Wachovia Bank wants three things for its external customers, said Jesse Fearrington, director of cross-channel solutions in retail and channel technology.

“We want consistency. Regardless of which channel they come to us on, we want them to get the same information. The channels have grown up with their own sets of logic so in some cases we are providing inconsistent information, even in account balances,” Fearington said.

Next: “Customer choice. We want the customer to be able to choose whichever channel they are comfortable with, and we want to offer the same products and capabilities across the channels,” he said.

“And in long running transactions, like a loan application, we want the customer to be able to start in one channel, like the Internet, and finish in another. Now, if they start on the Internet and want to finish in a call center or a branch, they have to start from scratch,” he said.

With its retail branch banking system on ARGO, Corillian for Internet banking, and Microsoft on its desktops, Wachovia has the latest in retail banking applications.

Now it is focused on building a hub where cross-channel services will reside. The channels will tap into the hub through Web services.

The bank plans to lift business services out of the channel applications and move them to a shared execution environment, said Mike Mosier, director for architecture and integration. “Our integration hub will house the shared business services and handle integration to the back-end systems of record, which are mostly on mainframes. We see this as an opportunity to reduce costs; our channels represent a large portion of our IT spend in lines of business,” Mosier said.