Its Outsourcing Unit Plans to Demonstrate Package at ABA Conference
Mellon Bank's outsourcing unit is working with four vendors in developing advanced management software that it plans to market to client banks.
The software would enable the institutions to collect data on profitability, productivity, and other areas from across their operations.
Mellon plans to demonstrate a prototype of the system this week in New Orleans at the American Bankers Association's National Operations and Automation Conference.
Advanced Processing Method
The software uses a standard operating system, a relational data base, and an advanced method of processing that allows data to be extracted from across a network and analyzed at an individual workstation.
Working with Mellon on the project are hardware vendor Hewlett-Packard Co., data base vendor Oracle Corp., and two software companies, Powersoft and Indigo Software Corp.
Mellon expects to make the management software commercially available in early 1994. It is to be marketed by the Pittsburgh company's financial institutions outsourcing unit.
To Go Forward Despite Possible Sale
Mellon has put the outsourcing business up for sale along with other computer service divisions.
William F.X. O'Neil, first vice president of the outsourcing unit, said the development project would not be affected by the possible sale.
Three banks are working with Mellon to identify the types of information needed to make the software effective.
Mr. O'Neil said the banks, which he would not name, should begin testing the software this summer.
The test banks are expected to identify 15,000 to 20,000 elements of data that the system ultimately could make accessible.
Clients would extract data from Mellon's mainframes or from third-party data sources. The system would allow them to analyze the data and generate reports at remote workstations.
Using Mainframe |an Expensive Proposition'
"Making [this type of] information available via the mainframe is an expensive proposition," said Mr. O'Neil. "By providing it in this manner, clients will have access to all the data we have, including data that isn't available to them now."
Bankers will be able to ask for information in any format they require.
The software allows for the generation of reports giving the status of monthly deposits, new accounts, and organizational or departmental profitability. Bankers could view productivity and profitability by employee, by branch, or by customer.
Mellon plans to demonstrate the software on an IBM-compatible 486 personal computer, but banks that buy the software probably will want to run it on a more powerful workstation like those marketed by Hewlett-Packard, Mr. O'Neil said. The software will run on the Microsoft Windows standard.
