Big Blue says it beat off competition from Oracle and HP to provide Guangdong Cooperatives with an enterprise-wide system in the "largest and most complicated banking data consolidation project in China to date".

Guangdong Cooperatives was set up in 2005 to serve serve 99 cooperative associations and rural commercial banks - with around 5600 outlets - in the province.

Set for completion by the middle of this year, the new system - built on DB2 database software - will enable all of these parties to conduct 15 million transactions - up from four million - a day with improved performance and efficiency, says IBM.

Among the benefits will be a 360-degree view of customer data, delivering a more detailed understanding for more personalised services. In addition, member banks will be able to approve and process personal loan applications more efficiently and accurately, bringing the time down from weeks to days.

IBM analytics software will enable Guangdong Cooperatives to analyse and explore customer transaction information while the vendor's InfoSphere Information Server software will support the bank to integrate all relevant data resources and govern the quality and completeness of the information.

As part of the project, IBM has relocated the bank's key business and core banking systems onto a hardware platform that consists of IBM Power 595, Power 570, Power Blade Server and DS8300 storage platform.

Zhang Xuejun, president, banking service centre, Guangdong Cooperatives, says: "By deepening our customer-oriented perspective, we hope to boost service and enhance our business through these important technology investments."