Bank’s Commitment to Data Means Continuous Realized Value

Challenge – “We couldn’t modernize the bank”

Our client, a leading financial institution, realized they had an overall data issue – there were more than 25 terabytes of data in 1,600 systems within the bank. The bank wasn’t sure of the data quality, or even how it was flowing within the organization. 

 

Old legacy systems made it impossible for the bank to automate or optimize processes for even the most basic transactions. For example, if a new client walked into the bank and opened an account, the bank couldn’t onboard the client to the digital platform for an hour as it waited for a batch process to go through. This often resulted in the client leaving before the onboarding could be completed – resulting in a lost customer.  

 

Every initiative to modernize the bank failed to deliver its promised value, because for a bank (and really most organizations) data is at the heart of delivering value, and you can’t deliver that value with data that’s not properly organized. The bank’s leadership agreed that it would not be able to compete in the world unless it dealt with its modernization challenges. They produced a solution that they believed would be a differentiating factor and give the bank a unique competitive advantage: Become the best digital bank in the industry through a transactional Master Data Management (MDM) platform for client data. 

 

Action – An ongoing journey

The bank foresaw a multi-year journey to modernize and create a Master Client Profile (MCP) as its MDM platform – a full transactional customer master hub. They decided to go with the MDM Advanced Edition suite through IBM and needed developers to help with the development framework – the client learned that this skill is a rare expertise in the industry. IBM highly recommended Prolifics. 

 

Phase 1: MDM architecture consulting and implementation

The bank and Prolifics recognized that the most complicated part was to build the “new world” while maintaining the old world intact. The companies knew from the beginning that the MDM transition would not be a “big bang,” but done iteratively, starting small and growing. The key was to build a transition roadmap, stay on track, sustain existing customers while enabling future customers, all while adding value and transforming the bank. 

 

Prolifics experts started with commercial banking, which saw an immediate benefit of improving client uniqueness from 23 percent to 95 percent. Then the team transitioned various customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, including SAP. It’s important to note here that many people outside the bank/Prolifics team thought that having SAP under IBM’s MDM was impossible – but it proved to be successful.  

 

Phase 2: Expansion and integration

Building upon the initial successes, Phase 2 focused on expanding the MDM system to include additional financial and operational systems. Prolifics integrated MDM with Salesforce to trigger workflows whenever profiles were added or updated, leveraging business process management (BPM) capabilities. The BPM workflow was customized for the data owners and allowed for information flow to other departments for their specific tasks. This phase also involved enhancements to ensure seamless integration with the bank’s core banking system for retail customers and synchronization with the bank’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS) system user interface (UI) and database. Prolifics developed nine additional services to retrieve retail customer data from MDM and facilitate further integration with SAP. 

 

Ongoing: Managed services and continuous improvement

After the successful phase completions, our client has transitioned to a managed services model. Prolifics continues to support the bank by augmenting the teams responsible for maintaining the MDM solution. This model ensures ongoing support, facilitates the implementation of enhancements, and accommodates the addition of new data sources to the MDM ecosystem. 

 

Result – A foundation for a digital bank you can’t do without

There are several examples of how the bank is utilizing the MDM foundation created with Prolifics help (see below). However, in the bigger picture, the MDM will be “the gift that keeps on giving.” With robust customer data in one place, there’s an endless amount of flexibility and possibility, which the different lines of business will take advantage of as the MDM becomes increasingly connected. So, the biggest benefit is that the bank personnel will now have the same information on all the platforms that have been connected to the MDM. In terms of process efficiency and trusting the data, this is a huge advantage. The bank has realized many benefits, including: 

• Consistency and access – In the bank’s private banking service, they previously had to create the profile of a prospective client in one system through the onboarding, then go to another system to create company data and do compliance. Now, the profile is created in one place, and it’s already present for other uses and needs. The bank’s personnel don’t have to re-key the information or create duplicates. 
• Efficiency – Over time, the bank generated up to 7,000 duplicates for companies. That’s been resolved through connection with the new MDM platform. 
• Trusted data – The bank has managed to eliminate almost 100 percent of free text within the data model. With concentrated, structured data and centralized rules, building algorithms and using artificial intelligence (AI) will provide valuable insights. 

 

Technology – IBM MDM Advanced Edition

IBM MDM Advanced Edition enables multiple MDM styles and domains to work together to provide a comprehensive set of capabilities to meet the demanding MDM requirements. Built-in tools help streamline the planning and addition of physical capabilities: 

• Features highly accurate probabilistic matching and search 
• Supports multiple implementation styles 
• Includes comprehensive pre-built and extensible data models and business services 
• Supports large transaction loads and high-availability environments 
• Helps improve data quality by implementing policies and processes to coordinate multistep and multi-role workflow for data governance 
• Features a comprehensive security model to help you manage access and actions 

 

About Prolifics   

At Prolifics, the work we do with our clients matters. Whether it’s literally keeping the lights on for thousands of families, improving access to medical care, helping prevent worldwide fraud or protecting the integrity and speed of supply chains, innovation and automation are significant parts of our culture. While our competitors throw more bodies at a project, we apply automation to manage costs, reduce errors and deliver your results faster. We accelerate your journey throughout the digital environment – Data & AI, Integration & Applications, Business Automation, DevXOps, and Test Automation. We treat our digital deliverables like a customized product, with agile practices to deliver immediate, ongoing increases in value.  

 

Learn more about our Banking and Finance industry expertise and our Data and AI experience.