IBS Journal October 2015
Data as the new currency:
analysis in the post-crisis treasury world Amidst Black Mondays, European money worries and the rise and crash of stock markets, one thing will never be in short supply in the modern age – data. Our society produces it at an astonishing rate, with more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day. On top of that, IBM research suggests that more than 90 per cent of that data was created in the last two years alone. How can such vast quantities of data be harnessed for the good of the financial sector, especially when it comes to the management of treasury?
Bank of America HQ, New York
by Alex Hamilton Post-crisis, the meeting of regulatory requirements has become paramount, and properly actioned data, argues Cindy Murray, managing director of e-channels and treasury at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), is crucial to meeting those targets. The data stores that the bank is cre-
ating for its CashPro Online platform, says Murray, will capture all the elements and information that comes from the compa- ny’s depository and treasury platforms. The creation of trends from these piles of data are the end goal: with them, cli- ents will be able to look at their data and take action, as well as have much better insights into their liquidity over a given time period. CashPro allows BAML’s corporates
to access all of their treasury operations via a single screen with a single sign-on. With this single sign-in, Murray notes, things have become far simpler: where before clients had to open up one win- dow for wires and another for balances, now they simply just need one window for everything. The system is the result of an ongoing wholesale banking IT over- haul for the organisation, which aimed to standardise the bank’s front and back- end corporate banking software. Several legacy systems were earmarked to be reconfigured or phased out entirely, with CIO of wholesale banking technology at BAML, Bill Pappas, vowing to ‘reduce, rebuild and replace’ much of the existing infra structure.
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CashPro Online, BAML’s SOA-based online portal, was actually a complete rebuild of the bank’s previous treasury solution. It was primarily developed with in-house know-how but the infrastructure itself was bought from Fundtech in the form of the vendor’s Global PayPlus services platform. The first phase of this ‘next generation’ portal was released in February 2010 and contained the online channel and covered single payments, with batch payments coming later in 2012. The differentiator between Cash-
Pro and other portal offerings is that BAML runs what it refers to as ‘ usability labs’. Clients are able to test new solutions to destruction, establishing a valuable practical assessment. Additionally, it employs a team of usability engineers to generate ideas and respond to feedback. The study of testers’ reactions
recorded on tape was later cross- referenced with the post-session feed- back. Facial expressions, eye and hand movements and both non-verbal and verbal cues were used by BAML’s development team to change certain aspects of the proposed solution. Taking an outsider’s view has ena-
bled BAML to see work processes in a new light; light that often shines through the gap that appears between the actual processes carried out by those who do the work, and the official descriptions and explanations given by their managers.
case study: data management
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