John Macaluso
CTO, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Marketing
Fiserv CBS Worldwide

Establishing a services-oriented architecture (SOA) is high on the agenda of most bank CIOs. The promise of SOA’s loosely-coupled, tightly-integrated mantra is a more agile IT infrastructure that allows banks to respond to new growth opportunities rapidly while enabling broader leverage of their IT investments across the enterprise.

We’ve seen some industry progress toward SOA in recent years but most institutions still struggle with disconnected software applications that are purpose-built for a particular line of business, channel or function, and are minimally integrated with other systems and difficult to leverage. This is in spite of the fact that many of these applications access similar data objects (like customer profiles and account data) and often handle common functions (like updating a customer’s address or recording contact history). The impacts of this problem are wide-ranging: excessive IT costs, operational inefficiencies and even poor customer experience. These impacts hinder both short-term profits and longer term growth prospects for banks.

Fiserv CBS Worldwide started down the SOA path long before it was fashionable, exposing core banking functionality and commonly-used third party services such as credit bureaus through XML messages that are accessed by different applications across lines of business, departments and delivery channels. We started building our services bus, a solution called Communicator, on a Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server platform in 2001. We later upgraded the code from C to C# .NET for improved performance and flexibility and have since adopted Web services.

More recently we’ve been focused on moving from function-based services and applications to process-based services and applications. We have introduced Fiserv Aperio, a process automation and customer interaction management solution that is also built on .NET for a Microsoft Windows and SQL platform. We’ve been using Aperio to aggregate those discreet, granular services exposed by Communicator and other systems into logical business processes that can be delivered to bank users through Aperio’s branch, call center and back-office modules and, in many customer implementations, we’ve also exposed these processes as Web services. These process-oriented Web services are then leveraged by other applications across internal departments and customer-facing channels without having to re-construct the process logic each time. This delivers a higher level of reuse and consistency. Where customer-facing processes are leveraged across customer touchpoints, this consistency makes for a better customer experience and supports banks’ desire for multi-channel integration. And of course bank auditors and compliance officers appreciate the consistent enforcement of regulatory requirements and the audit trail that comes with this approach.

In determining architectural priorities we’re encouraging our clients to think how they can leverage process-oriented services not just function-oriented services across their enterprise. And as we bring new banking software solutions to market we’re focused on delivering process-based applications that can easily consume services from and deliver services to other applications.

Michael D. Nicastro
Senior Vice President – Marketing and Product Management
Open Solutions Inc.

Retail bankers should not underestimate the importance of technology in achieving either their short-term or long-term business objectives. Technology is not a utility or a cost center; it is a key part of any institution’s strategy for success in a highly competitive marketplace and must be seen as an investment. While most banks have ATMs, online banking, call centers, etc., it is how they use technology in these channels to better serve their customers that matters.

The Marketing, Operations and IT departments do not operate in a vacuum – they must work together to offer the right product to the right customer at the right time. It takes a powerful core data processing system and CRM/business intelligence program that are properly applied to be able to deliver these timely customer-appropriate offers. Our most successful clients have managed to change their cultures and break down their intradepartmental silos. In many ways, they have enjoyed success by using technology to blend the front office and back office in a customer focused manner.

A winning approach that crosses departments within the bank is one that is completely centered on relationships, not transactions. Front-line staff needs a full view of the bank’s clients in real-time straight from their core system, not outdated information that has been offloaded to another system. From our inception, we have delivered the only data processing system that is a fully-featured strategic product platform that integrates relationship-based core data processing with strategic applications such as Internet banking, business intelligence, financial accounting applications, electronic imaging, IVR, and payment solutions.

This last item is key because any long-term banking strategy must have payments at its heart. ACH, debit/credit cards, EBPP, Check 21 and other electronic payment streams have transformed the industry, and financial institutions must integrate their core system and all of their operations into these payment streams or risk being disintermediated by third parties or other financial services firms. We believe that we have the information management product platform that enables banks to integrate electronic payments and meet their long-term and short-term business goals.

• Edward Woods, Senior Analyst – Banking, Celent, LLC
• John Macaluso, CTO, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Marketing, Fiserv CBS Worldwide
• Michael D. Nicastro, Senior Vice President – Marketing and Product Management, Open Solutions Inc.
• Brian C. Hurdis, President, Metavante Image Solutions
• Tom Berdan, Vice President, Product Management, Harland Financial Solutions
• Steve Buchberger, Senior Vice President – Payment Solutions, WAUSAU
• Kirk Herrington, President and Founder, GaleForce Solutions Inc.
  
• Greg Haislip, Managing Director – Banking, Microsoft Corporation
  
• Kevin H. Connelly, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, Financial Services Group, Trintech, Inc.
• Paul Citarella, Executive Vice President, Alogent Corporation
  
• David Hampton, Managing Director, Financial Business Solutions, Getronics