"Datawatch delivered a solution that did exactly what they said it would do - provide immediate electronic operational reporting from several data sources through the Intelligent Finance Intranet so our operational staff could connect products with our customers."

When the Halifax Group decided to establish Intelligent Finance as the first true stand-alone direct bank, it was a decision that would not only revolutionise the manner customers would conduct their business with a bank, but it would also revolutionise the technology used inside a bank.

Intelligent Finance opened for business on 29th September 2000 and became the first UK bank to allow customers to connect their banking products and provide complete freedom of choice. Intelligent Finance customers can choose to reduce the cost of the money they borrow - whether it be their outstanding credit card balance, a personal loan or their mortgage - down to 0% APR. Or they can also choose to increase the amount they earn on savings or current accounts to the same rate as their borrowings - up to 10.5% APR. What's more, these products are accessible over the telephone, the Internet, WAP and GPRS.

The Intelligent Finance plan allows its various elements to be connected so the customer benefits from the best interest rates. For Intelligent Finance to deliver its products, operational staff within the bank had to be able to connect to multiple information views about customer status, history and product information in real-time and on-line. This meant that Intelligent Finance needed a unique IT enterprise to support the delivery of their banking products to their customers.

Like most banks, Intelligent Finance runs separate systems for its products: a credit card system from EDS; the current account system is jointly managed with the Halifax; and a Mortgage, Savings and Loans system from Lynx. These systems provide the operational reports needed to manage its products and transact with its customers. Immediately Intelligent Finance encountered an issue: if the customer can connect products to work with each other, then Intelligent Finance's operational staff also need to connect operational information relating to the customer and the products in an easy-to-use solution - that could also be delivered over the Intranet.

For this unique customer offering to be successful, operational staff had to be provided with the information they needed in "connected" views to respond to customers' enquiries, otherwise the Intelligent Finance proposition could not be delivered in a connected format.

Connected Product Plan Requires Connected Information Delivery

Julie McClelland, Implementation Director at Intelligent Finance, turned to Datawatch. Monarch|ES, the Datawatch solution, was implemented because of its proven ability to integrate the output of disparate reporting systems and provide operational information in usable formats and views. Monarch|ES is an information delivery solution that is able to take multiple report file formats, hold them in a repository, apply logical indexes and models and deliver report views to business users that are easy to use and essential to supporting any decision making process. Delivery of reports can be facilitated across any network or over an Intranet, Extranet or Internet with the Monarch|ES Report Portal.

Intelligent Finance employ 1,500 staff at their head office in Edinburgh and their operational centre at Livingston so the demand for easy-to-analyse and easy-to-action product and customer information was critical to a successful launch. Monarch|ES provided the bridge to connect the information output from the product systems to the desktop of their financial consultants working in the customer service centre.

Commented Julie McClelland, "Datawatch have been pivotal in the success of this project. Their consultants ensured the integration of the Monarch|ES Report Portal with our operational processes and delivered the report information the business needed to be able to transact with its customers."

Connected Decision Support, Connected Products, Connected Customers

Datawatch consultants deployed Monarch|ES against the product systems. Once the outputs had been captured and aligned to the information requirements "going live" was simply a matter of making these operational report views available for query and download via the bank's Intranet using standard web browser technology via the Report Portal. Users can search, retrieve and view these reports on their desktop, or simply receive summarised views of the data.

Monarch|ES now provides over 200 selected report views from the Intelligent Finance product portfolio and customer records.

Connected Benefits - Right Here, Right Now!

What has always differentiated Datawatch has been the ability of its consultants to manage projects and assist its customers in building business case and return on investment calculations. For Intelligent Finance this was less of an issue, being a new business venture of the Halifax Group, everything was new but like every business it was still a necessity to understand where cost savings and efficiencies would be achieved.

The technology deployed and the need for electronic delivery of information immediately meant that the cost benefits of using Monarch|ES could be identified against more traditional banking environments. Electronic delivery of report information immediately reduced the costs associated with print production - paper, printer consumables, floor space for printing, distribution and hard copy report archiving.

The cost savings associated with print production were significantly enhanced by the productivity benefits to endusers. They would no longer have the laborious task of sorting and distributing hard copy reports, of manually searching through reports to filter information, of having to re-key information from reports to spreadsheets for further manipulation and analysis, and finally of manually archiving hard copy reports only to have to manually search for those hard copy archived reports at a later date.

The productivity benefits were outweighed by the operational benefits. Quite simply for the Intelligent Finance product plan to be a competitive proposition, operational staff needed immediate information to transact with its customers. Monarch|ES provided an effective solution to operational staff who found they had the immediate ability to sort reports by product plan ID, immediate accuracy to make informed decisions and smart web based tools to support the image of the bank as a web based e-commerce bank.

Concluded Julie McClelland, Implementation Director at Intelligent Finance, "Datawatch delivered a solution that did exactly what they said it would do - provide immediate electronic operational reporting from several data sources through the Intelligent Finance Intranet so our operational staff could connect products with our customers."

Halifax Group: Intelligent Finance Achieves Connected View of Customer Base (PDF)