|
Initial Situation
DG Bank AG is a partner for credit cooperatives, medium or large sized national and international companies and institutional investors. The company develops high-quality banking products and offers comprehensive services to banks and rural credit cooperatives, with their retail and corporate clients, as well as in direct business to local and foreign companies.
In early 1999, DG Bank Luxemburg, an independent subsidiary of DG Bank AG, developed and implemented a new Oracle-based MIS. The ultimate goal was to create an integrated system where employees and management could have access to the most current information about companies, products and services, as well as customer account status. It was critical that the system be integrated and scalable as DG bank has subsidiaries all over the world, including several in Germany and DG Bank Luxemburg.
To reduce complexity, DG Bank subdivided the entire plan into a five sub-projects:
1. Market Results
2. Cost controlling
3. Financial controlling
4. Financial planning
5. Project and investment controlling
Having determined sub-projects, the team got to work. When the assignment was completed, however, the Bank found themselves in a strange situation. They were now able to view results, but without several consultants and hours or even days spent programming reports, employees were not able to disseminate information into something they could use for presentations suitable for management and investors, dynamic reports and ad-hoc projects. The solution needed to be structured, in database form, and integrate seamlessly with their Oracle-based MIS. DG Bank Luxemburg turned to PROMATIS to design the solution as well as assist with project implementation for the "Market Results" portion of their MIS.
Project Analysis and Implementation
PROMATIS first looked at the project's goal; dynamic reporting, data evaluation and strategic analysis. Furthermore, DG Bank required all important data on turnover, customer profits and cost, and credit business to be compressed and available for dynamic evaluations 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
To meet these criteria, a Data Warehouse solution based on Oracle 8i for data detail was recommended for this part of the project. The source systems and data supplier for the Bank came from a third-party implemented dispositional system of the Bank. This system's function is to read data from the operative systems and perform various calculations. Data is then transferred from the "dispositive system" into the Data Warehouse using Pl/SQL procedures. To keep loading times short, only new or updated data from the last save date are included. Best of all, data history is saved which means that employees can track how data and information has been changed or added.
End users access stored Data Warehouse data with queries, reports and analysis tools included in Oracle Discoverer. Because Discoverer allows varied reporting structures, all functional areas and hierarchal levels in the Bank have access and can actually use saved information in the Data Warehouse. Typically, data and information stored in the Data Warehouse is considered "sensitive" - not every user has viewing rights. Therefore, PROMATIS developed a sophisticated two-stage access protection system in order to protect privileged information. Now, users are required to enter a valid user code that authorizes them to access specific data and evaluate it. In addition, viewing rights are given as "data dependent" viewing stream depending on what cost center a user belongs.
Results
PROMATIS completed this sub-project in August 2000 and started training pilot users as well as beginning an extensive test phase. Franz Schulz, Manager of Retail Banking Department and Member of the Management Board, is already convinced that the DG Bank has taken a big step with the solution conceived and implemented by PROMATIS. "The system developed by PROMATIS is exactly what we wanted. Users get a fast overview of ongoing and completed businesses and can carry out informative evaluations", notes Schulz. "Tedious manual searches of information and data evaluation are now a thing of the past."
PROMATIS is now working on Phase II of this project. The purpose of this phase is to develop a PROMATIS Data Mart based on Oracle Express, a multi-dimensional database system. This will facilitate online analysis processes on data saved in the Data Warehouse using Online Analytical Processing (OLAP). With PROMATIS Data Marts, Bank staff will be able to more quickly filter and evaluate business processes according to different criteria like fiscal periods, customers or persons responsible for processing.
Wilfried Ehrhard, Manager IT, Organization and General Administration, stated, "Since PROMATIS has a great deal of know-how and project experience in the area of Business Intelligence-Systems and has proven itself as a competent and reliable partner, we are sure that we shall have a very powerful solution at the end of Phase II. We are excited to work with them again."
About DG Bank Luxemburg
As the largest closed banking group in Germany, DG BANK is the exclusive service provider for cooperative retail banks and genuine financing institution for small and medium-sized companies. Its product range encompasses money transfer services, the classical products of commercial business such as documentary business as well as export finance, project and structured trade finance. With 65 million customers worldwide and 127 billion euro in sales, DG BANK provides access to the international financial markets for its partner institutions and their customers. To enable DG BANK to perform these functions, it maintains branches in London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo, subsidiaries as the DG Luxembourg S.A. and the Cosba private banking (DG BANK Switzerland) and further 17 representative offices in the key financial centers and the most important economic regions throughout the world.
|
