains. “By better understanding

what’s going on in their customers’ lives

– and even what’s going on across their

customers’ families’ lives – branch employees

can make much more accurate and more

personal recommendations, creating a more

valuable relationship.”

Getting better access to information,

however, requires the industry to make

better use of technology. With transactions

and customer information generated across

multiple touch points, the reliance on siloed

processes and technology is commonplace,

yet reduces sales productivity and leads to

an inconsistent customer experience. The

heart of the issue is disparate, disconnected

systems that have made it extremely complex

to integrate customer and transactional

information.

The key to growth is unlocking the

power of data in a way that differentiates

the customer experience through delivering

world-class customer service, and innovative

products and services. “Technology is the

driving force behind the industry, and the

integration of data is key,” says Bosma.

“If you’re not able to have your client’s

information brought together in one place,

then you will fall behind.”

Bringing data together is undoubtedly key

to creating a customer-centric enterprise.

“For decades the industry has focused on

lowering the cost per transaction. But to

be competitive in today’s economy, banks

need to move from a transaction-centric

to a customer-centric architecture and

business model,” says Emerson. “The key

to growth is unlocking the power of data

in a way that differentiates the customer

experience through delivering world class

customer service, and innovative products

and services.”

Emerson points out many technology

trends that will have an impact on the

industry over the coming years. “Cloud

computing, digital marketing and business

intelligence are just a few innovations that

will support retail banking in the shift from

a transaction-centric business model to a

customer-centric model,” he says. “There

are still many challenges ahead – but with

the right attitude, the right resources and

the right strategies, these can be turned into

opportunities.”

featUre brancH of tHe fUtUre

than it is to learn sales skills – especially

as the products it offers are fairly simple.

Another change was in the opening hours

of the branches. These open on Saturdays

and until 7pm on weekdays, so that they

have similar hours to shopping malls and

retail outlets. The new-look branches aren’t

just a pilot project: their format will be used

throughout the bank’s branches. CheBanca!

plans to have 220 fixed branches by the end

of its fifth year, all of them reinforcing the

brand with their unique style.

However, according the EFMA report,

for the majority of banks the redefinition

of branches remains a work in progress.

Many have some way to go to become more

customer centric, find new ways to connect

with customers and create an in-branch

experience that feels personal. The report

says that employees must learn to talk to new

customers in a friendly way, attracting their

interest and asking them if they need help.

Much like the Chebanca! example, they need

to adopt a similar approach to that of staff in

a retail store.

Creating the best relationships possible

also depends on an employee’s ability to

access information. Customers today have

more access to information than they’ve ever

done in the past, and this presents a challenge

for branch staff. “Customers are more

knowledgeable, and they have the capability

to find detailed information prior to meeting

the bank’s employee in the branch,” explains

Tieto’s Uski. “This is why today’s branch

employees need to have easy access to the

right information or immediate online advice

from specialists during the customer visit.”

By giving staff the tools they need

to give enhanced levels of service such

as integrated customer relationship

management solutions, banks are in a

much better position to develop closer,

more meaningful relationships with their

customers. “As customers demand more

access to information, banks need to offer

better financial advice as part of their core

business,” says Jenze Bosma, president at

Figlo. “By providing them with tailored

information that illustrates the customer’s

financial position and shows data in a client-

friendly way, banks can offer more targeted

advice and not just increase loyalty, but

increase revenue too.”

Emerson says that having access to better

information allows staff to act on ‘moments of

truth’. “There could typically be six or seven

CheBanca! has given its branches a complete design refresh as part of its overall strategy to transform the branch experience

Relocate, innovate and connect Aleksandar Milosevic’s vision of the branch

Banks have to evolve if they want to stay relevant with today’s customers. As a new generation of customers come through that will never have experienced life without the Internet, you would be forgiven for thinking that the answer to a bank’s future success is to push all its services online, but as Asseco’s chief software architect Aleksandar Milosevic would agree, this really isn’t the answer. “I recently heard about a Scandanavian bank that launched a campaign to attract customers to use its new online services in an effort to reduce internal overhead costs, but it was so successful that 90 per cent of its customers moved online and made the bank’s existing branches almost redundant. The bank actually ended up having to launch another campaign to reverse some of the damage done,” says Milosevic. “Banks need to recognise that the branch still has a crucial role to play when it comes to interacting with customers and generating new business; they just need to

reconsider how to make best use of it.“If they want customers to keep coming

through their doors and benefiting from personal interactions with their staff, they need to bring the branch to the customer. This will involve relocating branches to shopping centres, partnering with coffee shops to entice customers in, rethinking store layouts and using technology in new ways to enhance the customer experience,” he continues.

“At our New Banking Vision 5 event last year, we demonstrated the use of RFID chips in bank cards. When a customer with this special card entered the RFID zone they were flagged up to employees who could pull information off the main system about them and offer a more personalised experience. It’s initiatives like this that will make one bank stand out from another. Use of self-service screens and terminals is another way of enticing customers in. Today it’s about making banking as approachable and relaxed as possible.”

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featUre bUsiness intelligence

Understanding

Jasmine Yalds investigates how today’s financial services businesses can gain visibility into their entire organisation’s performance through familiar, easy-to-use technology

Today’s financial institutions face many

challenges. Investors in the public market

demand both pressure and performance,

while private individuals require consistency

and trust that their money is safe and being

used prudently. At the same time, regulatory

scrutiny has ramped up and banks are being

watched more closely than ever.

According to a recent report from Aberdeen,

Business intelligence in banking: analytical customer focus drives performance, these issues lead to two

key pain points in the banking world. First, there is

the growing need to squeeze the maximum value

out of each existing customer relationship and

broaden their exposure to a variety of financial

investment options. Indeed, according to the

report, the top business pressure facing 51 per

cent of banking institutions is underdeveloped

customer relationships, indicating that much

more needs to be done to retain and engage

customers at all touchpoints for sustained

relationships that drive lifetime customer value.

“Today’s customers are far more educated about

financial products,” says Mikko Vesa, solution

sales manager at Tieto. “This means that customer

facing staff need to be much more aware of

their products, and differentiate themselves by

providing exceptional levels of service. They need

to be able to access information instantly, and in

an easy to comprehend way.”

John Gamble, senior BI consultant at Altius

Consulting agrees: “Succeeding today relies

tHe biggerPICTuRE

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featUre bUsiness intelligence

on financial services companies truly

understanding their customers, their

competitors and the market as a whole,”

he explains. “They need to know what is

driving their customers, which products

they are likely to be attracted to, how their

products fair against the competition and

predict how the market is likely to change.

It’s also important that financial services

institutions are able to segment their

customer base to understand who their

most valuable customers are. They can then

invest more time in targeting this group

with personalised strategies.”

The second issue is that as the sheer

volume of data balloons across the business

world, companies in the banking world are

looking to capture that data to support faster

and more accurate decisions. “Analysing

reports can take up large numbers of

man hours,” says Gamble. “And, with the

growing number of reports needing to be

made in order to meet regulations, this isn’t

getting any easier.”

Geoffrey Ng, vice president of product

planning at PROPHIX Software, agrees:

“The rapidly changing economy and

financial upheaval experienced globally has

put pressure on organisations to be able

to respond quickly to changes and make

better, more informed, decisions,” he says.

“Opportunities and dangers may appear

suddenly, necessitating rapid analysis of

relevant information in order for business

decisions to be made. Organisations who

are able to respond quickly to these changes

become the winners, while those who linger

behind lose.”

With all this in mind, getting easy

access to the right information across the

enterprise is essential, and many businesses

are turning to business intelligence

(BI) tools to help. “BI plays a vital role

in improving customer and business

insight, which is critical to success in the

global banking industry,” explains Shawn

Doumy, product director for Insight Risk

Intelligence at Temenos. “With competition

intensifying, data volumes exploding, and

risk management moving to the forefront,

developing a robust capability to manage

information is no longer a nice-to-have.”

Clearly BI is having a profound impact on

the industry, but according to the research

the uptake is still predominately from a

vanguard of leading financial institutions.

In a recent report, Forrester said: “Many

enterprises deploy siloed, traditional BI

and advanced analytics environments

through fragmented, departmental and

tactical initiatives.” Ian Michiels, research

director and practice leader of the Customer

Management Technology Group at

“succeeding today relies on financial

services companies truly understanding

their customers, their competitors and the market as a whole”

John gamblealtius consulting

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featUre bUsiness intelligence

Aberdeen calls this a “patchwork solution”

that’s not working.

Ng agrees: “It’s vital that there is proper

executive sponsorship for business

intelligence strategies to break across

disparate silos. BI is about collaborating

and sharing information so that it can be

analysed and measured; and this needs

to be ongoing, not just lasting for the

duration of the BI implementation project,

which is what often happens. A common

mistake is that organisations often take a

local view when deploying a BI solution, as

opposed to an enterprise view. The danger

of a local BI solution is that it can often be

disconnected from the overall organisation

strategy, providing inaccurate or irrelevant

information. Silos also get created this

way, leading to the proliferation of data

sources, making it difficult to consolidate

the information for analysis at the company

level. Finally, multiple disparate local

BI solutions make it extremely difficult

to foster greater collaboration between

organisational units. The information is not

consistent and cannot be easily interpreted,

impeding communication.”

“Data management is the core of the

financial services industry,” adds Colin Kerr,

Microsoft’s industry solutions manager for

worldwide financial services. “The banks

that manage and transform that data most

effectively are the ones that can deliver

the most innovative products to the target

customer segments, maximise operational

efficiencies and reduce risk exposure,” he

explains. “The challenge is that this data

is scattered throughout institutions across

many systems. For example, to give a true

profile of customer activity, banks would

need to look at payment transactions, ATM

activity, branch transactions, plus online

banking. No one area gives the complete

picture, and that is where a consolidated

view across data silos becomes essential.”

“To give a true profile of customer activity, banks

would need to look at payment transactions, atm activity, branch transactions

plus online banking”

colin kerrmicrosoft

www.onwindows.com

featUre bUsiness intelligence

In fact, a consolidated view can be the

difference between success and failure.

A recent implementation at the London

Stock Exchange (LSE) illustrates just how

business-changing it can be. With five

billion pounds’ worth of transactions taking

place and close to 15 million price updates

being sent from the exchange every day, the

company has to deal with an extraordinary

amount of data, which was something of

a challenge when it came to dealing with

enquiries from clients.

“Our primary account managers (PAMS)

need to be able to give customers the

most accurate information they can, but,

depending on the client’s enquiry, this

could take hours or days, as much of our

data is stored in different data warehouses

or other data repositories,” explains Natalie

Lynch, head of client management for

broker services at LSE.

The company needed a BI solution

that could pull together this siloed data,

and turned to Microsoft for help. “With

the introduction of Microsoft Office

and SharePoint we have created a PAM

dashboard which gives a close to real-

time view of client activity within the

stock exchange,” says Lynch. “Since the

introduction of this, PAMs are able to make

much better use of their time, spending

Reducing risk: achieving Basel II compliance

Financial services institutions have long been under siege with competitive issues, efficiency challenges, and the need to comply with ever increasing regulations. This has accelerated the need to gain insight into operational efficiencies and awareness of critical processing; and the need to ensure that operations managers have a complete overview of risk exposure and operational status in order to mitigate risk.

“With the introduction of Basel II regulatory framework in the last decade, having a global view of risk in all verticals became essential to exploit a risk pricing based business strategy,” says Shawn Doumy, product director for Insight Risk Intelligence at Temenos. “BI technology helps address both regulatory compliance

and internal reporting requirements to provide deeper view of the incurred risk. It also helps have the right information at the right time, making business decisions based on real time intelligence.”

Doumy points toward Universal Bank of Cyprus as an example of effective risk management in practice. “The bank urgently needed to address the central bank Basel II reporting deadline, which presented them with a huge amount of regulatory requirements which could not be fulfilled using their existing Barracuda system,” he explains. “The bank opted to implement Insight Risk Intelligence from Temenos, which was deployed in just two weeks, enabling the bank to achieve full Basel II compliance with extended reporting to cover COREP to meet the central bank deadline.”

www.onwindows.com 53

to share reports throughout an organisation

using a central repository. Dashboards can

be built providing an intuitive and visual

way of communicating status and driving

action. Reports, charts, key performance

indicators and other metrics from disparate

sources can be combined on a single Web

page. These reports can come from Excel or

Reporting Services.

And the SharePoint advantage doesn’t

stop here. PowerPivot for Excel 2010 is

a self-service BI tool used from within

SharePoint Server which represents a

revolutionary advance in empowering

users to manage their own information

requirements without a dependency on IT

resources. “Both the power, familiarity and

price point of PowerPivot is likely to see

several existing BI vendors either leave the

market or decline in market share,” says

Gamble. “It provides users with the ability

to work with and analyse vast quantities of

data within Excel,” says Gamble. “Financial

services employees have the power to gain

deeper insight into any business aspect and

compress decision cycles. And they can

share their findings with others effortlessly

and securely.

As time moves on the move toward these

technologies is likely to increase at a rapid

pace. “The future of BI will involve greater

focus on information delivery, and shift away

from looking only at historical data, and

increased collaboration techniques,” says Ng.

But this is just the start. Ng believes that

there are other trends that will shape the

transformation of BI as we know it. “BI has

also historically focused on summarising,

viewing, and analysing detailed data that

has been collected and placed in a data

warehouse,” he says. “Increasingly, there is

far greater demand on creating projections

and plans for future performance, instead

of just looking at the past. Predictive

models can help exploit patterns found

in historical data and incorporate new

assumptions so that future trends can be

plotted. Collaboration techniques have

also changed dramatically during the

last few years. One is no longer bound

by e-mails, sent files, annotations, and

print outs as modes of communication.

New applications such as social media,

instant messaging, mobile solutions, and

dedicated collaboration platforms have

changed the collaboration paradigm. In the

near future, expect to see more BI solutions

to integrate and link into these new modes

of communications to further increase

visibility to organisation performance to a

wider audience.”

Kerr believes that to cope with this

evolution of BI, financial institutions will

undoubtedly be turning to the cloud. “The

Microsoft Azure platform is well suited

for a number of reasons,” he explains.

“Performance and scalability for one, but

also to simplify the integration of market

data and institutional information.”

featUre bUsiness intelligence

more time with customers, and less time

collating information. The solution is really

important to the business and makes a huge

change to the lives of the PAMs.”

The advantages of using Microsoft

technologies like the ones used at LSE

can be significant. “Microsoft technology

has a strong role in supporting a modern

collaborative way of working and the

storing, finding, sharing and visualisation of

information,” says Tieto’s Vesa. “Tools such

as SharePoint, Office applications and SQL

Server are helping to ensure the end user

has a familiar, intuitive user interface, which

allows them to easily access BI information

and other content. This is made possible

with the powerful data warehousing, BI and

collaboration platforms from Microsoft.”

Kerr agrees, adding that the key is being

able to deliver data management across silos,

plus the ability to empower the end user

with a self-service experience, as opposed

to reams of traditional static reports. “This

is exactly what Microsoft technology does,”

he explains. “By consolidating relevant data

sources such as from mainframe, Oracle

and of course SQL databases, and perhaps

enriching that with external data feeds,

such as market or risk information, banks

are able to build a repository of data for

analytics. Microsoft’s SQL Server-based BI

stack enables just that.”

The next step is just as vital – to make this

cross section of data available to other users.

“For a complete user experience, SharePoint

provides users with ‘self-service BI’ in the

form of charts, graphs and dashboards, with

additional ability to drill into lower levels of

detail,” explains Kerr.

Gamble also has a lot of praise for

SharePoint. “Designed as a collaboration

platform, SharePoint provides an intuitive

and simple interface which allows

financial institutions to harvest corporate

knowledge,” he explains. Especially for BI,

the Report Centre provides a powerful way

Turning challenges into opportunitiesSabrina Rosati explains how BI technology is evolving to address the challenges financial institutions face today and help them compete in an increasingly tough marketplace

The delicate balance between risk and return shapes the banking and financial services industry like no other. In a time plagued by credit crunches, billion-dollar write-downs and a relentless buy-or-be-bought market, financial institutions must transform these business challenges into opportunities if they want to compete – and succeed – in tomorrow’s marketplace.

Whether the need is to accelerate the time to collect and report information, gain control over financial data or comply with new and changing regulations, they have to implement a BI, corporate performance management and financial governance solution to provide unprecedented insight on their operations and finances so they can improve business performance and value.

Choosing the right technology platform is key to success here. Financial services businesses need a solution that unifies all financial processes that drive business performance in a single, closed-loop software solution, providing one source of accurate financial data on all enterprise levels. This way,

financial institutions decrease the number of products in use, resulting in reduced hardware costs and interfaces as well as improved productivity. Our solution delivers on all this.

Tagetik 3.0 Enabled by Microsoft SharePoint 2010, is a result of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, and seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft BI and collaboration platform. With this solution financial institutions can take full advantage of the breadth of processes Tagetik covers, ranging from financial consolidation and reporting throughout budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, cost allocation and profitability analysis, through to financial close and fast closing, management/statutory reconciliation, regulatory reporting. They receive a highly intuitive, easy-to-use platform which is fast to deploy and easy to maintain, without costly external consultants or IT experts.

Sabrina Rosati is executive vice president of professional services at Tagetik

“microsoft technology has a strong role in supporting

a modern collaborative way of working and the storing, finding, sharing

and visualisation of information”

mikko Vesatieto

www.onwindows.com 55

featUre cloUd compUting

eXceeding eXpectations

As Microsoft and its partners continue to drive the momentum behind cloud computing, Rebecca Lambert takes a look at the benefits this brings to the financial services industry

In the last issue of Finance on Windows we presented

Microsoft’s strategy for cloud computing in the financial

services industry. In this feature we look at how that strategy

translates to reality. Promising to reduce IT costs, increase

agility, reduce the need for physical IT resources and help

enterprises stay at the forefront of technology, few would

contend the potential of cloud computing, but how are

financial institutions realising these benefits in practice?

Cloud services from Microsoft essentially span across

three categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), to provide

on-demand computing and storage to host, scale and manage

applications and services; platform as a service (PaaS), Windows

Azure as the operating system and application platform in the

cloud, SQL Azure as cloud database services, and Windows

Azure AppFabric that provides connectivity, security services

and federated identity for applications; and Microsoft Online

Services as the software as a service (SaaS) offering, which

provides on-demand applications and hosted services such as

productivity, collaboration and management of desktops. Over

the last twelve months, we’ve witnessed an increasing number

of financial institutions implementing cloud-based solutions

within one or a combination of these scenarios. The following

highlights just a few examples of financial institutions already

taking advantage of the cloud, as well as some of the partner

innovations driving adoption across the industry.

Global life and general insurance services company Aviva

turned to Microsoft cloud services back in 2008 as part of its

strategic vision to optimise internal communication, promote

collaboration and create a new knowledge-sharing environment

for its 54,000 employees. Within 150 days, the company had

a global solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Online

called Aviva World, which not only provides enterprise content

management and search, including document management,

Web content records and rights management, but allows the

creation of wikis and blogs, and enhanced business intelligence

with key performance indicator dashboards.

Having chosen to work with Microsoft technology, specifically

Office SharePoint Online, for its flexibility and interoperability,

today the intranet is an important communications channel for

Aviva. Employees have the freedom to write posts and offer their

opinion on anything they like, helping to create an open culture

while building a community within the global company.

Bindia Hallauer, Microsoft’s technology strategy director

and CTO of worldwide financial services, notes: “While cloud

computing offers a number of compelling advantages, when

it comes to financial services companies, one of the significant

benefits is quite clear: the ability to scale on demand without

procuring intensive, expensive infrastructure. Think about

the sheer quantity of data that financial services organisations

need to manage on a daily basis. Insurance or capital markets

companies, for example, rely heavily on computational

modelling and simulations whether it be actuarial modelling,

catastrophe modelling in insurance or risk computational

models in capital markets securities. These companies

run millions of computations per second – and the more

simulations that a company can process, the more effectively it

can determine the value of a product. The infrastructure needed

to support these activities is daunting and during peak times –

such as at the end of a trading day – many firms cannot keep

up with demand.”

Since Windows Azure was launched last year, many

financial services companies have started to recognise the

cloud platform’s ability to address scalability. Take RiskMetrics,

for example. Headquartered in New York, RiskMetrics provides

risk management, governance services, and financial research

and analysis for the world’s leading investment banks, asset

managers, hedge funds, pension funds, insurers and central

banks. To enhance the scalability of its services, RiskMetrics

needed to support large bursts in computing activity over short

periods of time. It also wanted to empower innovative solutions

by reducing the required new investments in its physical

computing infrastructure.

Using Windows Azure, RiskMetrics developed a solution

rapidly over the course of several months. To complement

its on-premises infrastructure, RiskMetrics uses the Windows

Azure cloud services operating system – the development,

service hosting, and service management environment for the

Windows Azure platform – to provide on-demand computing

capacity for its analytics applications. During periods of high

demand for specific kinds of complex analysis, the company

can extend the capacity of its risk-analysis applications with

Windows Azure resources to process the calculations. When the

Many financial services companies are recognising the ability of Windows Azure to address scalability issues

www.onwindows.com 57

and scalability to grow with the business. At

the same time, the insurance company did

not want to make costly financial investments

or go through the time-consuming process

of procuring new infrastructure hardware. It

was these requirements that encouraged it to

leverage the Windows Azure platform.

Working with Microsoft Gold Certified

Partner EMLink, AXA Seguros was able to

quickly develop its new claims management

system. The solution uses Windows Azure for

compute processing and Microsoft SQL Azure

for its relational database needs, including

storing customer information and claim-

resolution details. The cloud-based solution

has custom workflows that route claims to

the appropriate department for resolution

and then back to the agent, as well as alerts

to notify employees when action needs to be

taken on a customer’s behalf.

Including planning, development and

deployment, AXA Seguros implemented the

solution in just eight weeks, compared to

between 18 and 30 weeks with an on-premises

solution. By selecting Windows Azure, AXA

Seguros has built a highly scalable application

without having to invest in costly infrastructure,

and estimates it will make a 65 per cent cost

saving within three years.

Over the last few months in particular,

global banking software provider Temenos

has seen a growing appetite for cloud

computing in the banking world and, in early

February, announced the availability of its

T24 core banking system on the Windows

Azure platform. “The launch of T24 on the

Microsoft Windows Azure platform heralds

many powerful new benefits for banks – not

least the optimisation of data centre costs

traditionally associated with running a core

system, as services in the cloud are offered

on a consumption-based pricing model,” says

Mark Gunning, the company’s global banking

director. “Over the next decade, we expect to

see greater understanding of the cloud’s place

in the banking world, which will enable many

more banks to harness the benefits of T24. In

the immediate future, we are ready to tackle

individual banks’ requirements, offering T24

in the cloud, tailored to their needs.

“The banking industry will be slower

than others to develop trust in the cloud,

but this is understandable, given the very

high security requirements that apply to

banking solutions coupled with the simple

but compelling fact that banks are in the

business of trust,” continues Gunning. “We

understand the importance of balancing our

very real enthusiasm for the new capabilities

cloud technology offers with the caution and

thoroughness our clients and their customers

expect of us. Temenos is well placed to securely

leverage the benefits of cloud-based solutions,

given our long experience of successful work

with cloud-like environments that bear many

of the hallmarks of the cloud as it is being used

today. The technology and architecture of T24

and, in particular, its capacity to support multi-

tenant environments, make it fundamentally

suitable for cloud implementations.”

As part of this launch, Temenos has

embarked on its first cloud migration to move

a network of 12 Mexican financial institutions

from a traditional hosted environment onto

the Windows Azure platform. Five of these –

Sofol Tepeyac, Grupo Agrifin, Findeca, Soficam

and C.Capital Global – are in the first phase of

migration, which is currently underway and

is expected to be completed by Q2 2011. The

remaining seven will migrate later in 2011.

As confidence in the cloud continues

to grow and its partners begin developing

more of their applications on Windows

Azure, Microsoft expects to see an increasing

number of financial services institutions

embrace cloud services to strengthen their

businesses. “Having instant access to data

and collaboration tools when you need it and

where you want it in a highly secure manner

is a very compelling value proposition,” says

Hallauer. “Financial institutions already

moving to the cloud are architecting for the

future – enabling themselves to provide a high

level of service for customers and employees

while containing costs – and they are paving

the way for the rest of the industry to follow

suit. Microsoft and its partners are committed

to cloud computing and are ready to help

their customers take full advantage of the

opportunities out there.”

demand declines, RiskMetrics can scale down

from the Windows Azure instances until they

need the capacity again.

UK-based insurance systems and rating

engine software provider RDT has taken

advantage of Windows Azure in a similar

way to provide a better opportunity for its

insurance company customers to stay ahead

of the game. “We have recently deployed our

insurance rating engine in Windows Azure. It

rates products in exactly the same way as our

locally deployed engine, however the beauty

of deploying it in the cloud is that it overcomes

a problem that all insurers face,” says Mark

Bates, CEO of RDT. “When an aggregator,

such as Go Compare, hits the insurer’s

system for a quote ten times per second

following a TV advert, the insurer’s system

fails to cope unless massive redundancy has

been built into their architecture. Windows

Azure provides that scale and at a price far

lower than the insurer could manage with an

in-house solution. The concept and benefit of

the cloud suddenly becomes tangible.”

In fact, price is a clear differentiator for

companies looking to scale with ease while

keeping costs down. Describing how its

pricing model for Windows Azure works,

Microsoft compares it to turning on a light

switch: you don’t necessarily need to own the

generator to get the service you need.

“Performance, scalability and the ability

to deploy on a global basis with minimum

possible costs are the main advantages of

cloud computing that we are seeing,” says

Bates. “The best way to encourage customers

to use the cloud and evangelise its advantages

is to deploy an application that brings them

real business benefits in an environment that

they understand. When the application is

highly relevant to the business the customer

is in, the benefits become clear more quickly,

and if they can save money at the same time

then that’s an added bonus.”

For AXA Seguros, this was certainly the case.

When the Mexican insurance company decided

to update its existing claims management

system, it wanted to find a replacement that

did not rely on infrastructure destined for

obsolescence, but instead had the flexibility

featUre cloUd compUting

“the best way to encourage customers to use the cloud and

evangelise its advantages is to deploy an application

that brings them real business benefits in an environment that they

understand”

mark batesrdt

Aviva is using Microsoft cloud services to improve internal collaboration and build a global community

“pri error quando graecis ne, aperiam sapiente ex has. in ridens vivendo interpretaris per, an

ubique ceteroscri aperiam te quando”Gordon Esmond Freye, Microsoft

in practice

www.onwindows.com 59

geico

Insurance advice and services on the go

GeicoSolution: mobile desktop, device, server and customer managementt

Benefits: better customer service, increased workforce productivity on the go

Technologies: windows phone 7

Partner: microsoft

Geico is a member of the Berkshire

Hathaway family of companies and is

the third-largest private passenger auto

insurer in the US. Providing auto insurance

coverage for around ten million policy

holders and insuring more than 16 million

vehicles, Geico also offers its customers

insurance products for their motorcycles,

all-terrain vehicles and mobile homes.

In an effort to further improve how it

interacts with the millions of customers it

serves today, Geico is now using Windows

Phone 7 to improve the productivity of

its employees, as well as use it as a new

channel to connect with customers.

Taking advantage of the mobile

platform’s seamless interoperability with

Microsoft Office, the company has agreed

to support Windows Phone 7 as a corporate

smartphone for its 24,000 employees to

help them stay connected. Employees

can now work on the go, place calls, send

e-mails, create appointments and attend

meetings via corporate accounts on their

Windows Phones.

Discussing the phone’s functionality,

Matt Slocum, the company’s project

manager and analyst, says: “The interface

is really sleek, easy to use and quick to

navigate. The Windows Phone 7 version

of Outlook is great, it has the look and feel

just like Microsoft Outlook on the desktop

that I’m used to working with, but it also

lets me view and send out new appointment

requests and view the address I need to go

to directly through maps.”

Not content with just using Windows

Phone 7 smartphones internally, Geico has

taken its use of the mobile operating system

one step further by creating a Windows

Phone 7 application for consumers called

Geico GloveBox, which allows its policy

holders to pay bills, obtain policy ID

information, and receive help in tough

situations such as getting in a car accident or

changing a flat tyre.

“Geico has been an innovator for a long

time, way before there were mobile devices,”

says Dave Weaver, the company’s mobile

division manager. “We are always looking

for ways to make it easier for our customers

and Windows Phone 7 made perfect sense.”

Customers who download the Geico

GloveBox app on their Windows Phone

7 devices can get immediate access to a

number of services including Bill Pay And

Insurance ID Cards, which allows users to

pay their auto insurance bills and access

current insurance ID cards from their

phones; and Accident Helper, which helps

put customers in contact with emergency

services, provides a place to organise photos

and has other helpful features in case of an

accident. The app also includes Auto How

To’s that feature step-by-step instructions to

help users jump-start a vehicle, change a flat

tyre or check tyre pressure; locator services

including Roadside Service to help users find

nearby tow services and petrol stations; and

Taxi and Rental Car Service to help stranded

customers get a lift from just about anywhere.

“With Windows Phone 7, Geico can

connect with customers anywhere,” says

Steve Smith, assistant vice president of

Geico’s Internet Business Unit. “Accidentally

lock your keys in your car? With just a

few taps, help is on the way. With Geico

GloveBox, it’s never been easier to stay

current on your payments or get the help you

need if you’re ever in an accident.”

In addition to the built-in features

already mentioned, the app also provides

a list of all the insurance company phone

numbers a customer would need for any

situation, a library of entertainment videos

for customers to watch while they’re

waiting for a service, as well as integration

with any of Geico’s social media pages such

as the Gecko and Caveman Facebook and

Twitter pages.

Discussing how the GloveBox app is

working in real-life situations, Weaver says:

“We’ve actually had more than one policy

holder who has been pulled over by the

police and didn’t have their ID card in the

glove box to prove they had an up-to-date

insurance policy. Thanks to the app though,

they were able to take out their phone and

show the officer that they did indeed have

insurance and avoid getting a fine.”

“Geico is truly exemplifying the benefits

of Windows Phone 7 for both its consumer

and corporate users,” says Mark Hindsbo,

vice president, Developer and Platform

Evangelism US, Microsoft. “By empowering

its employees with corporate Windows

Phone 7 devices, and providing its custom

GloveBox application to its customers,

Geico is clearly innovating to deliver the best

possible mobile insurance experience.”

The Geico GloveBox app allows customers to manage their insurance policy and access related services while on the go

www.onwindows.com

in practicedenizbank

It’s nearly four years since DenizBank,

one of Turkey’s largest private banks,

successfully replaced its Unix legacy

system with a Web-based banking

platform using technology from Intertech,

HP and Microsoft.

DenizBank, which recognised that

building a new banking infrastructure would

be a huge undertaking when it first started its

selection process, had placed great emphasis

on finding the right software vendor to

develop the solution and offer hands-on

support throughout the project. It was this

focus that encouraged the bank to turn to

its own technology partner Intertech, which

ended up building a custom-made online

banking system from scratch using HP’s

Converged Infrastructures solution and

Microsoft technologies, including SQL Server

2005, Windows Server 2003, BizTalk Server

as the systems integrator, Microsoft .NET

Framework, and Office Communications

Server 2007 for unified communications.

The ambitious project, which required

the new banking platform to deliver

services including customer relationship

management, business process management,

agile core banking and business intelligence,

resulted in Intertech creating inter-Next. This

next-generation banking solution is now the

IT provider’s core offering and has since been

rolled out to five other banks: DenizBank in

Austria and Germany; Eurobank Tekfen and

Dilerbank in Turkey; Eurodeniz in northern

Cyprus; and DenizBank Bahrain in Bahrain.

Last year Intertech was also awarded the 21st

Century Achievement Award in the ‘Finance,

Insurance and Real Estate’ category, beating

181 candidates in the ‘Computerworld

Honors Program’ to the top spot.

Speaking about the inter-Next solution

and why the implementation was so

successful at Denizbank, Hakan Ateş, the

bank’s president and CEO, says: “inter-

Next has allowed us to accelerate our

business processes and this has resulted

in increased efficiency and profitability. It

has strengthened our business development

activities by enhancing operational

efficiency, and we have even lowered

one-year banking transactions to eight

hours, which is an extremely impressive

turnaround. We are proud of the inter-

Next banking project, and our collaboration

with HP and Microsoft has created a great

business model.”

The solution is also proving successful

at other financial institutions. Today,

customers who walk into a DenizBank,

Dilerbank or EuroBank Tekfen branch

looking for financial advice can receive fast,

up-to-the-minute information on investment

opportunities. Bank managers can access

a comprehensive range of financial

information through the monitors on their

desks, and start processing investments. By

mining the data accumulated on people’s

investment decisions, the companies

can also tailor their product portfolios to

customer needs and launch more focused

sales campaigns.

“Our employees are a lot happier

now,” concludes Soner Ersoy, CIO at

Eurobank Tekfen. “Core banking services,

distribution channel management, CRM,

business process management and business

intelligence are all seamlessly integrated on

a single platform.”

Going global

DenizBankSolution: web-based core banking platform

Benefits: integrated business processes, increased efficiency and profitability, better customer satisfaction

Technologies: inter-next, microsoft sQl server, windows server, biztalk server, .net Framework, Office Communications Server

Partner: intertech

www.onwindows.com

in practiceabn amro

An ambitious outlook for ABN AmroIn July 2010, ABN Amro and Fortis

Bank merged to create a new combined,

independent bank that builds on

entrepreneurship, professionalism and

experience. The new identity is a bank

that understands and supports clients in

achieving their ambitions while striving for

lasting relationships. ABN Amro is a financial

services provider that shows integrity by

keeping its promises. All this comes together

in its corporate values: trusted, professional,

and ambitious.

The relationship between Figlo and ABN

Amro started years ago when the bank started to

work with the Figlo Platform. The relationship

today is still very strong and the cooperation

is based on mutual trust. So when the bank

recently looked for a way of generating more

revenue from its existing client database while

building a better relationship with its customers,

it quickly realised it needed a new software

application with a quick inventory to give up-to-

date and compliant financial advice, and it

turned to Figlo to deliver the solution.

ABN Amro is well regarded in the banking

industry, and has skilled and competent staff

that are a reliable source of information for both

clients and the community. Adept at finding

new solutions or applying existing solutions

to new situations, Figlo wanted to find a new

way of empowering staff to enrich customer

interactions and present information in an

accessible, easy to understand manner. ABN

Amro’s top requirements were for a Web-

based application that is always up to date,

and could be implemented quickly. The Figlo

Platform, therefore, was the perfect fit as it not

only runs online but naturally integrated with

the bank’s existing financial planning software

to create in-depth financial planning advice.

Figlo also built a custom-made report, as well

as a dedicated server hosting solution for ABN

Amro, to ensure the application is well secured

and easily adjustable.

By being ambitious, ABN Amro is striving

to set the trend for being the first to address

new developments by going the extra mile

for its clients. That is why the most important

advantage of the recent solution implementation

is the custom made report: a unique report

made just for ABN Amro. “Figlo has a good

reputation at ABN Amro because of its flexibility,

quick time-to-market, and good knowledge of

financial advice, laws and regulations, all of

which meet the ambitious standards of ABN

Amro,” concludes Johan Plas, the financial

institution’s senior product manager of financial

planning.

ABN AmroSolution: financial planning platform

Benefits: custom-made report, online access, customisable, scalable

Technologies: figlo platform, microsoft .net, silverlight

Partner: figlo

63

in practicecrédito agrícola groUp

“Using tagetik 3.0, we were able to implement a comprehensive consolidation and reporting

solution in just 14 weeks”Francisco Machado, GCA

Tagetik optimises group consolidationThe Crédito Agrícola Group (CAG) is

a Portuguese financial group, which

encompasses 89 local cooperative banks

(Caixas Agrícolas) that, in turn, own more

than 670 local branches nationwide. Due

to its strong community presence, Crédito

Agrícola Group plays a strong role in

supporting and developing the country’s

local economies.

While restructuring its accounting

department, CAG saw the need to improve its

group consolidation and reporting processes

as well as its regulatory reporting to the

Portuguese Central Bank, Banco de Portugal

(BdP). As a result, the group decided to

implement a new solution in order to optimise

the consolidation process and minimise

manual work, ensure reliable data by creating

validation rules and cross-check procedures,

minimise the time and effort needed to create

reports, and adjust reports quickly to meet

growing accountability requirements and

regulatory standards.

CAG turned to Microsoft Gold Certified

Partner Tagetik and FWD Advise to provide

the solution. “Due to the new and growing

requirements in regulatory reporting, we

saw an urgent need to implement a new

consolidation tool. We selected Tagetik

because we felt that it could fulfil our needs

better than the other products on the market.

Although we still have a long road ahead of

us with as far as pooling our knowledge and

optimising the way we collect and gather

data are concerned, we already consider

Tagetik a top investment,” says Carlos Pica,

assistant director, Department of Accounting

and Consolidation at Caixa Central do

Crédito Agrícola Mútuo.

Tagetik 3.0 is designed to translate

strategy into operations by simplifying

complex business processes such as

budgeting, forecasting, cash flow planning,

statutory and management consolidation,

and compliance/industry requirements.

“The software’s flexible configurations

and customisations support our unique

reporting needs and help us consolidate data

from 110 companies across four different

sites as well as ensure compliance with the

strict specifications of Banco de Portugal, the

Portuguese Central Bank,” says Pica. “This

versatility combined with the ease of creating

reports is a huge asset which we can also

leverage in management analysis, analytical

accounting, budgeting and other financial

processes. Last but not least, the consultants

at FWD Advise did an outstanding job in

implementing the project.”

Since switching to Tagetik 3.0, CAG has

been able to reduce the total time needed

to consolidate its data to about four hours

– 50 per cent less time than it previously

needed. The software’s built-in features

have dramatically accelerated the processes

for making adjustments, intercompany

and cross-shareholder eliminations, and

calculations of direct and indirect minority

interests. The group intends to expand the

current solution in the near future in order to

configure the cost accounting systems to use

cost centre dimensions, activities and service

as well as cost allocation functionality, create

custom management reports, and implement

entity and cost centre dimensions to the

budgeting module.

“Using Tagetik 3.0, we were able to

implement a comprehensive consolidation

and reporting solution in just 14 weeks,”

says Francisco Machado, coordinator of the

Accounting Department of Accounting and

Retail Services. “Thanks to the software’s

built-in functionality and modern underlying

technology, we could easily integrate and

unify data from several different platforms

throughout our group and leverage it in

other processes. Best of all, we have achieved

all of our objectives for this project thanks

to the excellent support of the consultants

at FWD Advise and the ease in customising

Tagetik 3.0 to our unique needs.”

Crédito Agrícola GroupSolution: corporate performance management

Benefits: fast implementation, automated and faster processes, unified data

Technologies: tagetik 3.0, microsoft sharepoint

Partner: tagetik, fwd advise

“figlo has a good reputation at abn amro because of its flexibility,

quick time-to-market, and good knowledge

of financial advice, laws and regulations, all of

which meet the ambitious standards of abn amro”

Johan plasabn amro

www.onwindows.com

signing oUtcloUd compUting

A natural progession

At the beginning of February this year, Temenos

made a clear statement of intent to the financial

services industry by announcing the availability

of its core banking solution, Temenos T24, on

the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform.

In a move that not only reaffirms the company’s

commitment to its partnership with Microsoft,

but makes it the first technology provider in

the world to take a complete banking system

to a public cloud environment, this latest

development from Temenos highlights the

growing momentum behind cloud computing

in the financial world. Rebecca Lambert catches

up with Mark Gunning, the company’s global

banking director, to find out more.

Since Microsoft launched the Windows Azure

platform last year, the momentum around

cloud computing has been increasing. Why has

Temenos chosen to move T24 to the cloud now?

While we recognise that the banking industry will

be slower than others to develop trust in the cloud,

we are certainly seeing a growing appetite from our

customers for cloud computing, particularly smaller

institutions and start-ups. Over the last six months

we have made significant investments in T24 to

ensure it runs natively on Windows Azure. We are

now extremely pleased to be taking our solution

into the cloud and are confident of the opportunities

it opens up to us and our customers.

How have you been working with Microsoft to

bring T24 to Windows Azure? Did you come up

against any challenges?

Our partnership with Microsoft is extremely

important to us and together we have had to work

out how to bring the benefits of cloud computing

to the financial services industry. Understandably,

some areas of the industry are more sensitive than

others, and this has resulted in us making some

crucial adaptations along the way. For example,

some companies need to know what country their

data will reside in to satisfy certain security and

regulatory requirements. We’ve had to solve issues

like this with Microsoft.

So is the cloud a safe and secure place to run

critical operations and hold data?

The Azure platform has to comply with a wide

array of governmental and industry regulations.

This is achieved through Microsoft’s compliance

framework, with an online services security and

compliance team that closely manage the security

for Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. This team

develop policies and programmes for ensuring

compliance and managing security risks. As part

of its compliance framework, the Azure platform

undergoes annual compliance audits, as well as

internal assessments throughout the year. So

as you can see, behind the scenes security is a

massive focus.

What benefits do you think Microsoft’s cloud

computing platform in particular offers to

financial services institutions?

Banks will benefit in a similar way to other

cloud users, particularly in terms of lower total

cost of ownership. In particular though, banks

using T24 in the cloud will be able to enhance

their operations and build new opportunities

with flexibility and a rapid time to market.

Smaller banks will especially benefit from the

consumption based pricing model as well as the

scalability of Windows Azure as they grow.

How is the migration of T24 to Windows Azure

going so far with your first five customers in

Mexico?

As a hosting services provider, we’ve already

been running the IT infrastructures of these five

banks so they were comfortable about moving to

the cloud; it made perfect sense. We’re working

closely with them to ensure the migration process

is as smooth as possible and soon they will be

realising the full extent of the benefits of moving

to a cloud environment.

What opportunities do you think this latest T24

development will bring to Temenos?

We have already been receiving requests from

potential new customers about whether T24 will be

available in the cloud. And now we can say yes, it is.

We’re in a great position to be able to keep satisfying

out customers’ needs.

How do you think cloud computing will change

the future of financial services?

The long-term impact of the cloud will be profound.

Financial institutions won’t all leap into the cloud

straight away; it’ll be a cautious transition. But as

awareness grows and the industry as a whole has

a better understanding of the facts associated with

certain areas of the technology, such as security, we

do expect more and more to be attracted by the

benefits of the cloud, even if it does mean we have

to adapt the cloud to them.

“over the last six months we have made significant

investments in t24 to ensure it runs natively on

windows azure”

mark gunningglobal banking director, temenos

Temenos has recently made history by being the first to move a core banking solution to Microsoft’s cloud platform. Rebecca Lambert speaks to Mark Gunning about the opportunities that lie ahead