Headlines:
Omaha Thrift in Race Against Time
Facing the demise of two of its computerized lending systems, Omaha's Commercial Federal Bank sought a single replacement.
Now the unit of the $12.5 billion-asset Commercial Federal Corp. will have to scramble to get its new system into service before the lights go out on the others in April.
"It's going to be a challenge," said Glen Johnson, a vice president of the thrift and its director of consumer lending. He expressed confidence that it will meet the deadline.
Commercial Federal signed a contract in November with Appro Systems Inc. to use the Baton Rouge vendor's LoanCenter Consumer and LoanCenter Business automated loan systems.
Just getting to this point took more than a year; Commercial Federal began a formal review of the market in August 2002.
"We had a little time" because "our systems don't sunset until next spring," Mr. Johnson said in an interview Nov. 26. "We tried to get everybody who had any touch with the decision on our committee, because we wanted to get buy-in."
Commercial Federal now uses a UniFi consumer lending system from a unit of Fiserv Inc. of Brookfield, Wis. The vendor is ending its support for that product, though the thrift could continue using it, Mr. Johnson said. For small-business lending it uses a Fair Isaac Corp. credit system that will no longer be available after April.
After accepting proposals for replacement systems from at least a dozen vendors, Commercial Federal had difficulty finding a provider that could deliver both consumer and small-business loan origination systems.
"Some would have one or the other and would promise they would develop the other," Mr. Johnson said. "We wanted somebody who already had both and was in use in some major banks."
Commercial Federal chose Appro over another finalist after receiving positive reports from banks that were already using it.
The technical setup of the new system should be relatively easy, since Commercial Federal elected to run the software at a hosted data center with Appro as the application service provider.
"We don't know how long it's going to take to get our products in there and our documents," Mr. Johnson said.
Another New Wave at Wells
Since launching its Commercial Electronic Office portal for corporate clients in June 2000, Wells Fargo & Co. has been building up the services that are available over the Internet. Now it is tearing them apart.
After a dozen upgrades, CEO provides Treasury customers access to 35 applications including cash management, credit management, trade finance, foreign exchange, and corporate trust.
"The portal today is simply a doorway into these other applications," said Steve Ellis, an executive vice president and the head of Wells Fargo's wholesale services. But to keep up with the evolution of Internet technology and services, the San Francisco banking company developing a new version of the system that will be "more of a workstation tailored to the way the user works."
Wave 14 of the upgrades is to begin in mid-December with a pilot among two dozen companies, Mr. Ellis said in an interview Nov. 25. The full release is scheduled to occur by the end of January. (In classic triskaidekaphobic practice, there was no Wave 13 release.)
Mr. Ellis called the new edition "the first cut at our next-generation CEO portal" and said Wells will extend the customer-centric approach in subsequent versions. It was built on the WebLogic Platform 8.1 from BEA Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
Wells has spent six to nine months pulling the applications apart and making them more accessible to client companies' employees, Mr. Ellis said.
For example, many companies require "dual custody" of the wire transfer function. Commonly, a corporate employee sets up a transaction, but a manager must review and approve it. Now that manager will be able to receive an e-mail message or a notification upon signing on to the CEO system that a wire is awaiting approval.
By clicking on a link in the message, "you would go right to the screen you need to go to," Mr. Ellis said. "We're taking that piece of the application and pushing it right to you. You do what you need to do and get out. Saving time is a big, big deal to these companies."
Positive-pay exceptions will work in a similar way. When the bank receives a check that does not match the issue file provided by the company, a notification will go to the company to review it. "Pushing that out to somebody in e-mail, as opposed to coming in to find it, is a big deal," Mr. Ellis said.
Notifications will take place through an existing "self-administration" feature of the portal that lets the corporations set up users, provide permissions to certain applications, and manage the notification function.
Wells is also rolling out I-CEO this month for employee use. The internal version, which will replace individual applications for the wholesale banking staff, will give Wells personnel the same view into the system that customers have, as well as single-sign-on access.
"I have 12 passports to get into all the applications on my desktop. I have to go into each of them individually," Mr. Ellis said. By April, when the next upgrade is scheduled, 90% of the employee applications should be available using the single sign-on.
