The solution on the basis of the inxire ECM Suite and Oracle reduces throughput times for changes and basically improves the complete instruction management.
The instruction system of a company embraces and regulates all internal instructions, and thereby documents all processes. This plays a central role for banks, since these are subject to particularly strict regulations, and must be able to confirm at every audit which activities were carried out by any employee, and on the basis of what instructions.
The HypoVereinsbank on the inxire ECM Suite: |
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“With the inxire ECM Suite on the basis of Oracle, we have not only been able to reduce throughput times for the processing of process descriptions in instruction management by up to 20%. This has also relieved the strain on our IT, enabling us to save 50% of the personnel resources in administration.” |
Thomas Jaschke, Corporate Organization & Operations Division, HypoVereinsbank |
At the HypoVereinsbank, these process descriptions were in the past managed by IT, and represented on over 10,000 web sites. Their manual administration and updating alone required four employees of the central IT subsidiary. But that was not the only shortcoming which was criticised by the Corporate Organization & Operations Division (COO Division) of the HypoVereinsbank, which amongst other things is also responsible for the instruction system. Lacking currentness led to a lack of acceptance amongst users, the throughput times in the case of changes were too long, the reconciliation requirement was too high – not least because of the laborious review handling.
This was only changed fundamentally by the use of the Oracle-based inxire ECM Suite. In the handling of comprehensive process descriptions, the throughput time has been reduced by around 15-20%. The IT employees are now available for other tasks, and the authors are supported directly by two colleagues in the COO Division.
The instruction system of a company embraces and regulates all internal instructions, and thereby documents all processes. This plays a central role for banks, since these are subject to particularly strict regulations, and must be able to confirm at every audit which activities were carried out by any employee, and on the basis of what instructions.
At the HypoVereinsbank, these process descriptions were in the past managed by IT, and represented on over 10,000 web sites. Their manual administration and updating alone required four employees of the central IT subsidiary. But that was not the only shortcoming which was criticised by the Corporate Organization & Operations Division (COO Division) of the HypoVereinsbank, which amongst other things is also responsible for the instruction system. Lacking currentness lead to a lack of acceptance amongst users, the throughput times in the case of changes were too long, the reconciliation requirement was too high – not least because of the laborious review handling.
This was only changed fundamentally by the use of the Oracle-based inxire ECM Suite. In the handling of comprehensive process descriptions, the throughput time has been reduced by around 15-20%. The IT employees are now available for other tasks, and the authors are supported directly by two colleagues in the COO Division.
The extensive instruction management of the HypoVereinsbank consists to the extent of around two thirds of descriptions, which illustrate all the processes of the bank. These processes are documented in ARIS, and are then made available to employees throughout the whole organisation over the web in the form of checklists. These are augmented by product data sheets and competence guidelines, which for example specify what function within the bank is an authorised signatory for what amounts.
The responsibility for the description lies with the relevant author, although its publication is subject to a comprehensive review and release procedure. Around 300 authors are actively involved in the compilation and revision of the instruction management. Some are only involved once per year, while others devote up to 20% of their working hours to these activities. In the case of complex processes, such as the organisation and decision-making for loans, numerous offices of the bank are included in the revision of the process. Up to 8 review partners, who co-operate on the subsequent quality assurance of this process, is nothing unusual. In addition to clarity and ease of location, the currentness of the descriptions is of great importance when it comes to acceptance by the users in the bank. 50% of the 23,000 or so users access the system at least once per week, and frequently even more often.
“In the past, it was not unusual for Word documents of several megabytes to be exchanged between the mailboxes of those involved during the course of the review processes”, recalls Thomas Jaschke. “The consolidation was tremendously laborious, even for simple processes. And because of the central administration, one always had to hope that the resources were available in IT for prompt publication, which was by no means always the case.”
The descriptions are now processed using a web-based editor instead of in MS Word, and filed in the system. Manual administration by the central IT is no longer necessary. All documents are centrally available in the inxire ECM Suite, and are published decentrally by the authors.
The HypoVereinsbank on user acceptance: |
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“The central filing, combined with the decentral publication by the responsible author, has proven to be ideal for us, in order to make instructions available as promptly as possible. This has also improved acceptance by users, since it is now clear for all to see that documents from instruction management are always right up-to-date.” |
Thomas Jaschke Organisation and Instruction System, HypoVereinsbank |
Simple instructions, such as amended amounts for signatory regulations, can now be published by an author – taking into account the 4-eyes principle – within 1-2 hours, instead of a week or more, as was often the case in the past because of the central processing by a subsidiary company.
“Dead links” are also now a thing of the past for the instruction management of the HypoVereinsbank. Authors concerned are notified automatically if a document to which they refer in a text is no longer available.
The users access all documents by means of a clear web interface. The clearly arranged hierarchy, in addition to convenient search functions, facilitates rapid access to the required documents.
A subscription service ensures that every user who has registered for the subjects relevant to him is automatically notified of any changes. All new content features are also listed on a special central website.
The innovative concept for the review and release process fulfils all the requirements of quality assurance and internal audit – from the very beginning.
In the so-called “EditorialSpace”, documents are compiled, and on completion submitted to the employees involved in the review. The personnel responsible for the review edit them as required and in parallel – each has his own edition of the document – and file the versions edited by them in the “MasterReviewPlace” specially developed for the HypoVereinsbank, which has since become a standard feature of the inxire ECM Suite. Here the author can see all change requests and suggestions, and can then specifically accept or reject these changes.
For legal reasons, all documents in all versions must be archived for ten years, so that they are always available in the event of an audit. The integral archiving of the process descriptions provided in the inxire ECM Suite makes it transparent to the auditors which version of a process description was used at what time.
The HypoVereinsbank was further convinced by the SOA-based integration of the inxire ECM Suite with ARIS, which ensures the data exchange between the systems.
The easily readable checklists are generated direct from the process models of ARIS. On completion of the review, the ARIS models must be modified again, although they remain available with all functionalities for ultimate publication in the form of checklists. Herein lies a further reason for the speeding-up of the overall process, with which Thomas Jaschke is very satisfied: “The main effort in the revision of complex business transactions lies in the content design of the process. The processing times in the ECM Suite, reduced on average by 15-20%, clearly demonstrate that we now have a very slim and efficient solution which is exactly tailored to our requirements.”
From the point of view of the bank, there were numerous reasons in favour of the use of the Oracle-based inxire ECM Suite:
At the HypoVereinsbank, there are already many applications in use on the basis of the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, so that the bank was already completely convinced of the performance, failure safety and data security of the basic technology.
In addition, the inxire ECM Suite, which was implemented with the content management components of the Oracle Fusion Middleware in a service-orientated architecture (SOA), could also be brought into operation without any problem on the Oracle WebLogic Server – at the time still BEA.
The Oracle WebLogic Server, the high-performance, slim and easy-to-administer application server, is the standard system requirement at the HypoVereinsbank for all application server-based developments. Thanks to the open standards of the Oracle Fusion Middleware components, the use of the inxire ECM Suite on the basis of the WebLogic went perfectly smoothly.
In inxire GmbH, the HypoVereinsbank has found an Oracle partner which has convinced them not only with a highly functional product, but also with innovative and simultaneously realistic concepts. The solution approach presented by inxire was clearly superior to the competition as early as the selection phase, and was able to be implemented successfully thanks to the specialised and technical know-how provided.