EMEA IT/BUSINESS ALIGNMENT OF THE YEAR
Winner – Deutsche Postbank & SAP
The creation of a new corebanking system can be tough, especially for a Tier 1 bank, so Deutsche Postbank decided to work with SAP to re-engineer almost 70% of its processes – reducing 120 to 35, and replacing 14 separate systems with just one. Further benefits followed with the reduction of new product development from a period of months to a matter of weeks. The joint project showed strong co-operation between the two organisations, which delivered impressive results on time. With the business under pressure from regulation, lower profits and industry consolidation, the judges felt that the project fulfilled every winning criteria.
Highly commended – Citigroup & Smartstream
Citigroup teamed up with Smartstream to create a new line of business via its middle-office trade operations service. The service, with Smartstream’s Transaction Lifecycle Management at its core, has allowed Citigroup to build a trade operations hub that can manage client transactions across multiple assets. Using a modular delivery, the business allows clients to adapt the service according to their needs. This provision of customer options, supported by strong technology, made this entry impressive.
APAC IT/BUSINESS ALIGNMENT OF THE YEAR
Winner – Shanghai Pudong Development Bank
This entry made an impression, owing to its successful integration of corporate and retail bank processing on to a single platform from several hundred original systems; the creation of an SMS service for retail customers, including an inquiry function; the first ever certified online banking service by the China Banking Regulatory Commission; large investment into self-service banking that resulted in an increase in transactions of more than 50% on the previous year; and customer experience improvements at point-of-sale that resulted in a rise of more than 100% in total transactions on the previous year. With clear business returns, technology implementations on a large scale and innovative services provided through adoption of IT, this nominee stood out.
Highly commended – Suruga Bank & Fidelity
To improve customer data management and integration of accounting systems, Suruga Bank needed a rapidly-deployed and low-cost system. Based on Fidelity Information Services Corebank module, the Next Generation Financial Services System from IBM was deployed to allow the bank foresight into changes with regard to both customers and markets. In using Java, the core banking system gave the bank suitable scalability without it having to change hardware. This was a major project with measurable business returns.
NORTH AMERICA IT/BUSINESS ALIGNMENT OF THE YEAR
Winner – American Express Bank & Sungard
Built on SunGard EPI intelliTRAN CS, American Express Bank’s eAccess has proven popular with customers, showing a take-up of more than 80% among target customers while boosting new customer acquisition and assisting retention and satisfaction. By pulling together sources of data, customer enquiry servicing is boosted without increasing the number of staff employed, and consequently saving money and time. eAccess was put together by a team from Sungard and AEB over different geographies with a strong vendor-bank relationship.
SOURCING STRATEGY OF THE YEAR
Winner – Barclays and Accenture
Having reviewed how the IT and business processing services were sourced, it was appreciated that an external provider in IT and application development could deliver significant benefits. The project team put together internally-examined potential external offerings and compared these to an internal change programme that was already delivering benefits. The bank was in a unique position – to outsource the function would be beyond the scale of any previous deal in Europe – which often meant the service suppliers had no comparable references. The sourcing strategy used focussed on Order Winning Criteria with a supplier management solution used to ensure commitment to supplier needs. The final result was felt to have satisfied the needs of the bank, the staff union UNIFI (now Amicus) and to have given clear direction to agreed partner Accenture.