| The client is a Fortune 25 financial conglomerate with an annual revenue of U.S. $125 billion. The client is a global banking firm that serves the complex needs of its clients (including corporations, governments, institutional investors, and high net worth individuals) through a sophisticated and integrated range of advisory, financing, trading, investment, and related capabilities. |
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| Due to many mergers/acquisitions, the client had systems that provided similar functionalities, especially in the area of managing client information. This led to different legacy systems managing the same client information. The multiple sources of data, multiple technology platforms, and lack of client data standards resulted in: |
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- Poor quality of data
- Inefficient integration of client data
- Costly rework and errors
- Lack of ownership of data
- Time consuming and inefficient consolidated client reporting
- Difficulty in accessing client exposure in a crisis situation
- Redundant costs for system maintenance
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| As a result, the maintenance as well as consolidation of client information into a single global view became difficult. |
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| The proposed Client Central system would facilitate the process of consolidation and management of all client-related information. This system, as envisioned by the client, would have a centralized operating model and supporting technology to capture, share, and ensure quality client reference data across businesses in the most efficient and cost-effective model. Some of the goals of the new system would be: |
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- Real-time consolidated client profile
- Single customer identifier
- Capture of client information at the source and real-time distribution to related applications
- Centralized timely processing of corporate actions
- Firm-wide client view of relationships and product accounts
- Flexibility to meet cross-business requirements
- Efficiency and data integrity
- Operational integrity
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| The new system being developed by Cognizant is a three-tier system with a thin browser for user interactions. This architecture is intended to allow any of the three tiers to be upgraded or replaced independently as requirements or technology change. It will lend flexibility, scalability, portability, and ease of maintenance to the business functionality of the systems developed using this approach. The middle tier will host the application and process the complex business logic. The third tier will be the persistence tier that hosts the data model. This approach will simplify upgrades because the application server will be maintained in a centralized place and therefore, it will not be necessary to distribute the new application to fix the logic. The solution architecture is as follows: |
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| The new system will provide screens to set up new clients and manage client data. Apart from the user interface, the system will also have the capability to accept and process client data coming from external interfaces (MQ Series, Flat files, and XML messages). The client's central data will reside on an Oracle database. The Business layer will be built using Java and EJB components deployed on IBM WebSphere. The system will include an integrated workflow component implemented using IBM MQ Workflow. The primary purpose of the workflow component will be to drive client on-boarding (set up) and client reference data maintenance with appropriate verification, approvals, and notifications, as required. The system will also have a rules engine to validate business rules, and perform address and client compliance validations. User access security will be controlled using IBM Policy Director, and the application permission structure will be based on three levels, that is, role, function, and field level. |
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| The new system will become the authoritative source for client information within the enterprise. This will eventually replace all the legacy systems currently managing client data. The benefits of the new system will include: |
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- Automation and Accuracy - Using the new system, it will be possible to automate the integration of data between various applications and legacy systems. Automatic generation of notifications and routing and approval of documents by using MQ workflow will reduce processing time to a great extent. One firm-wide view to the client data and a single customer identifier will provide a consolidated view of the client information to the users of the system.
- Accessibility - The new solution's presentation tier will be a Web interface that allows easy access to client data from any Web browser.
- Flexibility and Scalability - The three-tier architecture is intended to allow any of the tiers to be upgraded or replaced independently as requirements or technology change. This brings in flexibility to respond to changing business needs over a period of time.
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"In North American Applications Outsourc
-ing, Cognizant edges out offshore competition in the current offering, primarily on the strength of strong client reference scores"
The Forrester Wave™:
North American Applications Outsourcing, Q1 2007, Forrester Research, Inc., March 26, 2007 |
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