(Core systems replacement – evaluating your options)  

Ownership is the thing. Whose systems are they after all?  Putting the ownership of the core-banking systems back where it belongs, with the bankers, is just part of being attuned. Forward-thinking bankers know that only the right technology, the right core banking systems can drive the business in the right direction. The wrong core banking systems mean: poor customer service, expensive back-office processing, inadequate business intelligence and heaps of risk. But you cannot always rely on technologists, it’s better for bankers to play a leading role in the selection of their own core banking systems because aligning the technology with the bank, its products, customers and channels is after all a business decision. The banker of the future understands the business, how to use technology, improve processes and develop people (including customers).

You can go badly wrong selecting core systems if you don’t do it properly, and that goes for technologists and bankers. Technologists are good at hard technology: bankers are good at the soft skills, people skills and business, but they can learn some technique from the technologists. The world today is about projects and hard decisions – combining and mixing skills, the multi-discipline, multi-cultural approach. You need all the skill you can get when managing long-term change and replacing core systems. Without the right skills you might select a product that costs a fortune, is poorly matched to the business requirements, and impossible for your organisation to implement. Your technology must be able to meet your business objectives and your objectives must follow your vision of your bank’s role in the future. Back to core banking systems – it really is a case of getting the right tool for the job, and don’t be taken in by the sales talk. If you want to know if a system handles a particular instrument the way you want and gives you the information that you need to run the business, by all means ask reference users, but better still, check it out yourself. You can design a series of benchmark tests based on your actual business, and then get each supplier to demonstrate how their system processes them. If the tests are the same for each supplier, you can gauge the differences; make real comparisons; check timings; assess user friendliness and let the business experts for each area make their own assessments.  

The fact that a particular system is a market leader does not necessarily mean that it is the right system for your bank. Your bank is different – in any case you actually want your bank to stand above the crowd.