FNB South Africa Gains a Global View of Data

First National Bank of South Africa adopts SAS Institute's next-generation Enterprise BI Server and achieves efficiencies across four business unit.
The secret sauce at First National Bank (FNB) of South Africa is an entrepreneurial owner/manager structure that gives departments autonomy and authority in return for operating as profitable business units, according to Robert Schmikl, FNB's manager of strategic credit and risk. Yet even in this culture, he admits, inefficiencies can arise.

"By 2006, four separate departmental analytics environments had grown up," Schmikl explains. "These environments were server-based and drew information from the same warehouse, resulting in a data duplication rate of about 80 percent. Further, the environments were managed by business users rather than trained IT staff."

In early 2007 the Johannesburg-based bank, a subsidiary of FirstRand (Sandton, South Africa; US$119.4 billion in total assets), began the consolidation process by forming a project team comprised of key stakeholders from each of the affected departments as well as Schmikl. "At a corporate level, we can make solutions available to departments, but they elect whether to use them," Schmikl says. "So the challenge wasn't selecting or deploying a technology; it was managing change. Therefore, to maintain continuity, all of the team members would serve from the design phase through implementation and continue on until the migration process was completed."

To start, the team developed a change management framework for the initiative based on author Spencer Johnson's popular work, "Who Moved My Cheese?" Within that allegorical framework, according to Schmikl, technology selection and implementation processes began. "The existing solution in all four departments was the SAS Institute [Cary, N.C.] product Base SAS," he recalls. "Although the team sought other vendor options, the predominant need was enterprise-class data mining, and at that time, the only suitable tool was SAS."

Strength in Numbers

FNB pooled departmental budgets to purchase the SAS Enterprise BI Server solution and the necessary IT infrastructure, as well as to hire a dedicated SAS administrator. For hardware, Schmikl says, "Our CTO was moving the organization toward Linux, so we eventually settled on multiple IBM [Armonk, N.Y.] x3950 enterprise servers running Red Hat [Raleigh, N.C.] Enterprise Linux."

After the hardware environment was installed during late summer 2008, the SAS integration began. By November of the same year the new system went live and each department began migrating onto the platform. By March 2009, Schmikl reports, three of the four original departments had fully migrated onto the system. "The remaining department has now moved most production and labor-intensive processes onto the platform," Schmikl relates. "It's expected that the department will fully migrate when its existing Base SAS server reaches the end of its life [within the next few years]."

In the meantime, data duplication has dropped to zero and efficiencies are adding up, Schmikl says. "Reduced licensing costs allow us to plow those resources back into the environment," he adds. "This has permitted us to invest in additional tools, such as a job scheduler, which was cost-prohibitive at the departmental level before."

In addition, sharing data and programming code is no longer an ad hoc function carried out on USB drives. "Now it's permissions-based and occurs within the environment, which improves operational efficiency while enabling auditing and audit trails," Schmikl notes, stressing that this reduces organizational risk.

FNB will upgrade in early 2011 to the SAS platform's new web-based interface, which will encourage analysts to leverage the solution's metadata, reporting and other capabilities to further automate tasks, Schmikl says. "We'll be migrating from a 32-bit platform to 64-bit. And we'll be expanding storage to accommodate the exponential data growth," he affirms.

"In retrospect," Schmikl adds, "some aspects of the BI journey have taken longer than expected. But ultimately, we're making our organization more efficient and effective than we were before."

FNB South Africa Gains a Global View of Data

First National Bank of South Africa adopts SAS Institute's next-generation Enterprise BI Server and achieves efficiencies across four business unit.
The secret sauce at First National Bank (FNB) of South Africa is an entrepreneurial owner/manager structure that gives departments autonomy and authority in return for operating as profitable business units, according to Robert Schmikl, FNB's manager of strategic credit and risk. Yet even in this culture, he admits, inefficiencies can arise.

"By 2006, four separate departmental analytics environments had grown up," Schmikl explains. "These environments were server-based and drew information from the same warehouse, resulting in a data duplication rate of about 80 percent. Further, the environments were managed by business users rather than trained IT staff."

In early 2007 the Johannesburg-based bank, a subsidiary of FirstRand (Sandton, South Africa; US$119.4 billion in total assets), began the consolidation process by forming a project team comprised of key stakeholders from each of the affected departments as well as Schmikl. "At a corporate level, we can make solutions available to departments, but they elect whether to use them," Schmikl says. "So the challenge wasn't selecting or deploying a technology; it was managing change. Therefore, to maintain continuity, all of the team members would serve from the design phase through implementation and continue on until the migration process was completed."

To start, the team developed a change management framework for the initiative based on author Spencer Johnson's popular work, "Who Moved My Cheese?" Within that allegorical framework, according to Schmikl, technology selection and implementation processes began. "The existing solution in all four departments was the SAS Institute [Cary, N.C.] product Base SAS," he recalls. "Although the team sought other vendor options, the predominant need was enterprise-class data mining, and at that time, the only suitable tool was SAS."

Strength in Numbers

FNB pooled departmental budgets to purchase the SAS Enterprise BI Server solution and the necessary IT infrastructure, as well as to hire a dedicated SAS administrator. For hardware, Schmikl says, "Our CTO was moving the organization toward Linux, so we eventually settled on multiple IBM [Armonk, N.Y.] x3950 enterprise servers running Red Hat [Raleigh, N.C.] Enterprise Linux."

After the hardware environment was installed during late summer 2008, the SAS integration began. By November of the same year the new system went live and each department began migrating onto the platform. By March 2009, Schmikl reports, three of the four original departments had fully migrated onto the system. "The remaining department has now moved most production and labor-intensive processes onto the platform," Schmikl relates. "It's expected that the department will fully migrate when its existing Base SAS server reaches the end of its life [within the next few years]."

In the meantime, data duplication has dropped to zero and efficiencies are adding up, Schmikl says. "Reduced licensing costs allow us to plow those resources back into the environment," he adds. "This has permitted us to invest in additional tools, such as a job scheduler, which was cost-prohibitive at the departmental level before."

In addition, sharing data and programming code is no longer an ad hoc function carried out on USB drives. "Now it's permissions-based and occurs within the environment, which improves operational efficiency while enabling auditing and audit trails," Schmikl notes, stressing that this reduces organizational risk.

FNB will upgrade in early 2011 to the SAS platform's new web-based interface, which will encourage analysts to leverage the solution's metadata, reporting and other capabilities to further automate tasks, Schmikl says. "We'll be migrating from a 32-bit platform to 64-bit. And we'll be expanding storage to accommodate the exponential data growth," he affirms.

"In retrospect," Schmikl adds, "some aspects of the BI journey have taken longer than expected. But ultimately, we're making our organization more efficient and effective than we were before."

Idaho Bank Finds A Balance Between Security and Convenience

bankcda, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, finds the middle way between draconian and laissez-faire security policy enforcement.
Although bankcda, a ten-year-old community bank based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is vigilant about using software tools to protect data, information security officer Stuart Gant says the bank tries to find moderate ground between draconian and laissez-faire security policy enforcement. "It's a delicate balance between security and convenience," Gant says. "Sometimes that means allowing some holes to be open, as long as you can monitor them, or closing some holes because they present too much risk."

The bank thwarted a recent hacking attack with the use of network monitoring software. An outside consultant had accidentally misconfigured SSH access to the bank's firewall, leaving a port wide open. A hacker used an automated tool to guess SSH credentials, but the bank's network monitoring software, TriGeo SIM, detected the aberrant activity, actively blocked the hacker from gaining access and alerted Gant to what was happening, all in real time. "This allowed me to take immediate action to thwart the attack," he says.

The consultant was forgiven. "Nobody's perfect, things happen," Gant says.

Hacking is one of the two types of information security threats Gant worries most about. The other is internal data leakage and inadvertent security violations.

The first step for a hacker, Gant points out, is typically a port scan of a network, to look for open ports. The TriGeo software alerts the bank to any port scans that take place as well as dictionary attacks, in which hackers attempt to guess passwords. "We weren't ever in any danger because we have good credentials and strong passwords," Gant says. "But the fact that they were able to do that was alarming."

The insider threat comes when employees deliberately but not maliciously leak data or violate a security rule. "Some people don't pay attention to policies well, they want to do what they want to do," Gant observes.

To prevent employees removing sensitive files from the bank by saving them to a flash drive, bankcda uses the TriGeo USB-Defender product. "Each computer has an agent on it that launches when the USB device is plugged in," Gant relates. He's created a list of approved devices that can be plugged in; everything else is kicked off automatically. This helped the bank evade the Conficker worm that spread across millions of computers in 2009, partially through the use of thumb drives.

To prevent employees from emailing sensitive files, Gant has limited webmail access; he monitors internal email.

The network monitoring software catches instances of employees downloading software without permission. One person installed Skype, which has many security vulnerabilities for a bank. The system detected the software installation and sent Gant an email. "I was able to respond to it first thing in the morning," he says. "I enjoy the ability to know what's going on in my network, from firewalls to routers to PCs."

The TriGeo appliance is not plug and play, it does take some time and effort to configure but within a few hours he had greater visibility into his network and within a few weeks he had much greater control as well. Gant says the vendor's training was helpful and that he was able to make decisions and set rules and alerts during the training.

But Gant isn't overzealous about rule-setting. "The software has the capability to automatically block an IP address if it detects a port scan," he notes. "However, the way I choose to do it is I watch for port scans and have alerts sent to my phone, so if I see a rash of port scans, I can log into the system from home or log in to my firewall and do a block IP manually." This is because some port scans are directed by someone within the bank and "I don't want the system to go crazy and start blocking all these IP addresses all of a sudden," he says. "I think it's better to exercise some element of human control over it."

BSI Bank Turns to Open Source Content Management System

BSI Bank turns to an open source content management solution to ensure its web presence keeps up with its high-net-worth image.
To ensure its web presence matched its growing profile as a bank focused on high-net-worth clients and wealth management, Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI Bank) in Ticino, Switzerland, needed to enhance its online content delivery capabilities, suggests Gianluco Balo, BSI's head of web communication. In searching for a content management system in 2009, he says, the bank elected to go open source, selecting the Magnolia (Basel, Switzerland) CMS as the backbone of its platform.

"It's not as expensive as other solutions," explains Balo. "And the functionalities it offers are similar."

But going for a lower-cost solution was by no means the bottom line for a bank with US$76 billion in assets. In addition to evaluating Microsoft SharePoint as a solution for in-house collaboration and web content management, BSI "also evaluated other content management systems, some of which were open source," Balo says. "At the end we decided that Magnolia was the one that best fit our needs."

Generally, he adds, Magnolia won because it was simple to use and offered the functionality the bank needed. "It surprised us when we saw the functionality because it was really simple," Balo says. "For a banking environment, where not all the people sharing content have technical skills, it is important that you have something that is user friendly. If not, we would not have reached the objective of the change of CMS."

At the heart of BSI's adoption of the new CMS was a desire to increase collaboration and more smoothly delegate responsibilities across business units to create and publish content to the web, according to Balo, who notes that the bank was working with a four-year-old website and a CMS that created bottlenecks. "Our old website had to be dismissed because of problems with the infrastructure," he says.

Balo's vision of a content management system was something flexible enough as a platform that it could be used for web content management, collaboration on the intranet and project management. At the same time, he adds, his department internally needed "more control over what's published, and wanted to delegate abilities to different areas of the bank, different areas around the world."

But as the bank grew into more of an international business over the past five years, Balo explains, it had established more international offices, and had more people who needed to access the system from more places. Among Magnolia's draws, he points out, are its integrated workflow capabilities, which allow his team to delegate responsibilities yet maintain centralized control of what ultimately gets published to the web.

Keeping it Simple

While content delegation and improved web collaboration were critical for BSI Bank, so was maintaining simplicity throughout the whole process, Balo notes. That extended from the Magnolia CMS' implementation in early 2010, to its ease of use and maintenance.

BSI hosts Magnolia Enterprise on its own web servers, according to Balo. The solution, which is built on the Java Enterprise Edition Platform, allows the bank to combine web content management and document management through a web-based interface; assign metadata and access rights; and publish, store and retrieve documents efficiently. Balo says training users across business lines has been simple and inexpensive. "All they primarily need to do is upload documents," he relates. "It's really easy."

And Balo doesn't forecast big costs on the horizon, even as BSI prepares to launch a redesigned website in March. The Magnolia system has been easy to maintain, even for his small team responsible for web management. "It's not such a big cost," Balo says.

Idaho Bank Finds A Balance Between Security and Convenience

bankcda, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, finds the middle way between draconian and laissez-faire security policy enforcement.
Although bankcda, a ten-year-old community bank based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is vigilant about using software tools to protect data, information security officer Stuart Gant says the bank tries to find moderate ground between draconian and laissez-faire security policy enforcement. "It's a delicate balance between security and convenience," Gant says. "Sometimes that means allowing some holes to be open, as long as you can monitor them, or closing some holes because they present too much risk."

The bank thwarted a recent hacking attack with the use of network monitoring software. An outside consultant had accidentally misconfigured SSH access to the bank's firewall, leaving a port wide open. A hacker used an automated tool to guess SSH credentials, but the bank's network monitoring software, TriGeo SIM, detected the aberrant activity, actively blocked the hacker from gaining access and alerted Gant to what was happening, all in real time. "This allowed me to take immediate action to thwart the attack," he says.

The consultant was forgiven. "Nobody's perfect, things happen," Gant says.

Hacking is one of the two types of information security threats Gant worries most about. The other is internal data leakage and inadvertent security violations.

The first step for a hacker, Gant points out, is typically a port scan of a network, to look for open ports. The TriGeo software alerts the bank to any port scans that take place as well as dictionary attacks, in which hackers attempt to guess passwords. "We weren't ever in any danger because we have good credentials and strong passwords," Gant says. "But the fact that they were able to do that was alarming."

The insider threat comes when employees deliberately but not maliciously leak data or violate a security rule. "Some people don't pay attention to policies well, they want to do what they want to do," Gant observes.

To prevent employees removing sensitive files from the bank by saving them to a flash drive, bankcda uses the TriGeo USB-Defender product. "Each computer has an agent on it that launches when the USB device is plugged in," Gant relates. He's created a list of approved devices that can be plugged in; everything else is kicked off automatically. This helped the bank evade the Conficker worm that spread across millions of computers in 2009, partially through the use of thumb drives.

To prevent employees from emailing sensitive files, Gant has limited webmail access; he monitors internal email.

The network monitoring software catches instances of employees downloading software without permission. One person installed Skype, which has many security vulnerabilities for a bank. The system detected the software installation and sent Gant an email. "I was able to respond to it first thing in the morning," he says. "I enjoy the ability to know what's going on in my network, from firewalls to routers to PCs."

The TriGeo appliance is not plug and play, it does take some time and effort to configure but within a few hours he had greater visibility into his network and within a few weeks he had much greater control as well. Gant says the vendor's training was helpful and that he was able to make decisions and set rules and alerts during the training.

But Gant isn't overzealous about rule-setting. "The software has the capability to automatically block an IP address if it detects a port scan," he notes. "However, the way I choose to do it is I watch for port scans and have alerts sent to my phone, so if I see a rash of port scans, I can log into the system from home or log in to my firewall and do a block IP manually." This is because some port scans are directed by someone within the bank and "I don't want the system to go crazy and start blocking all these IP addresses all of a sudden," he says. "I think it's better to exercise some element of human control over it."

BSI Bank Turns to Open Source Content Management System

BSI Bank turns to an open source content management solution to ensure its web presence keeps up with its high-net-worth image.
To ensure its web presence matched its growing profile as a bank focused on high-net-worth clients and wealth management, Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI Bank) in Ticino, Switzerland, needed to enhance its online content delivery capabilities, suggests Gianluco Balo, BSI's head of web communication. In searching for a content management system in 2009, he says, the bank elected to go open source, selecting the Magnolia (Basel, Switzerland) CMS as the backbone of its platform.

"It's not as expensive as other solutions," explains Balo. "And the functionalities it offers are similar."

But going for a lower-cost solution was by no means the bottom line for a bank with US$76 billion in assets. In addition to evaluating Microsoft SharePoint as a solution for in-house collaboration and web content management, BSI "also evaluated other content management systems, some of which were open source," Balo says. "At the end we decided that Magnolia was the one that best fit our needs."

Generally, he adds, Magnolia won because it was simple to use and offered the functionality the bank needed. "It surprised us when we saw the functionality because it was really simple," Balo says. "For a banking environment, where not all the people sharing content have technical skills, it is important that you have something that is user friendly. If not, we would not have reached the objective of the change of CMS."

At the heart of BSI's adoption of the new CMS was a desire to increase collaboration and more smoothly delegate responsibilities across business units to create and publish content to the web, according to Balo, who notes that the bank was working with a four-year-old website and a CMS that created bottlenecks. "Our old website had to be dismissed because of problems with the infrastructure," he says.

Balo's vision of a content management system was something flexible enough as a platform that it could be used for web content management, collaboration on the intranet and project management. At the same time, he adds, his department internally needed "more control over what's published, and wanted to delegate abilities to different areas of the bank, different areas around the world."

But as the bank grew into more of an international business over the past five years, Balo explains, it had established more international offices, and had more people who needed to access the system from more places. Among Magnolia's draws, he points out, are its integrated workflow capabilities, which allow his team to delegate responsibilities yet maintain centralized control of what ultimately gets published to the web.

Keeping it Simple

While content delegation and improved web collaboration were critical for BSI Bank, so was maintaining simplicity throughout the whole process, Balo notes. That extended from the Magnolia CMS' implementation in early 2010, to its ease of use and maintenance.

BSI hosts Magnolia Enterprise on its own web servers, according to Balo. The solution, which is built on the Java Enterprise Edition Platform, allows the bank to combine web content management and document management through a web-based interface; assign metadata and access rights; and publish, store and retrieve documents efficiently. Balo says training users across business lines has been simple and inexpensive. "All they primarily need to do is upload documents," he relates. "It's really easy."

And Balo doesn't forecast big costs on the horizon, even as BSI prepares to launch a redesigned website in March. The Magnolia system has been easy to maintain, even for his small team responsible for web management. "It's not such a big cost," Balo says.

Eastern Bank Partners With WAUSAU to Create Outsourced Lockbox Partnership

Eastern Bank teams up with WAUSAU Financial Systems to create a unique outsourced lockbox partnership that reduces costs and improves the bank's competitive position.
With its wholesale lockbox infrastructure aging, Eastern Bank faced a challenge during the latter half of 2008. "Although we were bringing on new clients, our volumes were declining due to the financial crisis," explains Barbara Heinemann, Eastern's EVP and CIO. "To improve our competitive posture we needed to add new lockbox features and services, but an internal analysis showed the capital investment for updating our infrastructure was cost-prohibitive."

As Eastern ($7 billion in total assets) began considering outsourcing options in early 2009, its long-time payments solutions partner, Mosinee, Wis.-based WAUSAU Financial Systems, made an intriguing offer. "At that time WAUSAU had an outsourced retail lockbox solution but not wholesale," Heinemann recalls.

"They wanted to get into wholesale and were either going to build a new lockbox operation or acquire an existing operation," she continues. "Since our existing lockbox processing was enabled by WAUSAU's solutions, they approached us with a plan to acquire our operation, including our employees, and upgrade the platform. Then they would provide us with outsourced lockbox processing while growing their business in the market."

According to Heinemann, to evaluate WAUSAU's offer, Eastern explored other outsourcing solutions. Ultimately, it decided to negotiate with WAUSAU, and the companies came to an understanding in early August 2009. While a final contract was hammered out, preparations began, including leasing space to WAUSAU on the first floor of Eastern's Boston headquarters for a completely segregated and secure outsourcing operation.

Once the contract was signed at the end of September 2009, the entire transition was completed by late October, with WAUSAU doing the heavy lifting, Heinemann relates. Not surprisingly, employee uncertainty was the biggest challenge, which Eastern "managed with high sensitivity," she says.

Ultimately, the perks of working for WAUSAU won over the 15 transitioning Eastern employees, Heinemann insists. "Unlike their previous bank location, the noisy processing equipment is now separate from workspaces," she notes. "And all new desktop equipment was installed, along with the updated software platform that WAUSAU implemented. So our former employees became part of a modernized, efficient and expanding operation."

Since Eastern's former lockbox employees had provided customer service, the bank enhanced its call center by training existing staff to handle lockbox calls and establishing service metrics, Heinemann adds. WAUSAU was tasked with monitoring overall customer satisfaction.

Locking in the Rewards

Today, Eastern is reaping the rewards. "Operating costs have declined by more than 17 percent and are now predictable from a management standpoint," reports Heinemann. "At the same time, our resiliency is significantly improved by redundant systems for both operational and disaster recovery. Plus, we retained all of our existing lockbox customers throughout the transition as well as attracting 16 new clients during the first year. And we have over a half dozen others in the pipeline."

In addition, Eastern expanded its image lockbox capacity, permitting clients to receive item images the same day rather than the next business day. "As a result, eight of our existing customers have already upgraded to our new image lockbox capabilities," Heinemann says. "And we're expanding our healthcare clientele because the required EOB [explanation of benefits] document is captured and transmitted electronically."

Further, Eastern is leveraging WAUSAU's remote deposit capture lockbox options to attract and service local clients that have offices outside of the bank's regional area. "We're no longer limited geographically," acknowledges Heinemann.

Going forward, Eastern will evaluate additional capabilities, such as options to assist commercial clients with transitioning to electronic invoicing and payments, Heinemann says. "We've identified customers that might be interested in working with us," she notes. "The first one we approached was very excited about the prospect."

Heinemann adds, "Clearly, adopting an outsourced lockbox solution has increased our competitive posture. In fact, our sales team reports that our position is significantly improved over our competitors."

Eastern Bank Partners With WAUSAU to Create Outsourced Lockbox Partnership

Eastern Bank teams up with WAUSAU Financial Systems to create a unique outsourced lockbox partnership that reduces costs and improves the bank's competitive position.
With its wholesale lockbox infrastructure aging, Eastern Bank faced a challenge during the latter half of 2008. "Although we were bringing on new clients, our volumes were declining due to the financial crisis," explains Barbara Heinemann, Eastern's EVP and CIO. "To improve our competitive posture we needed to add new lockbox features and services, but an internal analysis showed the capital investment for updating our infrastructure was cost-prohibitive."

As Eastern ($7 billion in total assets) began considering outsourcing options in early 2009, its long-time payments solutions partner, Mosinee, Wis.-based WAUSAU Financial Systems, made an intriguing offer. "At that time WAUSAU had an outsourced retail lockbox solution but not wholesale," Heinemann recalls.

"They wanted to get into wholesale and were either going to build a new lockbox operation or acquire an existing operation," she continues. "Since our existing lockbox processing was enabled by WAUSAU's solutions, they approached us with a plan to acquire our operation, including our employees, and upgrade the platform. Then they would provide us with outsourced lockbox processing while growing their business in the market."

According to Heinemann, to evaluate WAUSAU's offer, Eastern explored other outsourcing solutions. Ultimately, it decided to negotiate with WAUSAU, and the companies came to an understanding in early August 2009. While a final contract was hammered out, preparations began, including leasing space to WAUSAU on the first floor of Eastern's Boston headquarters for a completely segregated and secure outsourcing operation.

Once the contract was signed at the end of September 2009, the entire transition was completed by late October, with WAUSAU doing the heavy lifting, Heinemann relates. Not surprisingly, employee uncertainty was the biggest challenge, which Eastern "managed with high sensitivity," she says.

Ultimately, the perks of working for WAUSAU won over the 15 transitioning Eastern employees, Heinemann insists. "Unlike their previous bank location, the noisy processing equipment is now separate from workspaces," she notes. "And all new desktop equipment was installed, along with the updated software platform that WAUSAU implemented. So our former employees became part of a modernized, efficient and expanding operation."

Since Eastern's former lockbox employees had provided customer service, the bank enhanced its call center by training existing staff to handle lockbox calls and establishing service metrics, Heinemann adds. WAUSAU was tasked with monitoring overall customer satisfaction.

Locking in the Rewards

Today, Eastern is reaping the rewards. "Operating costs have declined by more than 17 percent and are now predictable from a management standpoint," reports Heinemann. "At the same time, our resiliency is significantly improved by redundant systems for both operational and disaster recovery. Plus, we retained all of our existing lockbox customers throughout the transition as well as attracting 16 new clients during the first year. And we have over a half dozen others in the pipeline."

In addition, Eastern expanded its image lockbox capacity, permitting clients to receive item images the same day rather than the next business day. "As a result, eight of our existing customers have already upgraded to our new image lockbox capabilities," Heinemann says. "And we're expanding our healthcare clientele because the required EOB [explanation of benefits] document is captured and transmitted electronically."

Further, Eastern is leveraging WAUSAU's remote deposit capture lockbox options to attract and service local clients that have offices outside of the bank's regional area. "We're no longer limited geographically," acknowledges Heinemann.

Going forward, Eastern will evaluate additional capabilities, such as options to assist commercial clients with transitioning to electronic invoicing and payments, Heinemann says. "We've identified customers that might be interested in working with us," she notes. "The first one we approached was very excited about the prospect."

Heinemann adds, "Clearly, adopting an outsourced lockbox solution has increased our competitive posture. In fact, our sales team reports that our position is significantly improved over our competitors."

FCNB Creates Customer-Centric Organization With Core Replacement

First Citizens National Bank modernizes its core systems with Harland Financial Solutions' PhoenixEFE Core, dropping its efficiency ratio to an impressive 47.5 percent and positioning itself for growth.
After 15 years of fighting for market share in its Mason City, Iowa, home market, First Citizens National Bank (FCNB) was at a crossroads. "We grew by mining market share from the larger players," explains Gregg Maakestad, FCNB's SVP and CIO. "To maintain our head-to-head competitive status we needed to challenge and exceed their capabilities." But by 2009 FCNB's item processing and marketing customer information file (MCIF) solutions had become inadequate.

Rather than install point-solutions, FCNB, a subsidiary of First Citizens Financial Corp. ($1.1 billion in total assets) determined that a core systems modernization would provide capabilities beyond just meeting current needs, Maakestad relates. A long-time user of the Phoenix System from Lake Mary, Fla.-based Harland Financial Solutions, FCNB nonetheless conducted due diligence in early 2009. "With every contract cycle we look at all options," notes Maakestad.

"Because Harland is an open-systems vendor that shares all its database tables, we learned the strategic value of leveraging database tables," he adds. "Therefore, we evaluate vendors' willingness to share tables as a significant selection criterion."

In fact, using the tables has become a critical best practice at FCNB. "We use the tables to supplement vendor-supplied reporting and modeling," Maakestad explains. "For example, when Reg E [governing electronic fund transfers] was updated, ... we calculated the impact on our organization's revenue immediately. And we're doing the same now for the Durbin Amendment [regarding debit card fees]."

According to Maakestad, Harland's latest platform, the Microsoft (Redmond, Wash.) .NET-enabled PhoenixEFE Core, was the best solution for FCNB, leading to a late-2009 migration. "Beyond our existing hardware, PhoenixEFE only required setting up two production [IBM] XM servers and two for disaster recovery," Maakestad reports. "There were no show-stoppers in the new core system -- just some minor items [that Harland is improving]."

During 2010 FCNB added Harland's ActiveView Item Processing solutionas well as the vendor's business intelligence tool, Touche Analyzer. And early this year the bank also integrated Touche Messenger, which draws intelligence from Analyzer for targeted multichannel marketing communications. The results have been impressive.

"PhoenixEFE has been key to achieving our current efficiency ratio of 47.5 percent," says Maakestad. "In addition, our item processing is simpler and our read rates have improved 15 percent. Also, the Touche solutions will be vital to moving our services per household from the current 3.493 to our 2011 goal of 3.516." The new platform also enabled FCNB to replace multiple daily ATM and debit card batch processes with near-real-time transactions.

And, over the next couple of years, the modern core will allow the bank to add more online and mobile products to its existing offerings. "As new opportunities mature, we'll jump into them with both feet," Maakestad says. "In short, our new core platform has made us more customer-centric and more efficient, positioning us for future growth."

FCNB Creates Customer-Centric Organization With Core Replacement

First Citizens National Bank modernizes its core systems with Harland Financial Solutions' PhoenixEFE Core, dropping its efficiency ratio to an impressive 47.5 percent and positioning itself for growth.
After 15 years of fighting for market share in its Mason City, Iowa, home market, First Citizens National Bank (FCNB) was at a crossroads. "We grew by mining market share from the larger players," explains Gregg Maakestad, FCNB's SVP and CIO. "To maintain our head-to-head competitive status we needed to challenge and exceed their capabilities." But by 2009 FCNB's item processing and marketing customer information file (MCIF) solutions had become inadequate.

Rather than install point-solutions, FCNB, a subsidiary of First Citizens Financial Corp. ($1.1 billion in total assets) determined that a core systems modernization would provide capabilities beyond just meeting current needs, Maakestad relates. A long-time user of the Phoenix System from Lake Mary, Fla.-based Harland Financial Solutions, FCNB nonetheless conducted due diligence in early 2009. "With every contract cycle we look at all options," notes Maakestad.

"Because Harland is an open-systems vendor that shares all its database tables, we learned the strategic value of leveraging database tables," he adds. "Therefore, we evaluate vendors' willingness to share tables as a significant selection criterion."

In fact, using the tables has become a critical best practice at FCNB. "We use the tables to supplement vendor-supplied reporting and modeling," Maakestad explains. "For example, when Reg E [governing electronic fund transfers] was updated, ... we calculated the impact on our organization's revenue immediately. And we're doing the same now for the Durbin Amendment [regarding debit card fees]."

According to Maakestad, Harland's latest platform, the Microsoft (Redmond, Wash.) .NET-enabled PhoenixEFE Core, was the best solution for FCNB, leading to a late-2009 migration. "Beyond our existing hardware, PhoenixEFE only required setting up two production [IBM] XM servers and two for disaster recovery," Maakestad reports. "There were no show-stoppers in the new core system -- just some minor items [that Harland is improving]."

During 2010 FCNB added Harland's ActiveView Item Processing solutionas well as the vendor's business intelligence tool, Touche Analyzer. And early this year the bank also integrated Touche Messenger, which draws intelligence from Analyzer for targeted multichannel marketing communications. The results have been impressive.

"PhoenixEFE has been key to achieving our current efficiency ratio of 47.5 percent," says Maakestad. "In addition, our item processing is simpler and our read rates have improved 15 percent. Also, the Touche solutions will be vital to moving our services per household from the current 3.493 to our 2011 goal of 3.516." The new platform also enabled FCNB to replace multiple daily ATM and debit card batch processes with near-real-time transactions.

And, over the next couple of years, the modern core will allow the bank to add more online and mobile products to its existing offerings. "As new opportunities mature, we'll jump into them with both feet," Maakestad says. "In short, our new core platform has made us more customer-centric and more efficient, positioning us for future growth."

First Citizens Bank's New Call Center Tech

First Citizens Bank increases its collections department's efficiency using Noble Systems' call center technology.
When Raleigh, N.C.-based First Citizens Bank sought to enhance its collections and recovery capabilities, it emphasized the need to increase efficiency and streamline the process. The family-owned bank, which has $20 billion in assets and more than 440 offices in 17 states and the District of Columbia, ultimately selected the Noble Solution unified customer interaction management suite from Atlanta-based Noble Systems.

"As part of our goal to provide superior service at every point of contact, we identified the need to change the system we used for servicing troubled assets," says John P. Wright III, the bank's group VP for the credit resolution group. "Advances in technology provided the opportunity for First Citizens to reduce expenses associated with servicing troubled assets, enhance recoveries and improve our overall service to our clients. It also allowed us to upgrade to many of the features found in today's call center technology."

Moreover, the bank wanted to increase its efficiency and allow its staff to handle more volume, Wright adds. With the Noble Solution, he says, First Citizens now has outbound predictive dialing; blended inbound, real-time reporting and management; data redundancy; call recording; interactive menus and customer self service; integration to collections systems and custom databases; and an Avaya (Basking Ridge, N.J.) private branch exchange (PBX) interface.

According to Wright, the bank looked at several platforms for the credit resolution group. "I contacted several suppliers of collection center technology," he says. "The process focused on efficiencies and technology features. Noble provided a turnkey solution, which was a significant advantage in terms of efficiency and maintenance." And the Noble solution integrated well with the bank's existing infrastructure, which includes a combination of various databases and software for its collection activities.

First Citizens ordered its initial installation of the Noble system in late-2005, and the software was deployed for the bank's staff in Raleigh within a 90-day time frame, according to Wright. The bank expanded the implementation to two additional sites in South Carolina in 2009 and 2010. First Citizens' Raleigh site has the capacity to support 35 people on the system at one time; the two South Carolina installations of the Noble solution each can accommodate another 10 collections staff.

Giving Customers a Voice

First Citizens' deployment of the Noble solution includes interactive voice response (IVR) and text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities, Wright notes. "IVR and text-to-speech are two features that stand out in terms of efficiencies and production," he says. "Integrating both of these allows our clients to call in and interact with the system. It allows clients to get last payment amounts, last pay dates, due dates and more, on their own.

"The TTS verification allows us to safely and securely provide the client with detailed information regarding the account 24/7," Wright continues. "In addition, Noble's call center solution allows business users to run the system at various times without the need for assistance and provides service to multiple time zones with reasonable cost."

The Noble solution's predictive dialing function takes the burden of busy signals or voicemails off the collectors' hands, Wright adds. If there's no response, he explains, the system takes an appropriate action, such as leaving an automated message or scheduling a follow-up call.

The bank also can track the performance of its own staff. "Knowing they're being tracked, reported and monitored all the time -- that in itself improves the productivity of those staff members," says Dan Donaldson, SVP of sales, Noble Systems.

The system's success for First Citizens' collections operations has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the bank, Wright adds. "The results have been so strong that other areas of the bank have expressed an interest in what my team is doing with the technology," he says.

First Citizens Bank's New Call Center Tech

First Citizens Bank increases its collections department's efficiency using Noble Systems' call center technology.
When Raleigh, N.C.-based First Citizens Bank sought to enhance its collections and recovery capabilities, it emphasized the need to increase efficiency and streamline the process. The family-owned bank, which has $20 billion in assets and more than 440 offices in 17 states and the District of Columbia, ultimately selected the Noble Solution unified customer interaction management suite from Atlanta-based Noble Systems.

"As part of our goal to provide superior service at every point of contact, we identified the need to change the system we used for servicing troubled assets," says John P. Wright III, the bank's group VP for the credit resolution group. "Advances in technology provided the opportunity for First Citizens to reduce expenses associated with servicing troubled assets, enhance recoveries and improve our overall service to our clients. It also allowed us to upgrade to many of the features found in today's call center technology."

Moreover, the bank wanted to increase its efficiency and allow its staff to handle more volume, Wright adds. With the Noble Solution, he says, First Citizens now has outbound predictive dialing; blended inbound, real-time reporting and management; data redundancy; call recording; interactive menus and customer self service; integration to collections systems and custom databases; and an Avaya (Basking Ridge, N.J.) private branch exchange (PBX) interface.

According to Wright, the bank looked at several platforms for the credit resolution group. "I contacted several suppliers of collection center technology," he says. "The process focused on efficiencies and technology features. Noble provided a turnkey solution, which was a significant advantage in terms of efficiency and maintenance." And the Noble solution integrated well with the bank's existing infrastructure, which includes a combination of various databases and software for its collection activities.

First Citizens ordered its initial installation of the Noble system in late-2005, and the software was deployed for the bank's staff in Raleigh within a 90-day time frame, according to Wright. The bank expanded the implementation to two additional sites in South Carolina in 2009 and 2010. First Citizens' Raleigh site has the capacity to support 35 people on the system at one time; the two South Carolina installations of the Noble solution each can accommodate another 10 collections staff.

Giving Customers a Voice

First Citizens' deployment of the Noble solution includes interactive voice response (IVR) and text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities, Wright notes. "IVR and text-to-speech are two features that stand out in terms of efficiencies and production," he says. "Integrating both of these allows our clients to call in and interact with the system. It allows clients to get last payment amounts, last pay dates, due dates and more, on their own.

"The TTS verification allows us to safely and securely provide the client with detailed information regarding the account 24/7," Wright continues. "In addition, Noble's call center solution allows business users to run the system at various times without the need for assistance and provides service to multiple time zones with reasonable cost."

The Noble solution's predictive dialing function takes the burden of busy signals or voicemails off the collectors' hands, Wright adds. If there's no response, he explains, the system takes an appropriate action, such as leaving an automated message or scheduling a follow-up call.

The bank also can track the performance of its own staff. "Knowing they're being tracked, reported and monitored all the time -- that in itself improves the productivity of those staff members," says Dan Donaldson, SVP of sales, Noble Systems.

The system's success for First Citizens' collections operations has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the bank, Wright adds. "The results have been so strong that other areas of the bank have expressed an interest in what my team is doing with the technology," he says.

Indonesian Bank Opens Locations Anywhere with New Core System

Indonesia's Bank BRISyariah leverages Temenos' T24 core systems platform to meet surging demand for Islamic banking and enable agile branch expansion.

Newly formed in late 2008, Indonesia's Bank BRISyariah (BRIS) needed the agility to meet surging demand for products and services compliant with Islam's Sharia law. However, with the legacy core systems developed by its parent, Jakarta-based Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI; US$46 billion in total assets), it took weeks to open new locations, according to Fahmi Ridho, CIO for BRIS. "In addition, branch banking with the legacy systems was decentralized, leading to duplicate customer information files," he says. "We wanted an efficient, centralized system."

The core modernization effort actually began in late 2007, prior to BRIS' launch, when a unit of BRI, Unit Usaha Syariah (UUS), and representatives from the parent company started evaluating about two dozen local and international vendors, Ridho recalls. After narrowing the list to five, three were asked to provide a proof of concept. Key selection criteria included open source code and either established Sharia functionality or the flexibility to easily modify systems appropriately, Ridho reports.

Ultimately, Geneva-based Temenos' T24 system was selected in mid-2008, just before BRIS was officially established. "Temenos' open solution was easy to customize," Ridho explains. "Also, Temenos offered T24 as a pre-configured, parameter-driven model bank solution, with standard products and processes" -- including Sharia banking functionality.

Teams from BRIS and local integrator Anabatic Technologies began development in late November 2008, Ridho relates. To support T24, BRIS invested in an IBM System power6 p550 server and an Oracle Database 10g database. To enable all branches to access the centralized system, Cisco Systems (San Jose, Calif.) infrastructure was deployed, including Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) for WAN optimization.

Not Without challenges

Despite the planning, there were development challenges, Ridho says, including adapting the system to local Sharia practices and ensuring proper data migration. Since every Islamic country translates the Sharia methodology differently, he says, the template Temenos provided for Sharia banking wasn't completely suitable for Indonesia. "Having a local integration vendor partner helped us fulfill our market's requirements," Ridho emphasizes.

And when migration began in the summer of 2009, the distribution of data across multiple legacy systems caused several migration attempts to fail, pushing the data migration process across six months, Ridho notes. But, by late 2009, all development, migration and testing processes were complete, he reports.

And after cutting over to the new system on Jan. 1, 2010, using the big-bang method, BRIS immediately began reaping rewards, Ridho adds. "With T24, we can open a branch, outlet or even a temporary tabletop location in one to two days," he says.

"Also, using Cisco's WAAS with 50 percent compression enables T24 to work twice as fast," Ridho continues. "Consequently, we can use a range of network communication options because distant locations only need a minimum of 64 kilobits in bandwidth. In other words, we can operate locations using anything from a modem on a notebook computer to standard telecommunications infrastructure supporting multiple workstations."

In addition, the flexible core system permits IT to design workflows to fit end users' needs, rather than the other way around, Ridho says. "Temenos is changing our paradigm," he insists. "Before, business users were forced to follow workflows defined by the legacy system. Now we can adapt T24 to fit the process needs of our users."

Most important, BRIS is gaining competitive advantage while improving efficiencies. "Because we can now automate almost every banking process, we can maintain lean IT and operational organizations," Ridho says of his 50-person IT staff.

"We've reduced development time by 40 percent, allowing us to strategically reallocate programming resources," he adds. "As a result, we're not only able to achieve rapid business transformation, our bank is also growing at double the target rate, giving us the edge compared to similar banks."

Indonesian Bank Opens Locations Anywhere with New Core System

Indonesia's Bank BRISyariah leverages Temenos' T24 core systems platform to meet surging demand for Islamic banking and enable agile branch expansion.

Newly formed in late 2008, Indonesia's Bank BRISyariah (BRIS) needed the agility to meet surging demand for products and services compliant with Islam's Sharia law. However, with the legacy core systems developed by its parent, Jakarta-based Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI; US$46 billion in total assets), it took weeks to open new locations, according to Fahmi Ridho, CIO for BRIS. "In addition, branch banking with the legacy systems was decentralized, leading to duplicate customer information files," he says. "We wanted an efficient, centralized system."

The core modernization effort actually began in late 2007, prior to BRIS' launch, when a unit of BRI, Unit Usaha Syariah (UUS), and representatives from the parent company started evaluating about two dozen local and international vendors, Ridho recalls. After narrowing the list to five, three were asked to provide a proof of concept. Key selection criteria included open source code and either established Sharia functionality or the flexibility to easily modify systems appropriately, Ridho reports.

Ultimately, Geneva-based Temenos' T24 system was selected in mid-2008, just before BRIS was officially established. "Temenos' open solution was easy to customize," Ridho explains. "Also, Temenos offered T24 as a pre-configured, parameter-driven model bank solution, with standard products and processes" -- including Sharia banking functionality.

Teams from BRIS and local integrator Anabatic Technologies began development in late November 2008, Ridho relates. To support T24, BRIS invested in an IBM System power6 p550 server and an Oracle Database 10g database. To enable all branches to access the centralized system, Cisco Systems (San Jose, Calif.) infrastructure was deployed, including Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) for WAN optimization.

Not Without challenges

Despite the planning, there were development challenges, Ridho says, including adapting the system to local Sharia practices and ensuring proper data migration. Since every Islamic country translates the Sharia methodology differently, he says, the template Temenos provided for Sharia banking wasn't completely suitable for Indonesia. "Having a local integration vendor partner helped us fulfill our market's requirements," Ridho emphasizes.

And when migration began in the summer of 2009, the distribution of data across multiple legacy systems caused several migration attempts to fail, pushing the data migration process across six months, Ridho notes. But, by late 2009, all development, migration and testing processes were complete, he reports.

And after cutting over to the new system on Jan. 1, 2010, using the big-bang method, BRIS immediately began reaping rewards, Ridho adds. "With T24, we can open a branch, outlet or even a temporary tabletop location in one to two days," he says.

"Also, using Cisco's WAAS with 50 percent compression enables T24 to work twice as fast," Ridho continues. "Consequently, we can use a range of network communication options because distant locations only need a minimum of 64 kilobits in bandwidth. In other words, we can operate locations using anything from a modem on a notebook computer to standard telecommunications infrastructure supporting multiple workstations."

In addition, the flexible core system permits IT to design workflows to fit end users' needs, rather than the other way around, Ridho says. "Temenos is changing our paradigm," he insists. "Before, business users were forced to follow workflows defined by the legacy system. Now we can adapt T24 to fit the process needs of our users."

Most important, BRIS is gaining competitive advantage while improving efficiencies. "Because we can now automate almost every banking process, we can maintain lean IT and operational organizations," Ridho says of his 50-person IT staff.

"We've reduced development time by 40 percent, allowing us to strategically reallocate programming resources," he adds. "As a result, we're not only able to achieve rapid business transformation, our bank is also growing at double the target rate, giving us the edge compared to similar banks."