The TCS Aspire Service, announced in Q4 2007, is a fully outsourced reconciliations and investigations service from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and SmartStream Technologies. Deutsche Bank, the service's first customer has gone live on cash and stock reconciliations. One of the key objectives of the TCS Aspire initiative within Deutsche Bank was the provision of a 'utility' based outsource service that created process transformation and process efficiencies while also delivering cost savings.

In parallel with the first customer going live, TCS and SmartStream are engaging with a number of other organisations who are in a position to take advantage of the features that can be delivered from the TCS Aspire Service. As new clients join the service they will help establish its future direction as well as benefiting from decreasing service costs as transaction volumes rise.

Commenting on the new service, N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, President, TCS Financial Solutions, said: "The combined expertise of TCS, SmartStream and Deutsche Bank has enabled the TCS Aspire Service to deliver a best practice approach to reconciliations and exceptions management. Using the very best in automation technology, the application of rigorous and measurable standards of service and the reconciliation of transactions at all stages of their lifecycle provides the ideal opportunity for process improvement and cost reduction. These capabilities, combined with access to a shared pool of highly-skilled reconciliations and investigations personnel deliver a service that can benefit institutions of all sizes. Smaller financial institutions can access software and highly skilled resources that might otherwise be out of reach. Meanwhile, larger financial institutions with intensive reconciliations activities can achieve enhanced utilisation of reconciliations personnel without the overheads associates with an ever expanding reconciliations team."

Ken Archer, CEO of SmartStream, commented: "SmartStream's experience and the inherent flexibility of TLM to achieve the highest auto match rates and support new instrument types, provides the foundation of the TCS Aspire Service. The combination of our industry knowledge and TLM's unparalleled ability to deliver intelligent automation and standardisation to reconciliations management has enabled us to provide the TCS Aspire Service with a market leading reconciliations platform that will continue to develop. That future capability was a key reason for TCS selecting SmartStream as their preferred technology partner and Deutsche Bank choosing to move forward as the first client."