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A large financial services institution seeks a technological solution to keeping its customers informed.
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Business impact IBM created an alert system for the financial services institution's banking customers that enabled them to receive updates about their accounts via e-mail and SMS (short message service) text messaging. Alerts were triggered by specific events, including ATM (automatic teller machine) transactions, money transfers and potential credit limit violations. The ability to receive account information on demand from remote locations was an especially critical differentiator for the 50 percent of customers who bank online, but the service was even more popular with offline customers, who were able to get up-to-the-minute information on their cell phones. And by connecting the bank's key audiences of employees, customers, partners and government regulators through a service oriented architecture solution, the bank reduced the time previously allocated to responding to inquiries by as much as 25 percent.
Issue In the crowded financial services field, one important way for banks seeking to distinguish themselves from the competition is through exceptional customer service. Through its customer alert service, this financial institution sought a way to enhance its customer relationships and boost productivity while aligning its technology strategy more closely to the needs of business and capitalizing on existing IT investments.
Executive summary IBM researchers and IBM Global Business Services consultants worked together to devise an end-to-end solution for the client that dynamically tied information on customers' account transactions to a complex event processing (CEP) tool, which analyzed and filtered that information and generated alerts sent to the end user via e-mail and SMS using proprietary bank applications. The result was a more closely connected banking clientele and a significant reduction in time allocated to answering account inquiries.
What IBM did With hundreds of branches serving customers throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, East Asia and Australia, the bank turned to IBM for help in improving its services and strengthening its customer relationships through a real-time messaging system that alerted customers to specified events related to their accounts. Customers could choose whether to receive the alerts on their cell phone via SMS or by e-mail.
Working together with IBM Research, the IBM Global Business Services team devised a customer alert service based on technology that integrates IBM WebSphere® applications with the IBM WebSphere Message Broker's CEP nodes developed and designed by IBM researchers. IBM WebSphere Message Broker performs the filtering of data, transformation and detection of interesting cases (complex events), such as when a banking customer's account balance has exceeded a certain threshold. IBM WebSphere Message Broker CEP nodes allow users to define business rules that determine the manner in which the various systems will respond to changing conditions, such as limiting account overdrafts, and banking customers could choose to be informed about their credit status, cashed or returned checks, account balances and other financial information.
The customer alert and other systems in the bank operate on IBM's Capacity On Demand (COD) infrastructure, which, together with IBM System p™ servers running on IBM AIX® operating systems, contribute to the bank's goal to provide online service around the clock, seven days a week.
Capabilities applied IBM's expertise in designing service oriented architecture solutions for clients and its portfolio of WebSphere applications and tools such as WebSphere Message Broker helped it create a customer alert system capable of analyzing millions of transactions in real time and providing customers with alerts in the format they specified, while maintaining a complex information technology infrastructure and at the same time streamlining IT operations.
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Related Case Studies | Case study: A major financial services company A financial services company wanted to improve customer service by allowing customers to quickly access account information without using lengthy menus or call center support. |
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