Integration solutions for the mass-market financial provider
Implementing a solution that provides reliable and secure, yet high-volume, data delivery has always been a concern for large banking organisations such as Indonesia’s Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI). BRI serves micro, small and middle-sized businesses whilst putting an emphasis on delivering excellent customer service. In this article Sterling Commerce Financial Services Solutions Manager, Richard Spong, describes how integration solutions help financial organisations such as BRI achieve their business aims and remain competitive in a demanding market, cost effectively.
Increasingly sophisticated business process solutions have enabled significant progress in automating the transfer of transactions and business information between different systems and departments, across widely distributed financial enterprises, and ultimately between separate finance organisations.
Great advances are being made in the areas of automatic content analysis, data reconciliation, effective exception handling, and data translation between applications.
Peer-to-peer data integration middleware can be optimised for assured delivery, high-volume and secure data exchange. Integration and collaboration systems incorporating automated data and format translation services can move files containing any type of data across multiple platforms, disparate file systems and disparate media.
Generally, taking advantage of an integrated and process–oriented infrastructure will allow organisations to reduce error and maximise business profitability.
Mission Critical in Indonesia – the Bank Rakyat Indonesia example
BRI is an example of the financial industry’s position as an early adopter of advanced technology solutions in Indonesia. The bank was among the first to realise that the appropriate use of e-business solutions from reputable and experienced vendors can help improve customer service levels and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of IT systems, through stronger back-end to front-end integration.
BRI is one of the oldest and most established banks in Indonesia, with a history dating back to 1895. Its focus from the start has always been on delivering the best banking services possible to micro, small and medium sized business – especially in the agriculture segment.
The bank is characterised by its specific target market and high number of disparate business locations across Indonesia - as General Manager, information technology at RBI, David Malligan puts it, “we have consistently tailored our services to meet the needs of the low income group in the community. Our main focus has been on providing loans to small businesses. Along with the rapid development in the banking industry, BRI now has 4,447 working units across Indonesia.”
Regular reliable reporting
With a wide network ranging from city branches to village service points, BRI required a solution that would ensure the reliable and secure transfer of data and reports between the head office and its ancillary locations.
In describing the technology needs of the bank, in relation to its customer base and customer service objectives, Malligan says “we required fully reliable software that we could be sure would deliver mission-critical reports to our branch offices in a timely and bandwidth-efficient manner.”
Dealing with potential exceptions in an intelligent and efficient way was also a strong concern: “we were looking for a solution intelligent enough to detect and manage any communications or server errors and resume the data transfer from the point of failure - not from the start all over again,” says Malligan. “As well as these reporting and visibility functions we also needed management data that we could use to understand the status of completion of activities. Our previous software didn’t provide these facilities or features.”
Malligan’s team researched for the solution that could deliver all of this, and after extensive evaluation of several options, BRI decided to deploy the Connect® solution from Sterling Commerce, a scalable, platform independent and a highly automated integration solution, “We evaluated several products and found that Sterling Commerce was the best from our internal evaluation. For a start, using Sterling Commerce Connect® means the branch manager’s daily reports are reliably and consistently delivered – which effectively enables this key operational staff to manage his branch activities and customers. This removes one major headache for us to worry about.”
Streamlined operations, improved staff efficiency
At BRI, the investment in the Sterling Commerce solution is expected to have a positive impact on the bank’s business, both internally and externally. The improved reliability and reduction in communication errors will reduce manpower requirements, and staff can be better deployed to other tasks. Malligan comments: “We expect that Sterling Commerce’s solution will streamline our operations and improve staff efficiency. Fewer staff will be required to manage the system compared to the current situation where a lot of time is spent doing follow-up manually to retransmit report files which do not get through the first time. This will also reduce impact on the branch network during business hours.”
BRI has therefore taken the steps to deal with business process issues in a cost-effective and efficient manner. As the banking industry gains in structure and power across Indonesia, banks will find it necessary to look at their internal and external communications systems more and more to address potential collaboration, file transfer and communication issues. As the financial services industry becomes increasingly competitive, only banks like BRI, which invest in the right solutions, will be in a prime position to survive and thrive in the future.
Integration in the financial services sector
In many industries throughout the world companies are discovering that the path to revenue growth is situated in the spaces between enterprises, and that closer collaboration amongst business and trading partners is the way to realise competitive advantage.
By implementing integration and collaboration systems, banks not only can provide the means to enable closer working across wide branch networks, but also with partners across business and continents. Integration software provides the ideal platform for automating the movement of large volumes of data and for connecting to remote offices and business partners over the Internet.
What’s more, integration systems can also provide a basis on which to build new technologies and processes, as and when necessary and as needs evolve, to help companies gain visibility into the key business processes and data upon which strategic business decisions depend.
Typical applications of software such as that used by RBI can also include the mirroring of business critical data on a disaster recovery site to minimise loss of information in the event of a catastrophe and the synchronisation of data between data stores for legacy applications and ERP/CRM.
Entry Filed under: SUPPLIER AND TECHNOFIN®, Financial Technology, Online Banking, Online Trading