When Information Systems
support Sales Strategies
The Benefits of a Service-Oriented
Architecture for the Lending and Asset
Finance industry
www.linedata.com
GE in 1995 – where he implemented Consumer Credit, Vehicle Financing and Mortgage Financing systems.
After a 2-year experience as a Project Manager with Transiciel, he joined Ingenetudes in 1998, which later became part of the Linedata group in 2000. There he stayed for 7 years and gained valuable expertise with Linedata EKIP, Linedata’s flagship product dedicated to the Lending, Asset Finance and Leasing industry.
He then gained further experience in 2004 when he founded the Blue Caravel Company, where he performed a variety of tasks, such as defining target architectures, selecting and implementing software packages or measuring the value of Information Systems. João returned to Linedata in September 2010 where he is now in charge of defining, approving and supporting international strategic initiatives for all Lending, Asset Finance and Leasing products.
Linedata is a global solutions provider with 700 clients operating in 50 countries. With more than 900 employees across the globe, Linedata is dedicated to the investment management and credit community. Linedata has been at the service of the financial industry from day one, and applies its market and client insight to provide innovative and tailored mission-critical software and services that help its clients grow. As a pioneer for over 10 years with the setup of SaaS infrastructure for the financial industry, Linedata has preached and spread this model throughout the global financial community, for its full range of products.
150 lenders and asset finance institutions in 32 countries choose Linedata for their core IT system, a comprehensive software platform dedicated to the lending and asset finance industry with two well-known software solutions: Linedata Ekip and Linedata Profinance. Linedata’s offering manages the entire life cycle of a contract, from the first customer contact through to accounting. Its integrated workflow streamlines and optimises business processes. This country, currency, channel, multi-GAAP offering handles more than 8 million contracts on a daily basis.
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When Information Systems support Sales Strategies
Finance institutions currently use numerous applications that are connected together within their information system architecture: these applications are for day-to-day contract management, accounting, risk management and reporting, third party database management etc. and they all interact with each other using specific interfaces.
In traditional enterprise architecture, applications interact with each other in pairs.
This approach has limitations because of the number of interfaces that need to be developed as the number of systems increases.
As a result, upgrading these applications is a difficult task: the upgrades must be synchronised and they add significant testing costs as well as major operational risks. Modifying one of the applications might involve modifying interfaces, and, in some cases, modifying one or more partner systems.
These restrictions, which are due to the IS architecture, build up inertia and are a major obstacle for the Sales and Marketing departments, which have to wait until the new software versions are finally deployed.
In a market where laws and regulations are subject to frequent changes and competition is fierce, this type of architecture is a deterrent to competition and product innovation.
This is why more and more IT directors are now turning towards a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)1, in which the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is the core messaging backbone.
With the Service Bus2, all software applications in the Information System no longer communicate directly with each other, but via a standardised and shared communication service. This means that information is collected, transferred and published by the Service Bus, whose task is to forward it to the relevant applications. System A System A System B Interface A System B System D System C
1. SOA: Service Oriented Architecture.
2. Service Bus: the most common implementation of SOA is based on a Service Bus. This bus acts as middleware between service consumers and providers.
Traditional architectures:
A deterrent to competition and product innovation
Federate and simplify communication with Service Bus
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Service Bus Applications can be updated independently through the service Bus without impacting others: this results in the updating of the application glossary (Metadata manager/WSDL3) in the Service Bus.
In addition, implementing services and new work methods will help to better define and structure processes, which will also ensure sustainability. It is important to consider:
• how the application will interact with other applications
• how to differentiate, from project conception, which data is public and which remains private
• determine what is in or out of the application’s scope.
Services Buses unmistakably bring greater flexibility and responsiveness to data, but they also bring additional security. When upgrading versions, live deployments can be spread over time and might involve only a portion of the portfolio: it then becomes possible to have several versions of the same Front Office application working in parallel. These are different versions of the same software package that are deployed at the desired pace.
3. WSDL: Web Services Description Language: an XML-based language that provides a model for describing Web services.
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in different applications, the Service Bus will find
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When Information Systems support Sales Strategies
Service Bus ESB is particularly suited to real-time data
management. Constraints are different for batch data management. Real-time data management systems process various transactions one by one. Batch data management systems process identical transactions “in bulk”. All too often we forget that this is a critical issue for information systems in which the back office is at the core of the management system.
Enhancements can be made to the Service Bus to improve performance significantly. For example, “caching”4 can be used: If two applications request the same information for the same client at an interval of a few seconds, the system can return the first result directly, without the need for a new request.
In addition to these enhancements, Extract, Transform and Load (or ETL5) technologies can also be used. These technologies offer exactly the same benefits as the previous ones (i.e. they can link two systems that don’t know each other and provide directory and messaging services), but with different technical constraints.
They are very powerful technologies that can batch-process large volumes of data. The ETL batch-process works in the same way as the Service Bus used for mass-processing.
It also organises the “caching” concepts. An invoicing batch needs client data. Before this is processed, the application will request information on all clients to whom the process applies, and will cache this data into a golden copy6.
An application is therefore meant to store:
• the data it processes
• a copy of the data it needs to work properly (and which it does not own).
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4. Caching: component that improves performance by storing data onto the hard drive such that future requests for that data can be served faster. 5. ETL (Extract-Transform-Load): Process in data warehousing that involves extracting data from outside sources, transforming it to fit operational needs and loading it into the end target (database or data warehouse).
6. Golden copy: Trusted copy of a master dataset
In a traditional architecture, applications “talk” to each other, know and understand each other. Interaction standards have to be defined when creating the interface.
In a Service-Oriented Architecture, the Service Bus acts as middleware: it can, for example, link a “Front Office” system request to a service provided by the
“Risk Management” system. In order to provide communication between the two systems, the Service Bus must be able to translate the request made by the “Front Office” into a language understood by the “Risk Management” system. In addition to being a service directory, the Service Bus is also a “multi-language translator”, capable of managing metadata.
ESB is the key to SOA
Can the Service Bus process high-volume data?
Operationnal data Golden copy
and that upgrades are synchronised (when initiating a new offer, for example).
The most natural approach is to provide a Central Data Repository. This is both a performance issue (containment node) and a system reliability issue (e.g.: if the repository is down, all systems directly dependent on it will also be down). The “Golden Copy” approach is therefore preferable.
Switching from a traditional architecture to SOA
The trend is not towards major overhauls but progressive changes that are better managed and more sustainable. The aim is to capitalise upon the years of investments that have been made in applications that used to run separately. Priority will be given to replacing point-to-point interfaces by interfaces connected through the Bus.
Defining a reference glossary of the data shared by all applications seems to be the best starting point before development.
Core business software can accelerate the delivery of your projects by providing a consistent basis. Choosing Service-Oriented Architecture will ensure the durability and flexibility of your Information System and increase your current and future competitiveness.
This is an important decision that requires the participation of business and technology specialists such as Linedata’s, who support clients every day in implementing their IT software solutions.
Along with Linedata Ekip360, Linedata’s software package dedicated to the Lending, Asset Finance and Leasing industry, Linedata also provides a Service Bus with its glossary. This Service Bus can be used to connect different Front, Middle and Back Office applications. Using the Linedata glossary as the basis of corporate glossaries will allow you to adjust gradually to the Service Bus. Applications can be connected to the Service Bus according to your needs. Service Bus Repository synchronisation Off er management Linedat a Ekip F ront Linedat a Ekip Middl e Linedat a
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