There's a classic business saying  that to fix a problem  - you first have to identify the problem.

Many companies are striving to attain what is commonly called "a single view of the customer" .  The main problem they face in solving this problem is that they will probably have three to four and maybe up to a dozen back end systems that all manage the same customer customer base - and the information will be different in each system.

One system may have a name and address, while a second system will have a name and phone number - same person - different information.  Depending on what data source you attach to, the result may not always be the same.

The solution to this problem is to consolidate all the attributes of the one person into what we call the "natural person" and then manage the "state" of this information across each of those back-end systems.

Taten's Financial DataHub is the  mechanism to consolidate this information and is the result of many years of experience in understanding, collecting, managing and disseminating data.

Taten's Financial Datahub can be seen as the glue or DNA that connects and binds all the disparate data sources together to create that single view of the customer. 

Typically, the information is fragmented and potentially contradictory.  So while there are many views of the customer's information across the organisation, they are almost never consolidated or cross-referenced making it very difficult to achieve an accurate single customer view. 

The FDH addresses many of the issues faced by companies - not just retail financial service organisations - in trying to achieve this elusive holy grail of customer service including:.

• Aligning IT infrastructure planning with core business strategies
• The need to ensure agility and operational excellence in financial services back office operations
• Enabling organisations to focus on simplifying their IT software infrastructure and avoid adding new applications unnecessarily
• Enabling Financial Services organisations to establish a road map of business process improvements by extending and (where applicable) rationalising the life of core Back Office systems without raising the total cost of ownership
• Ensuring processes and analytics match business vision and strategy

The key to addressing these issues is to adopt a technical architecture that is not constrained by the limitations of the back office legacy systems.

Because Financial Institutions are bound, by legislative, legal and moral obligations to operate core processing systems accurately and reliably, the ability to change these systems to meet the operational needs of the business is limited, particularly when the new business process requires the combination of data from more than one back office system.

The traditional approach is to extend or rationalise the back office system into vertical processing silos. The cost and time implications of making changes to these vertical silos is typically measured in years and with costs measured in the millions of dollars.

Taten's aproach is to adopt a horizontal architecture  - which has been identified by the Gartner Group* as a key enabler of Business Process Management Systems that better meet the need of the businesses -

• Enables organisations to centralise and standardise processes across back- office system
• Creates a common user interface for front offices staff
• Modernises and improve business process 

This horizontal architecutre approach solves eight key issues that almost any company faces in dealing with customer data.
 

1. Assembling a customer's full financial picture from many disparate sources

2. Having to fill out a new form every time the customer wants to apply for a new product or service

3. Having multiple logins to a number of web based systems

4. How to share information securely with specialist advisers and third parties

5. How to accurately match products and services to a customer's needs

6. How to provide specific offers and up-to-date information that are relevant to a customer

7. How to grow their own business while providing a value add service to existing customers

8. Analysing customer behaviour from logged-in areas or when using website tools such as calculators or budget planners.

*  2008 Gartner Report