bank opted for consultancy support from Bearingpoint to manage the business concept side of things. DAB's approach was to divide the implementation into three phases. An initial phase dealing with the business concepts and requirements regarding products and processes was carried out by all parties. Following this, a second phase involving the implementation and parameterisation of the system was completed by I-flex/Oracle FSS. Finally, there was an extensive testing phase, which involved all the bank's back office staff. The testing phase was by far the longest of the three, lasting eight months. Overall, project run time was 14 months, with the system going live in November 2005.
The Flexcube system was implemented on an Oracle 10g database, with a Unix Sun Solaris operating system and hardware. It interfaces mainly to the bank's trading systems, with these being: the Brokerage3 (B3) system from Elaxy for the front office; the Geos system for the back office; the CRMsolution from Siebel/Oracle; an SAP solution for financial control; and ADM, software developed by DAB for account data management. The bank was keen to stick to the standard software as much as possible, adopting only minor modifications where necessary to fit with DAB specialities.
The system was delivered within the estimated timescale and budget, but the implementation was not without problems. DAB marked the first major roll-out of Flexcube in Germany, and this proved a challenge for both bank and supplier. 'The specific challenge for us was that Germany is quite different from other countries where Flexcube has been implemented before', said Strobel. 'The "Germanisation" of Flexcube was a concern during the implementation' agreed Spiegel. The regulatory environment in Germany is relatively strict, and in addition there are specific personal tax laws which can cause complications; both the bank and supplier had to work to find the right parameters so that the system produced the necessary declarations to meet with German legal requirements. This issue in particular presented problems for DAB, and Strobel warned other German banks considering taking products from abroad: 'It's not easy and whoever wants to implement a system like Flexcube in these environments should face these issues carefully'.
Despite this, the bank on the whole remains positive about both system and supplier. The challenges surrounding the Germanisation of the system were largely overcome before the system went live.
