Commbank IT modernisation tracking ahead of schedule

Dave Curran, CBA executive general manager and modernisation project lead

The Commonwealth Bank’s IT management team is tracking ahead of schedule in its $580 million, four-year core modernisation program.

Speaking at a media roundtable, Dave Curran, executive general manager and lead for the modernisation project, said that at the one third mark in the project the bank had already delivered three major capability launches, with another planned for this calendar year.

The capabilities included real time banking and processing and a process of ‘industrialisation’ where new products can be created quickly for various parts of the business based on common components and chassis.

Curran said that using these capabilities, the bank had created a custom term deposit product for Colonial First State — which it will later push out to its wider CommBank business and retail customers — and had applied real time banking to a new staff savings account product and the Federal Government’s First Home Saver Account.

According to Curran, the bank had placed a focus on leading the project directly and had moved to capitalise on the momentum created by the upgrade of its online site, Netbank.

“We have watched a lot of organisations globally, before and during, get bogged down in analysis paralysis; we don’t allow people to slip on decisions and go back and revisit things,” Curran said. “That has let us build some contingency in our schedule as we know we will have some surprises; it doesn’t matter how hard you plan."

The surprises included finding undocumented functionalities in its legacy systems which affected customer-facing systems and services, he said.

“You base things on the documentation and history. But you find things that were put there 30 years ago that no-one knew about, which makes testing and piloting very important — to make sure we pick things up before we put something into production that will affect customers,” Curran said.

CIO, Michael Harte, said the bank had also deployed several project management methodologies including Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC), which combines intellectual property from SAP and Accenture, and Project Governance Delivery Excellence (PGDE), the bank’s CIO and group executive Enterprise Services.

“SDLC is a robust discipline or set of practices that takes out chance, takes out variation and puts program quality into industrial strength computing,” he said. “PGDE lets you make the right investment decisions quickly, knowing they have a certain priority for business and customer outcome, executing those within the budget and timeframe allowed, making sure the code and process that comes out is repeatable and reliable.

“Something different to IT organsiations the world over is assuring and committing to the benefits. We’re seeing the quality of outputs increasing and, with good change management, greater assurance around the delivery of those benefits.”

The bank was also looking at further upgrading its customer site, NetBank, to include:

• a real time desktop banking application
• a relationship manager rating tool
• eBay-like messaging tools
• advice on creating stronger passwords
• expanded use of Web chat
• customer verification tools.

It will also upgrade systems to include an SMS notifications service for due credit cards — something with the potential to cut the bank’s revenues, Harte acknowledged.

“There certainly is that potential,” he said. "It is not a direct intention to churn over interest on cards. You are trying to help people spend their money more wisely and grow a deeper loyalty with the organisation over a longer life time. It’s not our intention to keep people in the dark and charge them higher and increasing fees — we are going in the opposite direction and making charges and fees more clear."

As reported by Computerworld, the bank is also increasingly tying performance to executive and partner pay.

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