Banking On An Integration Plan

Manufacturers Bank of California has embarked on a key integration project that maps to a long-term customer-relationship man-agement strategy. The subsidiary of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. primarily services small-business accounts, but it also offers business owners and their employees consumer banking services. Now CIO Adrian Danescu wants to integrate each customer's financial data, whether it's related to personal or small-business accounts, and make it available in real time to service agents to improve relationships with and services for clients.

"We look to be a full-service provider of financial services to our customers and their employees," Danescu says. The bank, with $1.1 billion in assets, last week deployed two integrated applications from S1 Corp. to further its goals. S1 Personal Banking lets customers using its online banking system receive a consolidated view of deposits and credit and loan accounts, as well as conduct online transactions. S1 Business Banking provides similar financial-management tools for small businesses.

The S1 software is based on a Java 2 Enterprise Edition open architecture, which should ease integration with other applications that contain customers' data. S1 moves the information into a common data model so Danescu won't have to create point-to-point links between apps that can add to infrastructure and maintenance costs. The seamless view the bank will have into customers' combined account data should make it easier to develop new services for clients, as well as cross-sell and up-sell services.

"To me, customer service is a product," Danescu says. "It tells my customers how well we can perform" as their partner.

Looking forward, Danescu wants to integrate instant-messaging services into the S1 applications and add secure messaging for E-mailing financial statements to customers.