Banking and Financial
Challenge
z US Bank was rapidly expanding its payment service offerings in a time when
local technical manpower was in it’s highest demand. The lack of resource availability in Minneapolis was causing severe backlog in the development teams.
SES Solution
z US Bank engaged SES to build out and manage a remote development center
that housed as many as 125 resources.
z SES provided legacy system outsourcing, project outsourcing, data
warehousing, and web service development.
z SES managed as many as 35 concurrent project efforts every three months,
spanning over 20 different organizations, across 7 geographic locations.
z SES managed Global International Projects and outsourced QA Testing for
Nova Merchant Systems (a subsidiary company of US Bank).
Benefits
z US Bank’s project throughput increased nearly 250% allowing it to become a
Banking and Financial
Challenge
z US Bank needed support services for a number of major “legacy” applications
(listed below); as well as the development and integration of their B2B and B2C applications.
SES Solution
z SES provided a J2EE-compliant environment, based on Java, Rational, Web
Sphere and MQ Series, with full integration to US Bank’s legacy systems (primarily IBM “blue”).
z In addition to providing Business Analysts, Developers, QA Testers, and
Production Support personnel, SES provided project management and
coordination with over 20 other applications, across 7 geographic locations, in its remote development center located in Inverness, Colorado.
Benefits
z US Bank was able to meet market demand in the infancy stages of the internet
web-enable payment and card services space, capturing a strong market-share of the fastest growing segment of the industry as a first in-market provider.
Banking and Financial
Challenge
z US Bancorp required release enhancement, development, and implementation
support for the government credit card service of US Bancorp (IMPAC).
z Each release comprised of multiple projects targeting specific service-line
improvements or replacements.
z The projects varied in size from small enhancements (approximately 300 man
hours) to full service-line improvements of 1,000 man hours.
SES Solution
z SES consultants provided an outsourced support concept for these online
systems as well as production support for assigned batch applications.
Benefits
z This initiative freed up critical US Bank resources to deliver their second
generation of government payment systems, which allowed US Bank to maintain its positioning in the lucrative government payment space.
Banking and Financial
Challenge
z US Bank required work on the Merchant Conversion Project that converted an
existing Merchant VSAM system to a relational database (DB2), while
enhancing the base set of applications to allow for future growth and improving the functionality of transaction processing.
SES Solution
z SES provided development and implementation support for the centralized
database of US Bancorp (CDB). This database served all applications focusing on customer care support via the internet.
z Projects included implementing the DB2 database as well as the development
of internet applications.
z SES also assisted US Bank in bringing its first full-scale J2EE three-tiered
architecture development factory on line by building out the process and the resources needed to move to this environment.
Benefits
z This effort allowed US Bancorp Services to rapidly expand its product offerings
Banking and Financial
Overview
z SES has provided strategic consulting and development services to Freddie Mac for
over 18 years and focused on delivery of Data Warehousing initiatives and re-statement activity.
Challenge
z Freddie Mac is one of the nation’s largest processors of home mortgage loans.
Freddie Mac must manage very high volumes of transactional data, and must also maintain a level of excellence in data analytics for portfolio management, risk
management, customer demographics, and financial information. Because of this, data management is a critical component of their Business and IT strategy.
SES Solution
z SES provided Strategic Consulting, DW/BI/ETL Analysis and Development, Process
Analysis and Improvement, Data Analysis and Assessment. In addition, SES utilized its Guaranteed Sunsetting approach to maintain and assure efficiency in the table marts and warehouses.
Benefits
Banking and Financial
Challenge
z Sigue was in the process of building a next-generation processing engine that
was designed to not only support cash-to-cash wire transfers, but also to
provide an architecture able to support future functions and services when they looked to SES to provide an overall project assessment.
SES Solution
z This initiative included a Project Risk Assessment, Concept Validation,
Checkpoint Audit, Security Process Assessment, and Business Readiness and Deployment Strategy.
Benefits
z The achieved goal provided an objective view of this project from a third party
experienced in this domain, ensured that the project was in alignment with the business objectives and expectations, and ensured that the project would implement successfully.
Credit Card Services
Challenge
z FDC was faced with a difficult business challenge; a project that was estimated at
nearly 40,000 man-hours beyond the required deadline. In order to finish the project, a large number of people (40) would need to be added to the project for nearly six
months with excessive overtime.
SES Solution
z SES worked with FDC to establish a bonus program as incentive for these individuals
to work extra hours towards meeting the deadlines for deliverables, assured all team members from SES were committed, and worked collaboratively with FDC to assure a successful delivery.
Benefits
z The project was a success with all tasks completed on time. This system (EFTPS) won
IBM’s highest design commendation for a DB2 application excellence - the DB2 Crystal Award; and FDC’s Executive for IT was awarded this commendation at IBM’s national convention that year.
z “While other firm’s teams were like revolving doors as they dropped out of the project,
SES stayed focused and their teams drove this to completion with us. SES showed what a true partner is” – Ronnie Caropresso – FDC’s, VP Application Development.
Credit Card Services
Challenge
z FDC required help with the maintenance and enhancement of their Retail
Money Order (RMO) system, which was the backend of their payment services product.
SES Solution
z SES provided collaborative teaming with FDC, and performed the RMO system
Y2K conversion along with all other Y2K compliance for FDC systems. SES conducted an enterprise-level assessment of the effort, determined its impact and issues, and developed a solution and automated tools to ensure Y2K compliance.
Benefits
z The Y2K conversion project was successful due to the creation of tools by SES
for FDC that automated the process of changing code. These tools were
instrumental in speeding up the process and lowering the possibility of manual errors. All systems worked as designed for years after Y2K.
Credit Card Services
Challenge
z The FDC Cash Tax system was considered highly unstable and required over thirty
resources at all times to assure it remained running in a short nightly cycle.
SES Solution
z SES quickly took on the responsibility for multiple projects within the Cash Tax system
and continued to support this system. SES provided a program and project management approach along with twenty-five consultants to work on a number of projects, including: TTax Plus Conversion, Cash Consolidation Conversions, and Cash Tax system
maintenance. A root-cause troubleshooting process was implemented to solve long-term problems, with an objective of reducing the over-all cost of ownership for this critical suite of applications. The project office team regularly presented project status and strategic recommendations to FDC’s executive management.
Benefits
z SES was able to fully stabilize systems and reduce trouble tickets to only a few per
month vs. a few hundred per month. It was then able to reduce the total team needed to maintain and enhance the system to only eight resources from over twenty-five. The system was later targeted as the operational system for the three-tier architecture; and was fully web-enabled, extending its life by more then 10 years while saving millions of
