Customer Relationship Management Strategy in ABC XY Bank Merger

7 Key Challange to Customer Relatonship Management

 1.  1. Size. The customer size of both bank combined is over 3 million customers in more than 650 branches. The size of costumer base may couse problem as the complexity arises after merger.
2. Different market segments. Bank X as strong corporate market player whereas Bank Y tends to focus more on the consumer and commercial markets. This makes difference of both banks core competence.
3. Managing customer retention. During the merger and transformation, it’s important to ensure customer retention, especially for the closing branches due to overlapping branch area.
4. Ensuring smooth transition. Customer relationships must be merged smoothly between the relationship managers of both banks. Customer must not feels any deficiency during the transition.
5. Internal Implementation problem. Such as: lack of strategic vision, no project team, no clear busines process, lack of assesment, no change management, inadequate training, and dirty data.
6. Fragmented Implementation. Initiative between departements need to be communicated and integrated to any other part of the organization to ensure customer experience the same and standarized service.
7. Tools and workflows. Software and technology, as well as workflow used can be complex, especially both bank have a large customer based, and many application and services which have to be combined.

Current Service Operations Evaluation, Customer Base Segmentation & Analysis

Bank X was the sixth largest bank in Indonesia. Bank X is a strong corporate market player, with core strengths in: Corporate & Mortgage Loans. Customer profile: Corporate customers, retail mortgages, Customer niche: Housing mortgages, car financing

Bank Y was the tenth largest bank in Indonesia. Bank Y tends to focus more on the consumer and commercial markets, with core strengths in: Transaction banking, SME banking and retail commercial loans. Customer profile: Mainly retail, general commerce, consumer sectors, Consumer niche: Credit cards (issuer and merchants) 

ABC XY Bank combined makes huge customer base reaches more than 3.3 million customers in total and more than 650 branches located in across country. The size of customer base added with the basic different of market segments. The market segment itself will be vary from retail and transactional banking customer, business customer, and corporate customer.

The merger enables ABC XY Bank to broaden and strengthen its product range. ABC XY Bank will combine Bank X’s strong corporate lending presence, and mortgage niche together with Bank Y’s leadership in SME loans and the payment processing system which offers attractive growth opportunities.

The merger also gives the opportunity to cross-sell into the ‘merged’ Bank’s combined customer base forms the most significant source of value synergy. This is the key to balance the cost of service with the current and potential value of customer relationships.

Furthermore, Indonesia as an emerging country in Asia have a customer characteristic which is most concerned with gaining ‘value for me’, in terms of personalized service, product flexibility and choice, and competitive pricing. However, risk protection will be an increasingly important counterbalance to this search for value. In terms of general profile, these customers are highly self-directed early adopters who are still open to taking risk.

On the other hand, The SME Segment in emerging country is looking for trust, manifested by a greater emotional connection with their banks, and information transparency. This overlays their central desire for a positive customer experience on factors such as service quality and convenience. These customers are highly self-directed, have strong relationships with their banks, and are comfortable with moderate risks.

 

CRM Software Design

 SAP CRM enables integated industry-spesific processes to support customer-facing departments in Marketing, Sales and Service. Plus, it enables a 360-degree view across all customer touch points and interaction channels-including the internet, interaction centers, the field, and channel partners-as well as powerful analytics.

 Customer Contact Blueprints

Customer contact blueprint devised into three main area being provided by CRM to manage customer contact: marketing, sales, and service area. This customer contact blueprint leads to efforts that balances the cost of service with the current and potential value of customer relationships. Customer lifecycle maybe reviewed first to asses the position of customer contact.

Customer Lifecyle

Customer acquisition. The beginning phase where new customers are being acuired through, example, by marketing and sales strategy. The cost of acquisition commonly much more higher than retention as it may include promotion, advertising, sales, etc.

Customer retention. Aims to keep a high proportion of current customers by reducing customer defections, Adopting a customer contact blueprint that leads to higher customer retention. This is the most concerned part of the most CRM strategy.

Customer development. Further to customer retention, this phase aims to increase the value of those retained customers to the company.

Customer Contact Area: CRM Services

1. Marketing Area
This area concerned to how to drive marketing operating efficiency by marketing operations optimization, marketing measurement optimization, trade promotion management, merchandizing and trade marketing, and media management
This area may also identify the most profitable opportunities by customer data management, segmentation and analytics, as well as develop compelling, profitable new offers. The developmet done by market and customer strategy, customer-centric marketing, loyalty management, category, product and brand management, and pricing management.
Furthermore, it creates engaging customer interactions in the right channels, at the right time by Digital marketing optimization and Campaign management and multi-channel interactions.
2. Sales Area
Sales area manages sales strategy & channel management, including sales multichannel management. This area also manages sales talent management, including high performance sales workforce, compensation management, and sales process design. Sales operations optimization also being carried out by using sales technology enablement.
3. Service Area
This area covers differentiated service strategy and channel integration by differentiated service experience and customer enablement as well as channel integration. Others are service delivery management and optimization by service-enabling technology and architecture and service operations and analytics. Last but not least, service execution also being concerned by service workforce and processes and Service transactions and processing.

Develop The CRM Strategy

Situation analysis. The analysis including the customer strategy cube between three dimensions: Channels, Offers, and Customer or segments. Situation analysis may also drawn in customer interaction maps.

Commence CRM education. The stakeholder, especially inside the organization, must be well-communicated of the CRM strategy being developed to ensure the implementation is not fragmented. Learning sources from The Institute of Direct Marketing, American Marketing Association , Websites and online communities may also help to commence education.

Develop the CRM vision. A CRM vision is a high-level statement of how CRM will change a business as it relates to customers, and may be critical as it provide guidelines to CRM implementation.

Set priorities. Clear priorities for action normally focussed on cost reduction or enhanced customer experience, might fall out of the situation analysis, but more time and debate is often necessary. Priority might be given to projects which produce quick wins or fast returns, or low cost.

Establish goals and objectives. Most common goals and objectives of CRM are customer loyalty and satisfaction, revenue enhancement, or cost reduction.

Identify people, process and technology requirements. People, process and technology (Such as SAP CRM softwares) required are need to be prepared to ensure the CRM implementation gone smooth and effective.

Develop the business case. The business case may can generate additional revenues, otherwise it also can reduce costs.

 How it can balance the cost of service with the current and potential value of customer relationships?

The main source of service cost is from communications & customer retention programmes, that must be concerned in preparing and designing cost for bank integration. The other possible source of cost are from developing CRM software, as well as the integration cost itself.

The different market segment from both former banks may cause integration and service complexity that may add to service cost. But in other hand, by integration synergy this may offers some opportunities. The opportunity to cross-sell into the ‘merged’ Bank’s combined customer base forms the most significant source of value synergy.

Some possible potential value of costumer relationships of merging Bank X leading corporate player and Bank Y customer base in retail and commercial banking, are:

• Synchronizing rates and fees for Bank X and Bank Y customers utilizing alternate channels Banking
• Launching of new ABC XY credit cards, and Introducing Bank X’s Corporate MasterCard to Bank Y’s corporate client
• Piloting the sales of Personal Loans products to Bank X’s customers
 

4 Key Success Factors of Customer Relationship Management

Commitment. From excecutives to sales-front are important part of the success of CRM. Excecutive vision and leadership, to commitment of skillful sales-front will ensure the success of CRM. Furthermore, nature of learning and willingness to share information culture on employees are bonus point.

Communication and Integration. The harmony of all department within organization to runs CRM strategy will ensure customer experience the same level of CRM excellence.

Customer Experience. Good customer relationship will grow “Value for Me” feeling which will leads to trust. Trust will eventually increase and retaun in average products sold per customer, as well as the value of customer relationship.

Technology. IT is an enabler for acquiring and managing valuable data on customers. Technological aspects such as data warehouse capabilities and software configuration in addition to the influence of the internet are crucial for CRM successful implementation.

Conclusion

ABC XY Bank combined customer base reaches more than 3 million customers in more than 650 branches. The bank now operates double the volume and at the minimum, needs to maintain its customer base. Bank X is a strong corporate market player whereas Bank Y tends to focus more on the consumer and commercial markets. The merger gives the opportunity to cross-sell into the ‘merged’ Bank’s combined customer base forms the most significant source of value synergy. Considered customer lifecycle (acquisition-retention-development), customer contact blueprint devised into 3 areas: marketing, sales and services. To develop CRM strategy, the steps are: situation analysis, commence CRM education, develop the CRM vision, set priorities, establish goals and objectives, identify people, process and technology requirements and develop the business case. This will balances the cost of service with the current and potential value of customer relationships. The 4 key succes factors to CRM are: Commitment-Communication Inegration-Customer Experience-Technology.

 References

Accenture. “Customer Relationship Management Strategy Software Design”. Accenture, -.

Accenture. “Customer Relationship Management: Services Overview”. http://www.accenture.com/sk-sk/Pages/service-consulting-customer-relationship..., 2011.

Accenture. “From Strong Roots to Healthy Branches: How customer needs and expectations will drive differentiation in Asian banking”. Accenture, 2010.

Almotairi, Mohammad. “CRM Success Factors Taxonomy”. EMCIS2008, 2008.

Bank CIMB Niaga. “Merger Process and Achievement Report: January 2009”. Bank CIMB Niaga, 2008.

Baran, Galka and Strunk. “Principles of Customer Relationship Management”. South-Western, 2008.

Buttle, Francis. “Customer Relationship Management: Concepts and Technologies”. Elsevier Ltd., 2009.

Fung, Mei Lin, "You can learn from “Dell Hell”, Dell did". http://www.customerthink.com/article /you_can_learn_dell_hell_dell_did, 2008.

 

 

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Managing Organizational and Workforce Transitions

Question 2

“You are asked to lead a team that would help ABC XY Bank prepare for changes by managing complex organizational and workforce transitions once the business and IT solution is in place. One of the challenges is to help ABC XY leadership and the integration teams in carrying out an effective transition to a new way of working. How would your team go about doing?

6 Challanges of Organizational Change

Based on the trends in organizational change in some journals,  writer points out 6 key challenges for managing complex organizational and workforce transitions. These 6 key challenges are concluded from some writing, which arranged to the case of Bank ABC XY with all the challanges it faces and the characteristic it shows. They are:

 1. Corporate Leadership. Transformational change within an organization cannot end success without good corporate leadership. Leadership and good communication skills must be possesed by the leader of transition.

2. Cultural and psychological issues within employees. There are many evidence of the failure of corporate strategy – including transform – are caused by corporate culture that cannot accomodate desired change. Furthermore, the psychological issues within employee during the change also one of the concern must be addresed by the team.

3. Organisational Learning. The transformation within organization and organization could only occur as the result of continous learning by all employees regarding the newly desired behaviour through which the new strategy can be achieved. [1]

4. Multiple stakeholders. Stakeholders, as well as shareholders are the source of pressure while doing organizational change. They demanded the organization -during the change-could achieve significant business improvements and tangible, bottom-line results. Multiple stakeholders could give complexity to balance their needs and to satisfy each of them after the transformation.

5. Organization size and complexity. The size of ABC XY Bank -3.3 Million customers, 650 branches,  more than 100 applications, and enormous employees-  in addition with crganisational complexity and complexity of organisational reaction to change. In today’s complex, interdependent organizations, changes in one area can permeate the entire organization. 

6. Rising importance of workforce performance. Human resource and performance, especially in banking field, are the main concern as the banking service demanded to have zero downtime. So, during the change customer must not experience the declining of services. [2]

Furthermore, by the readings that writer found in internet, evidence shows there is a predictable pattern in organizations that experience failed change initiatives. So this key challanges could act as lesson learned from transformational process that has undertaken before.

Transformational Change Management Methods Framework [3]

Based on Accenture’s proven Transformational Change Management Methods Framework, the writer design the framework that could aligned with ABC XY BANK Integration strategy especially to ensure an effective transition to a new way of working.

Asses: Journey Context and Content Assesment >> Issue Definition and Assesment (the 6 challanges) >> Risk assesment >> Job Impact Analysis >> Cultural assesment

Prioritize: Journey Planning >> Value Management Strategy >> Commitment to Proceed

Measure: Journey Measurement and Value Realization

Prepare: Prepare Methods and Tools >> Prepare Communication Channel >> Prepare commitment >> Prepare People.

Transform: Leadership Alignment >> Strategy Alignment >> Performance Alignment >>  Culture Alignment >> Organization Alignment >> Business Process Alignment >>  Application and Technology Alignment >>  Governance alignment >>   Skills and talent alignment >>   Roles alignemnt >>  Team Structure alignment

Manage: Stakeholder engagement >> Evaluation >> Risk and contingency review

The 5 Steps for Effective Transition

One of the challenges is to help ABC XY leadership and the integration teams in carrying out an effective transition to a new way of working. To answer this challenge, writer proposes 5 steps for conducting effective transition. The 5 steps are designed based on Accenture’s Transformational Change Management Methods Framework discussed before. All 5 steps are designed to represent a clear and complete Workforce and Organizational Transition Plan. This can be used to achieve executive and operating unit buy-in and provide a roadmap for a problem-free transition. This 5 steps are:

1.   Organizational Assesment

This step done by carrying out Journey Context and Content Assesment, also by identifying Issue Definition and Assesment – 6 Challenges discussed before. Firther more, in the field of workforce transformation, the team have to carried out Job Impact Analysis.

The objective is to define the job impacts within the operating units when distributed business processes are consolidated, and to assess operating unit differences. The best way forward is to establish a true partnership between the operating unit management and the transformation team to ensure real engagement. [4]

In this step, the transition leader also have to prepare for workforce reduction or addition. This include Job impacts analysis, baseline organization size measurement, policies, and legal / regulatory issues.

 Understand the organizational culture, so the team could choose the best method to implement transition smoothly. One thing that cannot be forgotten is risk analysis. By doing this, we can avoid the negative effect, and mitigate it earlier more effectively.

2.   Planning for Transition

After we asses the organization position and status for the change, the next thing we must do is to plan for the transition. The planning phases include:

Change control team. Preparing for the team to conduct the transformation as well as the team that control the transformation itself.

 In term of transform workforce, workforce transition plan must be carried out.  With workforce transition plan, the team will be able to Identifies job positions and process affected, address transition challange, as well as providing options to employees against the change.

Change request document, and Configuration management. The team also have to pay attention to This two item to ensure the transition runs smoothly[5]

Identify the contingencies for unplanned organization changes also have to be carried out to plan for the outside and unpredicteble pressure to the organization during the transition

3.   Prepare for The Change

Prepare Methods and Tools. Planning Companies regularly prepare for change at the project or program management level and often use planning and design tools or develop assessment tools to do so.

Prepare communication channel. Effective communication is critical. The changing team have to communicate the scope and rationale for change. Most of changing organization also conduct training for employees when preparing for change. Furthermore, the team could uses employee input or feedback regarding preparations for change. The communication strategy should also address the needs of those employees whose responsibilities are changing or not impacted at all.

Prepare commitment. The succes of transformation is determined by how far the organization achieve participation through seeking sponsorship and commitment during the reparation.  The organization could also establish reward and recognition processes related to the change as an option. In addition, advance identification of potential resistance and trust-building efforts is a preparatory step that proven good to be taken.[6]

 Prepare people. Only 20% of organization strategy failure caused by technical causes, the rest of them are caused by human. So, The changing team must prepare the people and align the transformation so itu could fit the culture and the behaviour of the people within the organization.

4.   Implement Transition Programs

This following several specific change management activities and emphases will be particularly important for executing an overall transition strategy and journey on the path to high performance.

Leadership engagement. Because of the transformation will affect wide-organizational and workforce, the top management must be engaged to ensure that the change will match perfectly with the organizational vision and strategy. They must also be actively involved in the creation and execution of change management and journey management plans.

Organization design, roles and team structures. The new organizational design, roles and team must be communicated and accepted by all the employees. These three items need to configured and aligned smoothly with the current one.

Governance. with new workforce, the process and the team need to be re-aligned and oriented to meet the performance expected.

Skills and talent management. this must also carried carefully to ensure the right people on the previous position could perform as well as or even better on the new position.

Culture. This is a substantial program that must be addressed as part of the change management program. [7]

5.   Evaluate and Manage the Transition

The last step, after the transition occur, the control team have to measure how far the transitions impacted the employees, as well as the impact of the process within organization. Control team measure performance given by the organization after the transition – is it increased, or otherwise decreased. A plan must be prepared to mitigate the negative effect or even to rollback the fail part of the transition. Furthermore, the control team review risk and contigency plan occured during the plan, is it succed or not, this can be lesson learned for the other strategies.

Managing workforce after the transition also need to be carried out to ensure the changes are making the performace of worforce increased, as well as to measure compliance to new staffing model.

3 Key Factors for Successful Transformation

1.   Communication

 During the transformation, the organization , especially bank, need to retain its performance and make the customer, as well as the customer are not negatively-affected by the change. In order to do that, the right and comprehensive communication plan and method need to be carried out. This could avoid the risk of misscommunication wihin the organization that could lead to the failure of the transition. Good socialization and comminication will also engage the employee to ensure the succes of the transition.

2.   Leadership

 Once the Transition Plan is developed and approved, the project must actively involve operating unit leaders to execute the plan successfully. It will ultimately depend on the operating unit’s Human Resources executives to implement the majority of the plan at the local level.Senior management must be directly involved in enforcing compliance through clear expectation setting and support of the right behaviors. A carefully planned and executed Workforce Transition plan can not only minimize the disruption to daily operations but also lessen the impact to employee productivity and morale. Strong executive leadership and respectful approaches to employee relations are key to the succes of transition.

3.   Commitment

 The most important aspect of the change is the change within the people / stakeholders itself. The transition team must ensure all the stakeholders are engaged and commited fully to the change. Started form the top management, need to commited to the transformation to ensure the changes are sponsored and match perfectly with organization vision. As well as the employees, also have to committed to work on the desired performance and not negatively-affected with the change. With commitment from all the stakeholders, the transition will runs according to the plan into effective transition to a new way of working.

Conclusion

As business and technology cycles continue to accelerate, it’s more important than ever for companies to ensure that they have a flexible, adaptable workforce that can accommodate change. There are 6 challanges of organizational change pointed out by the writer, namely Corporate Leadership, Cultural and psychological issues within employees, Organisational Learning, Multiple stakeholders, Organization size and complexity, and Rising importance of workforce performance. To answer these challanges, using Accenture’s Transformational Change Management Methods Framework, writer design 5 steps for effective transition, in short: Assesment, Planning, Preparation, Implementation, and Evaluation. To achieve successful transformation, writer also formulate 3 key factors that could ensure the transformation is gone smoothly: communication, leadership and commitment. 

References

[1] Leonard, A. “Transformational change management and change communication”. University of Pretoria etd, 2005.

[2] Pearson, Susan. Mosher, Patrick. “Managing Change, Managing Business Success”. Accenture,  2003.

[3] Accenture. “Transformational Change Management Methods Framework”. Accenture, -.

[4] Accenture. “Managing Workforce Transition”. Accenture, 2006.

[5] Schwalbe, Kathy. “Managing Information technology projects, 6th ed.” Cengage Learning, 2010.

[6] The Conference Board. “Effecting Change in Business Enterprises: Current Trends in Change Management”. The Conference Board, Inc., 2010.

[7] Silverstone, Yaarit. Nichols, David. “Embedding change management into your service-oriented architecture development strategy”. Accenture, 2007.

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Managing a Merger for a Regional Bank

The Question

“You are leading the Accenture team to develop the IT Strategy for the integration services for the merger of the two banks. Using Accenture's proven "Merger Integration Framework and Methodology" what steps and what areas will you prioritize to ensure that the strategy fits with the overall goals?”

The 10 Key Challenges

Based on the information of both legacy banks, writer points out 10 key challenges for the IT services during the integration process. These 10 key challenges are concluded from both banks characteristic (size, market segments, geography, legacy system, network architectures, and human resource) which arranged into IT Service requirement analysis for merging both banks. They are:

  1. Managing cross team dependencies from both former banks including cultural, functional or operational problem during the project integration.
  2. Gathering system requirements from multiple businesses processes and applications across both banks.
  3. Continuously act as business enablers throughout the whole period of the merger and having no impact to business during the Integration process. This challenge includes balancing the time of staff member spend for the integration project for the project completed on time, compared to operational task to run the business operational.
  4. Due to banking services are obligated to run 24/7, IT integration has to make sure there are zero downtime and/or longer MTBI (Mean Time between Failure), including the contingency plan, risk planning and recovery plan.
  5. Integrating a large number of branches 665 spread over a wide geographical area as part of the merger process.
  6. Integrating application, legacy system, network architecture, etc between Bank X and bank Y.
  7. Designing capacity requirements (systems, channels, operations) for the merged bank in which will almost double as this involves the integration of 2 similarly sized banks.
  8. Ensure the knowledge transfer throughout employees cross legacy bank finished within the timeframe, including the deployment in branches and also user training.
  9. Communicating effectively throughout team members.
  10. Make a timeframe with milestones, timely decisions to avoid delays of the merger.

IT Service Integration Framework

Conducting integration in two Bank with huge size is not an easy work, It requires a robust merger architecture to be put in place – tools, including merger execution milestone, status reports and proven approaches. Using the Accenture’s proven "Merger Integration Framework and Methodology", the IT Merger Integration Approach divided into three major parts:

Establish Merger Framework> Conduct Integration planning > Execute Integration Plans

I.    Establish Merger Framework

  1. Identify new IT management and executives, as well as the IT integration team
  2. Communication to top management and stakeholders
  3. Project Charter, including scope statement, timeframe, and desired outcomes

II.    Conduct Integration planning

  1. Analysis of the Information Systems in both Bank including the process, data, application, platform.
  2. Target Operating Model (TOM)
  3. Conduct project framework including scope, timeframe, cost, quality, human resource, communication, risk, procurement and integration.
  4. Selection of target systems, and conduct migration planning.
  5. Integration milestones

III.    Execute Integration Plans

  1. Deployed integration plans
  2. Ongoing Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Reporting
  3. Ongoing synergy tracking
  4. Integration results


IT Strategy for Integration: The 5 Steps

The IT service in Integration process plays role as provider of centralized information and IS service deliveries. By adopting IT governance standard best practices, IT service becoming a key actor of the success of merger. It also leverages the company synergies in terms of regional IT architecture and platform during the integration. Based on the role of IT written above, writer suggests 5 steps for the IT strategy for integration, in which stands for:

Understanding and analyzing the challenges
Gather information and requirements. Before conducting the integration, it is important to understand and analyze the challenges given by the merger of two banks. In this case, the challenge will be the current size of the bank, the difference of major market segments between two banks, the geographical issues of bank’s branch, legacy system of former bank (The differences between Bank Y's merchant acquiring system and Bank X's card issuing system), network architectures, and human resource each bank has.
Communication to Stakeholder. In order to know further and deeper about the objective and the requirements of the merger, it is necessary to communicate to the stakeholder –especially the top management- to make sure the service meets the requirement of the integration
Analyzing current system, infrastructure and architecture. Information and requirement gathered from two activities before analyzed to get the big picture of the integration requirement and process. The current legacy systems, application, and architecture also need to be analyzed in order to make an effective integration planning.

Establish The Team
Designing new IS management. After the merger –ABC XY Bank- the IT managements from both former Banks are aligned into one new management.
Choosing the team from two. The integration team also need to be aligned from both bank, the team including operational and functional needs of the integration project.
Balancing the work. In order to make sure the core operation of banking still going smoothly during the integration, the balance between the time in the project and the time in the core operational function of IT department needs to be balanced.

Conduct Planning
The project framework. In this step, the team has to define the scope they need to or they don’t in the integration. The team also has to conduct the timeframe of the project, including the milestones. Besides,  The team has to make cost / budget planning for the whole project, as well as the plan to retain the quality of integration and operational work. Other area of the planning including human resource needed during the project, the plan to maintain communication to stakeholders (especially top management and customer), analyze and reduce the risk by conducting a contingency plan. The team must not neglect the procurement planning and the integration of other planning area mentioned before.

Execute Integration: The migration to new system
Selection of target systems. To merge the systems from both bank, the team needs to analyze and select which systems will be merged to which. Based on writer analysis, the Bank X system will be merged into Bank Y system  (Bank Y as the target system), as the Bank Y have the ability to maintain huge consumer and commercial markets, compared to Bank Y which only plays in corporate market player area.
Conduct migration. After the target system is chosen, the next task is to “pour in” the other system to target system. This process concerned to these area:
Process. This area specifies the processes involved in the exchange of enterprise information, allows organizations to streamline operations, reduce costs and improve responsiveness to customer demands. This area includes process management,  process modeling, and workflow.
Platform. Deals with the processes and tools that are required to allow these systems to communicate optimally and securely. So, data can be passed through different applications without difficulty. For example, if the one bank using PHP for webapps processing, on the other hand other bank using ASP, then we must unify the language of new-merged system.
Data. First, we have to identify and record data from both bank, then build a metadata model. Data can now be shared or distributed across database systems, providing it is in a standard format such as COM+/DCOM, CORBA, EDI, JavaRMI, and XML.
Application. The goal of this area is to bring data or a function from one application together with that of another application that together provide near real-time integration. This may include business-to-business integration,  customer relationship management (CRM) systems,  web integration, and building web sites that interact with multiple business systems.

Post-merger services
Helpdesk and IT Support. During the transition to new systems, there is high possibility of problem in IT field. In order to solve the problem, IT support and helpdesk must be established.
Testing. Testing to new system must be conducted during the execution of the integration as well as after the integration. Testing will be conducted by the user (user acceptance test) or the IT team as the developer.
Training. It is highly important to the user of the system -employee- to be able and fluent to use the new system. In order to do that, a wide user training by the IT team have to be established.
Preparation in branches. As well as the training to user, every single branch throughout the geographical area (650 branches, 1267 Automated Teller Machines (ATM), 237 Self Service Terminals (SST) located in across country) must be prepared to meet the new infrastructure of the system . This preparation mainly focused on the networking issues, as well as the user of the system.

IT Integration Area to Prioritize

Business Area. IT Integration must be aligned to the core business process of both banks. It have to enable the new-merged bank to be able to obtain its objective. The integration must be prepared to combine both former banks specialties (Bank X is a strong corporate market player whereas Bank Y tends to focus more on the consumer and commercial markets). This area must be prioritized and have to be validated after the integration finished, to make sure the integration has meet the overall requirements.
 
IT Application and services. Note that both bank has Distributed and decentralized systems, and has more than 100 applications need to be aligned and integrated or rationalized. The integration need to retain and integrate two different legacy systems for credit card business alignment - Bank Y's merchant acquiring system and Bank X's card issuing system. So, the application integration also has to prioritize to make sure the application can support new-merged bank core business processes during and after the integration.

IT Infrastructure. We all agreed that the IT supporting systems and applications can’t work properly without sufficient infrastructure. In addition, the merger of the two banks will double the capacity form the former system, which makes it is one of the area need to be prioritized

Human resources. Human resource area also plays a big role on the integration success. User acceptance has to be validated after the system deployed to the new-merged bank. In order to do this, socialization and training needs to be carried out. After the points above, human resource area is the next area to be prioritized.

References
Accenture. “Getting Ahead of the M&A Curve to Drive High Performance”. Accenture. 2009.
Accenture. “Global communications solutions provider: Postmerger infrastructure synergy” Accenture. 2009.
Bert, Art, Ravi Chanmugam, and Caroline Firstbrook “Accenture Mergers & Acquisitions and Merger Integration Services: Achieving value faster”. Accenture. 2006.
CIMB Niaga. “Merger Process and Achievement Report”. CIMB Niaga. 2009.
Fenner, James. “Enterprise Application Integration Techniques”. http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/ucacwxe/lectures/3C05-02-03/aswe21-essay.pdf. ; Accessed 20 December 2010
Lithicum, David S. “Enterprise Application Integration”. Addison-Wesley, 2000.
Schwalbe. “Managing Information Technology Projects”. Cengage. 2009

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