The new solution fully modernizes its core banking system and is now being used by around 40 branch offices Europe-wide.
The financial world is under increasing pressure to bring new products and services to the market. Existing IT systems, however, do not always allow for fast product development and rapid market introduction. Taking into consideration the increased fierceness of competition, switching to modern, flexible and smart systems is an imperative.
Med-El Ghazi, Head of Solutions for Financial Services at Atos in Central and Eastern Europe, explains: "Flexible, easy-to-scale systems are increasingly becoming a a decisive factor in order to be able to compete.
In addition to speeding up time-to-market for new products, they facilitate growth. They make it possible to upscale the IT to expand into new markets or regions with the necessary without major additional cost.
The replacement of the core banking system is a major challenge for businesses. The objective is to replace a system, which has been developed over years and that has been extensively enhanced and optimized, with a completely new release. Exchanging the core banking system touches virtually all areas of a bank".
The Western Union International Bank, with its headquarters in Vienna, is part of the Western Union group, a leader in the global money transfer business.
At the time of company formation, Oracle FLEXCUBE® was introduced as a core banking solution. Since then, numerous specific changes and enhancements have been integrated into the solution as well as new peripheral and third-party systems of the bank added.
Furthermore, an adjustment of the entire application landscape to the amended legal framework was carried out. This all led to the creation of a structure, which has grown with the business and can today only partially meet the constantly increasing business demands.
As a consequence, WUIB decided in 2012 to completely modernize its IT environment. For this purpose, all data center activities were outsourced as a first step to Atos. Within weeks, all applications were transferred safely to the Atos Data Center in Vienna. Due to the excellent cooperation, WUIB decided to implement the modernization of the core banking system together with Atos.
In the second quarter of 2013, a requirement analysis was performed by Atos to identify all the functional and non-functional needs. This was followed by the integration of all the core banking-specific processes of WUIB into Oracle FLEXCUBE® 12, the latest version of the standard software. The productive start-up took place on schedule in October 2014.
Peter Bucher, Member of the Board of the Western Union International Bank, on the successfully implemented project: "With Oracle FLEXCUBE®, we have anchored our IT landscape on a modern platform which supports our business model in a sustainable manner. It allows us to further enhance our services and we can offer our customers new products faster".
Bucher adds: "With Atos we have an IT partner at our side, who can already look back on many years of experience and a high level of expertise in the financial sector. This has of course contributed to the success". Another key success factor of the project was the intensive collaboration between the specialist departments, the IT team at WUIB and the Atos project team. This made it possible to implement the project in time, budget and quality, and to the complete satisfaction of the financial service provider.
